What's Wrong with Labor?

Not far beyond the half-way mark in the Gillard government, the consensus seems to be that the parliament has been nothing short of chaotic: scandal upon scandal, lie after lie. Pundits agree that this government is magnificently dysfunctional, when in fact, the Gillard Government has been passing legislation with quiet regularity. And yet, they have all but lost the election that won't be held for another twelve months or so.

The possibility that the ALP could win the next federal election lacks credibility in most quarters, and the newest national sport is hypothesising on what killed the Labor Party, and for those from the left, how to fix it.

Conservative commentator Chris Kenny proposed via on Twitter on May 15 that the ALP's woes are the result of being poll-driven.

Labor's whole problem is it is poll driven - even the claim it is not poll driven is poll driven #auspol

Bill Kelty, one of the godfathers of the Left, suggested to this week's ACTU Congress that they should look within: "...when he advised delegates not to blame the media or opposition because they are just doing their job, the meaning for all of us is that we control our own destiny with our own behaviour." There's more than a grain of truth there, but it's an insider's truth, not the whole truth.

Brisbane commentator Madonna King had a look at the situation in yesterday's Courier Mail. "Voters aren't taken with Tony Abbott, and they've now turned off listening to Julia Gillard." Ms King is correct, as far as she goes, but there's so much more to it, and Bill Kelty nudges it when he talks about making policy simpler for the electorate to understand and embrace.

For Labor, there is no easy answer, no single cause, and no silver bullet. An extraordinary convergence of events and personalities has conspired to...er...screw the Australian Labor Party with its pants on.

Circumstantial shots were fired by the GFC, ensuring that the Labor Governments of Rudd and Gillard would face economic challenges not predicted in the promise-filled days of campaigning. After years of Howard/Costello Budget Bonbons and Surpluses, the electorate was confused by talk of recession combined with stimulus handouts. It was seen as wasting our precious surplus when we needed it most.

History has shown that Wayne Swan's economic leadership through the darkest days of the GFC was masterful. Had he taken us in a different direction, Australia could well be fighting Greece and Spain for the title of Loser of the Week. But as the ALP has learned, it's almost impossible to get that triumphant economic message out.

Factors 2 and 3 in the ALP Real Life Disaster Movie are the Coalition and Media. Bill Kelty cautioned unionists not to blame the Opposition or the media, but it's foolish to discount their impact. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is a skilled No-man, with a team of committed No-People behind him. So relentless, so fascinating is the Coalition's ability to undermine every Labor achievement, the media has no choice but to cover it, particularly when our articulate government ministers seek out a microphone and react every time the Noalition says anything. This is Labor allowing the Opposition to control the national agenda.

Who are the big media names in this country, the commentators with a personal following? Alan Jones, Ray Hadley, Andrew Bolt, Piers Ackerman, each of them aggressively conservative, with anti-refugee, anti-climate change, anti-gay rights agendas. There is no left-leaning equivalent with anything approaching the reach of these men.

Add to that Today Tonight and A Current Affair. They may not be overtly political, yet their lowest common denominator stories about undeserving asylum seekers living the good life, dodgy public officials and the appalling cost of everything, feed into the anti-government sentiment. Even as I write this blog, Today Tonight is promoting noted xenophobe Pauline Hanson's guest-starring role this week as another Caucasian making you mad at people who look like me.

Chris Kenny, journalist and Liberal party operative, suggests that the ALP downfall is because it is poll-driven. The assassination of Kevin Rudd's Prime Ministership had an element of poll-reliance to it, yet those poll numbers that Rudd had in mid-2010 would be a dream come true for Labor now. Why hasn't the ALP benched Julia Gillard? Perhaps they aren't as poll-driven now as they were two years ago.

What else do the polls tell us? Concern about the economy trumps all other policy areas, despite Australia's world-beating financial status. The latest Morgan poll on issues doesn't seem to determine ALP focus, but it does reflect the agendas of the right wing shock jocks.

Does all of this suggest that the Coalition is simply better at getting their message out via traditional means than Labor is?

The final, most disastrous element in the ALP's decline is the simple truth that the Party and it's traditional base are separated by an ever-widening ideological gulf. Bob Hawke can sing all the union anthems in the world, but it doesn't mean anything to the unionists who see "their" ALP slow-dancing with policies so far to the right that even Malcolm Fraser has to swivel his head to see them.

So there they sit, disgruntled unionists, disillusioned greenies, disenfranchised lefties of all kinds, wondering where their party went. Polls, media, an obstructionist opposition, a hung parliament, the GFC, climate change, asylum seekers and the rise in popularity of the raspberry macaron notwithstanding, the base is still there, where they've been all along. The ALP chased the centre, and in doing so, moved so far to the right that it's unrecognisable to grass roots lefties like me.

How does Labor fix the problem? Start by turning 180 degrees to the left and peering into the distance. There's literally hundreds of thousands of Aussies over here who'd like to have a chat.

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Pointing Fingers

Peter Beattie's friends, family, supporters and detractors are, according to Brisbane commentator Madonna King, flooding her inbox in response to her article in yesterday's Courier Mail.

Like so many Queenslanders, Ms King is looking for reasons for last week's enormous LNP victory over the Queensland Labor. I'm one of those, and I am nowhere close to knowing what happened last week. What I do know is that in attempting to apportion blame between two Premiers, Anna Bligh and Peter Beattie, is an oversimplification. To assume that all responsibility lay with the party leaders is to ignore the context in which we operate. 

Although some Labor supporters tried to convince themselves that miracles are possible, they were never going to win last week. They shouldn't have won on 2009 either. To understand Labor's appalling defeat, we have to look at the unlikely 2009 victory, and as Madonna did, peer even further back, but also closer to home. 

After compiling a pithy list of Labor crises during Beattie's years in power, Ms King writes

"Now he makes the point that he's been gone more than five years but many of the problems Bligh's government faced were of Beattie's making. And to sheet home the entire blame for the election loss to the woman he groomed to replace him is to skew history, and ignore the facts."

Madonna, you've ignored a few facts too, and I'll admit that I'm about to commit the same sin. There is a vast array of factors that contribute to a government being bollocksed in the polls.
 
But let's start with a little Root Cause Analysis. It's so much more useful than blame. 
The turning point that changed Anna Bligh from Labor Premier to Public Enemy was the Asset Sales decision, just a matter of weeks after winning the 2009 election.  Asset Sales had not been suggested during the campaign.  People hated the idea, and hated Premier Bligh and Treasurer Andrew Fraser for the decision. "See Queensland before its all sold off" read the bumper stickers. Voters felt betrayed, bitter, and the government's credibility was shredded.
 
So why move forward with such an unpopular decision? Doesn't really matter. There was a GFC that hit mining $ tourism hard, and we sold off some state owned assets to pay some bills.
Then there was the little matter of a credit rating being downgraded. More proof of a government unable to manage the economy? Read it for yourself. 

Yes, Premier Beattie should have spent more on state infrastructure. He didn't. Premier Bligh had to catch up. Really, does pointing the finger help?

And then there was Queensland Health. Just where does the buck stop? The DG? The Minister? The Premier? Doesn't matter: the ALP was in government when Jayant Patel was at Bundaberg Base Hospital. The Health Minister was Gordon Nuttall. Patel and Nuttall are both serving time.

The pain continued with the Queensland Health Payroll Debacle. Let me introduce you to an acronym many of you won't know: UAT. User Acceptance Testing. It's an incredibly important phase of IT project work, where the client tests the new developments against a comprehensive range of real-world scenarios to ensure the product is fit for purpose. UAT is often the Go/NoGo for taking the project live. Guess which step was missed in the Qld Health Payroll project. Yep: UAT. The system wasn't tested, or wasn't tested well enough. Why? My guess is that someone had a large bonus riding on a GoLive target date being met. This kind of disaster tends to reflect the culture of the organisation, yet throwing blame at the Premier misses the target and helps no-one.

To completely destroy what was left of the Qld Health morale and reputation, there was the incident where a middle manager alledgedly helped himself to a few million dollars. This was the result of a systemic failure to conduct background checks, and one alledgedly greedy criminal.

I don't think anyone is denying that Qld Health is experiencing a series of crises. Beattie's fault? Bligh's fault? Hard to say. It's a bigger question around the relationship between the government and the public service.
 
I'm not a fan of blame. I think it's wasted effort.
 
We can, and should, be looking at 'why' rather than 'who', and the ALP will be doing plenty of that. Some of the 'why' will involve the issues Madonna King listed in her article, and the ones I mentioned here. Many more are harder to pin down: the "it's time" factor, the continued movement of the ALP to the right, backwash from Federal Labor, differences between the ALP and their union base...it's a long list of complex issues.

Peter Beattie is not blameless. Neither is Anna Bligh, Tim Fraser or anyone else from Qld Labor. Yet in this, as in most circumstances, finding people to blame has no benefit beyond making the blamer feel superior.