If Labor it to have any hope of winning the next federal election, its new leader will need to moderate his instincts and move the party to the centre.
The Conservative Party strongly opposed Bill Shorten’s high taxing, high spending big government policies and this month’s election result proved most Australians felt that way too.
The Australian reports, at 10am yesterday it became official: Anthony Albanese is now the leader of the Labor Party. He is the 21st leader and the first to hold an inner-city seat since Arthur Calwell retired from the electorate of Melbourne in 1972. And he is the first from Labor’s NSW Left faction since HV “Doc” Evatt vacated the role in 1960.
Albanese has been a member of parliament for 23 years, including six as a minister and a few months as deputy prime minister. His entire full-time working life has been as a political staff member, party official or parliamentarian . He was a leader in student politics and Young Labor. And he is the leader of the hard-Left faction within the party.
While Albanese is popular among party members and respected by many voters, he will need to undergo a transformation to be electorally viable. He will need to junk many of the things he has believed in, threatening his authenticity and credibility, and to accept that he has been on the wrong side of many policy issues.
Such as death taxes. At a meeting of the NSW Young Labor council executive in mid-1985 , Albanese moved a motion urging the Hawke government to introduce “a wealth tax and gift and death duties”. He was, to be fair, 22 at the time. Union leaders had called for similar things. Maybe it is ancient history and doesn’t matter. Put it down to youthful ignorance.
But at Labor Party conferences in the 1980s and 90s Albanese opposed the deregulation of financial markets, privatisation of government assets, tariff cuts, wage restraint, fiscal consolidation and the export of uranium to France. He even voted with the Left faction to re-regulate the currency, years after the 1986 float.
As Young Labor president, Albanese often trashed Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. He repeatedly said they were out of touch. “Someone like Keating can put himself up as a possible Labor PM, but he is more comfortable mixing with millionaires and business executives than he is with working-class people,” Albanese thundered in one of many tirades.
Much more recently, at Labor’s 2015 national conference, he urged Left faction colleagues to oppose Bill Shorten and Richard Marles in their support for asylum-seeker boat turnbacks.
At that same national conference , Albanese moved a motion supporting a minimum level of taxation on high-income earners, the so-called Buffett rule. It would generate about $2 billion to $3 billion in extra revenue. Labor’s Left faction re-endorsed this policy ahead of last year’s national conference.
The Left faction also supports a Tobin tax, which would introduce a levy on financial transactions.
None of this augurs well for Albanese’s judgment on policy and political issues.
Labor does need to conduct a detailed, open and independent review of its election campaign. The last review, overseen by national secretary Noah Carroll, was a farce. It was the first time that Labor’s post-election review was kept secret.
How could anybody learn from it if they couldn’t read it? Albanese has made promising comments about the need to revisit Labor policies. He also has said the party’s anti-business and class warfare rhetoric such as “big end of town” should be left behind.
The trouble is that he has used this language throughout his time in politics, including during the recent election campaign. These are not just words; they are statements that signalled Labor’s values to voters.
Albanese’s personal motto is “I fight Tories”. If Labor is to win back voters, it won’t do so with phrases about fighting its opponents. Labor must win the battle of ideas.
The party must accept that it has suffered yet another election defeat. The true believers always look for scapegoats such as their opponent’s scare campaigns or the media, or lull themselves into believing they were unlucky and will win the next election. Labor did this time and time again during the Howard years and is doing so again. But it has only itself to blame.
