Many inside Labor want to narrow the significance of the 2019 result by focusing on short-term factors: Shorten, Palmer, franking credits, and the like. But a decade-by-decade analysis of Labor’s primary vote makes it clear that Labor’s electoral strife has been building momentum since the mid-1980s, which means it goes well beyond any one of these factors. In the context of this long decline, what the 2019 result made clear was that the number of voters who now want to use their vote to elect Labor is no longer sufficient to regularly get majority Labor governments elected. Rather than an alternative party of government, federal Labor is increasingly looking like an emergency stop button for Coalition governments, only deployed by voters when the Coalition hangs around well beyond its used-by date. This a humbling decline for a very proud party, and it leaves ALP bosses with no easy choices. Many insiders want to focus on short-term factors such as Bill Shorten's unpopularity to explain the latest election loss. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen A new leader, a new policy agenda, smarter pollsters, sharper campaigns – none of this alone will address the structural decline of four decades. How do we know this? Because over that time Labor has had some of its best leaders, policy agendas, pollsters, and campaigns, but nothing it has done has arrested the long slide. Watching Labor struggle over the past decade has been like watching an industrious housekeeper try to make a queen-sized bed with a fitted sheet for a double. Every time Labor stretches the sheet to reach a required electoral corner, the opposite electoral corner becomes exposed. The problem is not the housekeeper; it’s the diminished dimensions of Labor’s fundamental political appeal.

So, can’t Labor just reform its structure, to broaden its appeal? The short answer is no. In recent decades Labor has proved it is incapable of reforming itself. The forces pushing for reform inside the party simply have no leverage, and in many state branches Labor is too busy surviving to have time for reform. As federal Labor enters its 13th decade there is no realistic chance it will change its structure to appeal to a broader base of voters, which means Labor will not reinvent itself as the party of urban progressives, or the sensible centre, or be anything other than the Australian Labor Party. Labor has effectively snookered itself into a position where – short of waiting for Coalition governments to occasionally self-immolate – its only realistic pathway to consistently forming governments in the 2020s is to work with the moderate minor parties and independents sitting on the ever-growing crossbench. After 120 years of hard political yakka, this will be a painful repositioning for Labor, and will require some serious political rewiring of its formidable political machine. But refusing to concede this fact will only succeed in diminishing it to the role of a political seagull, occasionally snatching electoral victories that the Coalition discards.

What makes this task even more difficult is the fact that the Greens are the exact opposite of the coalition partner Labor now needs. The Greens economic radicalism means that they are palatable in the seats Labor holds, but toxic in the seats Labor needs to win. Hence a coalition with the Greens would be a zero-sum deal for Labor. Illustration: Dionne Gain Credit: Over the coming decade Labor must look to the growing band of socially and economically moderate independents who sit on the crossbench for the early signs of a partner, or partners, who can help it form a Labor-led progressive/moderate coalition government of the future. Unlike the Greens, these independents can win seats that Labor can’t win. Seats such as Wentworth, Kooyong, Mayo, Warringah and Indi, which have a strong rump of moderate voters who are unimpressed by the ideological indulgences of the Coalition government but are not willing to vote Labor. As the number of seats on this list grows, the political opportunity grows with it. Like the housekeeper with the undersized bedsheet, it would be a fool’s errand for Labor to attempt to win these seats on its own. What it made in one corner, it would quickly lose in the other. Labor should protect its political patch, not radically reposition. Of course, convincing the independents and minors to play ball with this plan is no lay-down misere. “Whatever it takes” sounds cool to Young Labor neophytes but sounds creepy to politicians who have followed their own path. Luckily, political power has its own logic, so if co-operation was on the table, a deal could be done.