Labor was going to hit the ground running — it hit a brick wall instead

Updated

The first day of a Shorten Labor government was going to project the image of a hard man, every bit as tough on border protection as the Prime Minister he had just replaced.

Mike Pezzullo, the divisive head of the Home Affairs super-department, was to be flown down to Melbourne, where the newly-elected PM would be briefed on how the boats would continue to be stopped.

Everything had been considered, down to the choreographed photo opportunity.

Cameras would record for posterity, and for the benefit of people smugglers, a defiant Mr Shorten declaring that their trade would not be allowed to restart under his government.

It was only one element of a detailed plan for the smoothest of power transitions.

No-one had a plan for a Labor loss.

Not least Anthony Albanese, who, within days of Mr Shorten's resignation, suddenly fulfilled a lifelong ambition to become Labor leader, taking the reins of a shattered, shell-shocked party unable to come to terms with the fact that it somehow managed to lose the unlosable election.

Where the party finds itself now is uncharted territory. Every one of its policies is up for review, meaning Labor has no settled foundation or framework upon which to attack the Coalition's plans.

On climate change, it says the Government's 2030 target to cut emissions by 26 per cent is grossly inadequate, while at the same time paving the way for an overhaul — some say a retreat — on its own 45 per cent target.

By year's end, an official autopsy on Labor's loss will be delivered by party veterans Jay Weatherill and Craig Emerson, who have been consulting widely — even with political journalists — about what went wrong, and which policies might be salvageable.

There is a suspicion among some within Labor that it will be a whitewash, conveniently laying most of the blame at the feet of the vanquished Bill Shorten.

But whatever it finds, the review will become the first road map the party uses to try and chart its way back towards office.

Albo's Nixon moment

In the gloomy months for the ALP Caucus since May 18, MPs have been forming a broad conclusion that, in his bid to keep the factional peace, the right-wing Mr Shorten drifted too far to the left in both policy and rhetoric.

Some argue the party lost its working class base.

If that's accepted as the party's underlying problem then, the thinking goes, Mr Albanese has a few advantages over his predecessor in correcting it.

The rugby league-loving, occasional DJ universally known as "Albo" has a common touch, he is not a creature of the unions — and therefore owes little to them— and although he is from the left, he's well suited to shepherd his own faction in the new direction required.

The theory is that Albanese is about to have his "Nixon moment" — if it took an avowed anti-communist to confound his base and engage with Chairman Mao, perhaps only a left-winger like Albo can pull his party back to the centre.

It is notable that Mr Albanese has been quick to abandon the anti-business rhetoric of his predecessor, who would often decry the "top end of town", and that his first policy intervention, of sorts, has been on climate change.

While maintaining Labor's commitment to "strong action", Mr Albanese has sanctioned his ally and climate change spokesman Mark Butler to start making the case for the 2030 target to be dumped or reworked.

Having been the salesman for the original policy, Mr Butler is now making the case for why it should be changed.

In a recent speech, he said "nothing should be excluded or treated as sacrosanct" in the post-election review, not even "the area I had responsibility for — climate change and energy".

There is, of course, a pragmatic reason to dump the target; it was set in 2015 and intended to be implemented over a 15-year period.

If Labor is elected in 2022, it would have just eight years to achieve it, a task made even more difficult by the fact that emissions have continued to rise in the meantime.

But sources say there is also a political imperative in revising Labor's short-term targets.

Voters, they believe, were wary of the fact that the policy could not be costed and suspicious about what impact it could have on their hip pocket.

At a time of economic uncertainty, they stuck with the devil they knew.

One Labor MP said the policy was — fairly or unfairly — considered "indulgent" by some voters who heard climate change and thought "expensive power bills".

The challenge for Labor is that surveys and public polling consistently show that an increasing number of Australians are concerned about climate change but not enough, it seems, to sway their vote.

Franking credit policy on the nose, MPs say

Beyond emissions, tensions are simmering over tax policy with several within Labor's parliamentary ranks convinced Mr Albanese will move to junk the divisive franking credits policy, or modify it into something unrecognisably different to what was devised by former shadow treasurer Chris Bowen.

What was seen by Labor as a sensible move to "close an unfair loophole" (and save $5 billion a year), was vulnerable to relentless political attack and re-labelled a "retiree tax" by the Prime Minister, who put it at the centre of his campaign assault.

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Even though ending the cash refunds would have affected a relatively small number of Australians — and had effectively been tested with the electorate during the previous year's Super Saturday by-elections — Labor believes the Coalition's campaign cut through.

It was a key part of an ambitious tax-and-spend platform that insiders are now convinced was too crowded, too ambitious and robbed the ALP of a simple message to sell to voters.

There are still divisions within the party over where to go next because if it decides to ditch a big revenue-raiser like the franking credits policy, then it also has to dump big-spending initiatives to match.

Untangling these connections is complicated.

Education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek, who was Mr Shorten's deputy, has been sending strong signals that Labor should maintain its pledge to boost spending on schools by $14 billion, in keeping with the original Gonski needs-based funding plan laid out in 2013.

But some have questioned why the party would stick with such an expensive commitment (and one it's held onto now for six years) particularly when, in their view, education policy does not sway votes at a federal level.

No clear winner in the blame game

There is an element of legacy protection at play here as well.

Forces close to Mr Shorten are determined not to see him become the fall guy for a suite of policies signed off on by Shadow Cabinet.

That could explain, to some extent, the recent outbreak of hostilities between Mark Butler and the man who replaced him as ALP national president, Wayne Swan, over the party's direction.

It was most evident in two separate launches of the exact same book documenting Labor's reformist traditions.

Taking to his task, Mr Swan used the opportunity to blame the marketing or use of "progressive language" for the rejection of his favoured tax-and-spend agenda.

But Mr Butler had a very different take, complete with an embedded message about Bill Shorten's popularity, as he demanded his party embark on a ruthless path of renewal.

"Our only three victories over Liberal governments since World War II all involved an immensely popular leader, a compelling national vision and a superior campaign," he said.

The party has to confront the reality that in 2019, it failed on all three fronts.

Back to basics

As he "hastens slowly", Mr Albanese is working on that compelling vision. Over the next 12 months, he plans to lay out what he calls "vision statements" on key policy areas that he hopes will eventually form the basis of a more modest, less detailed, and less prescriptive national platform.

He is going back to basics, broadly outlining Labor's values to explain to voters what his party stands for.

Perhaps anticipating a major reset, Mr Albanese has brought forward to next year ALP's next national conference, its peak policy-making forum.

An earlier gathering of the disparate factions and interest groups that form Labor's membership base should ensure that any brawls over policy direction are settled well before the next election.

Between now and that conference, he just has to hope members' confidence in him is matched by a level of patience that he knows where he's heading, and how to run down Scott Morrison in 2022.

Topics: elections, federal-elections, federal-parliament, parliament, federal-government, government-and-politics, australia

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