Things That Matter

‘One of the things about elections is that … they are a chance to have a national conversation about things that matter.’

So said Labor’s Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Dr Andrew Leigh, to a gathering of Labor faithful at the home of Pat O’Neill Labor candidate for the Federal seat of Brisbane last Wednesday evening.

Photo courtesy of alp.org.au

Leigh’s context was inequality and he went on to talk about inequality being one of the deep currents that will run through the 2016 campaign.

Whether you agree with his politics or not, Leigh makes a good point.  Elections should encourage a national conversation and a refocusing of the national awareness onto matters that will affect us in the years to come.

‘Australians believe the state of the economy, interest rates, unemployment, the cost of living, and the gap between rich and poor are more concerning than immigration, environmental issues, and social problems.’ Reported Gareth Hutchens in the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this year. Hutchens was reporting on a late 2015 Morgan poll.

Prime minister Turnbull, banking on terminally linking Shorten to union corruption and malpractice wants to fight the election on Industrial Relations.

The double dissolution trigger for a July 2 election was the return of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) legislation. Turnbull asked the Governor-General to recall parliament on April 18 to debate the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013 (which will reinstate the ABCC). The Senate cross benchers rejected the Bill giving Turnbull the trigger and justification he needs to request the Governor-General to dissolve both houses and lock in the July 2 federal election.

But there’s a small problem – nobody outside State Circle in Canberra actually cares much about reinstating the ABCC. As Gareth Hutchens mentioned, employment, inequality, cost of living and interest rates are engaging the population – the proposed resurrection of an arcane ABCC is not.

Second tier issues energizing voters’ minds include immigration, health and the environment and on these issues there has been little or no solid achievements by the government – certainly not enough to base a campaign around – and nothing new on the horizon.

Photo courtesy of miapplesinteractive.blogspot.com

Immigration minister, Peter Dutton, who staggers from disaster to disaster in his portfolio - of which last Thursday’s reports of young people being beaten on Nauru is just the latest - at least has the advantage of a chimera of bipartisanship between Coalition and Labor asylum-seeker policies to hide behind - his penchant for gaffs notwithstanding.

Photo courtesy of no fibs.com.au

The Paris agreement on climate change was significant but, given that the “announceables” for that were late last year, those achievements will not be front of mind for voters come July and it is beyond Environment Minister Greg Hunt to prosecute a decent case based on them. He has little else to work with after former climate change advocate Turnbull capitulated to the deniers in the Coalition and ruled out any changes to the Coalitions widely criticised Direct Action policy.

Photo courtesy of article.wn.com

Health Minister Sussan Ley’s, recent announcement regarding health care packages for chronically ill patients has little to differentiate it from Medicare Locals or Primary Health Networks and will, in any case, be totally drowned out - as will any future announcements by Education Minister Simon Birmingham - by claims that the Abbott/Turnbull government has ripped $80 billion dollars out of the states health and education budgets.

Photo courtesy of smh.com

Birmingham has already discovered the depth of feeling there is in the higher education community with his proposed changes to deregulate university fees.

Photo courtesy of https://theantibogan.wordpress.com

As for the hapless Treasurer, apart from not being in his prime minister’s inner circle as Phillip Coorey in the Fin Review of 23 March revealed, Scott Morrison has been emasculated on every single economic policy position he has taken from raising the GST through changes to negative gearing. In the end, all the Treasurer has left are company tax cuts and tax cuts for the wealthy and even company tax cuts are looking shaky following the prime minister’s comments regarding the up-coming budget.

Morrison’s woes were compounded last week with the revelation that the Australian Tax Office is investigating over 800 wealthy Australians following their exposure in the Panama Papers. If Andrew Leigh is right, and inequality is the deep current running through the campaign, then the Treasurer has only broken arrows in his quiver to fight the election with.

In September last year, advocates of same sex marriage had high hopes for the newly minted and hugely popular prime minister. Marriage equality was, by Turnbull’s own account, a signature policy. What remains of that hope was dashed by recent reports that even the plebiscite to which Turnbull had conceded to placate the right wing of his party is now likely to be postponed indefinitely. Mungo MacCallum, writing in The Monthly, suggests that: ‘… the actual vote on the plebiscite will drag well into 2017. And even when it comes, it will be hedged around with caveats and loopholes.’

Malcolm Turnbull’s personal approval rating, though on the wane, is still a significant factor when discussions regarding the outcome of the up-coming national poll occur and Bill Shorten’s less than impressive approval rating is touted as a lead weight to Labor’s chances.

However, electoral analyst for the Guardian Australia, Ben Raue, wrote in last Thursday’s edition that ‘personal popularity is no guarantee of poll success for prime ministers’.

The reality of our political system is that leaders’ personal popularity is completely relevant only in the federal electorates of Wentworth (Turnbull) and Maribyrnong (Shorten). It’s not irrelevant, it’s just less so while-ever the major parties are fundamentally responsible for electing federal leaders.

It will no longer be sufficient to rely on the personal popularity of Malcolm Turnbull to get the Coalition over the line for a second term.

And all this underlines Leigh’s broad message. Not on inequality, necessarily, but on elections providing the opportunity for greater national awareness and a deeper national conversation.

In May last year, celebrated Australian musician Mark Seymour said in an interview with ABC News 24 Breakfast: ‘The national conversation has narrowed down almost to a dangerous level’, and he was right.

Australian voters are looking for an opportunity to expand the conversation in the lead up to the likely July 2 election and the dwindling grab bag of policies on offer by the government won’t meet their needs.

Around the dinner tables of middle Australia, the conversation will be about all of these issues – marriage equality, climate change, immigration, the gap between rich and poor – all of them. Our politicians would do well to heed Seymour’s warning. These issues – things that matter - are what will guide the pencils of the voters on their ballot papers in July.

A Question of Leadership

New Year’s Day saw the release of Cabinet Papers from the Hawke era and a revelation that then Prime Minister Bob Hawke had unilaterally decided to extend student visas to Chinese students in Australia who otherwise may have been caught up in the melee of Tiananmen Square if forced to return to China.

That Bob Hawke made this decision without reference to his Cabinet colleagues or the Labor Party Caucus signifies either one of two things: the abuse of power by an ego-driven megalomaniac or the astute exercise of executive power by a compassionate leader.  Compare and contrast this to the frankly bizarre nomination by the current Prime Minister of Prince Philip, the Queen's consort, for an Australian knighthood on Australia Day.  The motivation for which is being thoroughly questioned by almost everyone.  Also a "captain's call.

Clearly, this commentator regards the former as visionary; the latter as, well, misguided.

Compassionate leadership, decisive solutions and an ability to “bring the people along” with them are rare and valuable attributes in a profession that has suffered an incredible downturn in its public profile in the last decade: namely, politics.

A recent Australian National University study has shown that under 45% of people regard it as relevant which of the two major political parties are in power and, by inference, wish “a pox on both their houses”.  Politicians are held so much in disdain that the old adage about knowing when a politician is lying by seeing their lips moving has never been truer in the public’s opinion. (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-11/poll-data-reveals-waning-interest-in-politics/5662568)

The rise of “personality” politicians: everyone from Pauline Hanson to Jackie Lambie, may be one response to the general demise of the political class.  And this is exacerbated by the rise of the Presidential-style leadership model that has become the norm in modern Australian political parties.

The phenomenon arguably began with “Honest John” Howard and his gratuitous appeal to the “Howard’s Battlers”.  A carefully managed persona, heavily scripted talking points and carefully stage-managed public “events” beginning with the Lazarus-with-a-triple-bypass accession to the Prime Ministership through the morning walks in Australian tracksuit to appearing in front of the gun lobby in a bullet-proof vest following the buy-back scheme.  And this careful image management has carried on until today.  Indeed, it could reasonably be argued that the Abbott Prime Ministership is the most heavily controlled or presidentialized performance ever seen in the Australian Polity. 

And the Australian public have seen through it.

Wary of three-word slogans, zingers and scripted lines delivered like automatons reading straight off the autocue, Australians have turned off in droves to the political debate in this country.  And who can blame them.  Australians don’t like politics but they are savvy enough to know that politics affects them every day.  They don’t want choreographed responses to problems they don’t even know exist in the first place.  What Australians want, and, I would argue, need given the concerning state of the nation’s moral compass, is strong, compassionate and decisive leadership.  Leadership that: identifies problems; proposes reforms; and, shapes the future direction of the nation.  A future direction that inspires us.

And I'm absolutely convinced that the conferring of a knighthood on the Queens Consul is not in resonance with the general mood of the Australian population and does not reflect the kind of leadership we are looking for.

It remains to be seen if there is a leader from either side of the political spectrum out there who can bring the people along with them and provide the decisive leadership that Hawkey showed in 1989.  There are always some glimmers of hope but it would indeed be a tragedy if another Tiananmen Square was required to flush one out.

Polls, Damned Polls and Statistics

A strange anomaly of opinion polls in Australia is that, since the big one on September 7 2013, the Australian Labor Party has enjoyed a 5.5% swing to them in 26 consecutive Newspolls.


By any reasonable metric, a sustained swing of this magnitude should indicate that whatever strategy the leader of the party has adopted up until now, more of the same should be done.  And yet there’s a strenuous debate about Bill Shorten’s continuing leadership.


The Opposition Leader is “enjoying” some of the most invidious and irascible attention from the political commentariat that a leader should endure.  Rather than lauding a series of remarkable poll results, his very future as Federal Parliamentary Leader of the ALP is in serious doubt.  Well, it is with media commentatariat.  (Aside from a few loud and proud warriors on social media, there’s scant indication from the folks that actually matter – members of Federal Labor Caucus, for instance – that there is even the remotest risk to Bill Shorten remaining in the top job.)


In the latest Newspoll, the Opposition Leader’s satisfaction among voters fell by seven points and his dissatisfaction level rose by 10 giving him a net satisfaction rating of -28 points.  (Incidentally, his nemesis has a net satisfaction rating of -27 points – not statistically different - yet the cacophony of the commentariat regarding Mr Abbott’s leadership tenure seems to have died down in recent weeks.  Clearly not from any turn around in the polls.)


These are unquestionably poor figures but they do not reflect the obvious success that the ALP is enjoying and consistently maintaining, poll after poll, from pollster after pollster - an election-winning lead over the Coalition.


Optimistically, a theory regarding this anomaly could indicate that the electorate is looking for other points of differentiation between the two major parties.


Arguably, for good or ill, there is a “struck match of emphasis” between the centre-right and centre-left positions on fiscal policy, general economic management, the role of the reserve bank in determining economic performance and all those other middle-of-the-road policy settings that aren’t reflected by a diversity of public opinion.  (What Tariq Ali would describe rather dramatically as the “Extreme Centre”.)


Yes the ongoing background noise that is the dichotomy between Keynesian verses free market economics is important.  But it only remains so where there is a wide divergence in how these philosophical positions effect the everyday of economics like cost of living, income disparity and personal income tax.  Day-to-day the philosophical basis of economic policy probably doesn’t rate in public perception.  Generally there is little significant difference because that is not what fires up the electorate.


What does resonate are issues like justice, fairness and equality.


And we can see this in spades in the debates surrounding marriage equality, asylum seeker policy, indigenous recognition and domestic violence.


The problem for the Opposition Leader, though, is that the cacophony of opinion about his popularity feeds perceptions among that part of the electorate, who only keep half an ear on the machinations of federal politics, that his hold on the leadership is temporary.  It then becomes inevitable that his hold on the leadership will slip – a self-fulfilling prophesy if you will.


No doubt this perception will be playing on Bill's mind as he faces the Trade Union Royal Commission this week and prepares for the up-coming ALP National Conference at the end of July.
Various, largely unsolicited I imagine, testimonials surrounding Bill’s time as AWU Chief testify to the fact that Shorten oversaw some of the most successful industrial relations deals in Australian union history.  Successful for both employer and employee alike but this will likely, and not surprisingly, be a feature in omission in the work of Jeremy Stoljar SC on Wednesday.


Shorten, like Gillard and Rudd before him, will front the Royal Commission and provide his evidence and I have little doubt that, like Gillard and Rudd before him, he will have no case to answer.


The Royal Commission appearance will have little long-lasting effect on Bill Shorten’s standing within the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party.  A poor performance may well be used by Mr Abbott to justify an early election but remember, those 26 consecutive polls show the Coalition is consistently up to 5 points behind the ALP.  It would have to be a revealingly bad performance from Bill to kick that can down the road.


National Conference, on the other hand, presents a more useful platform for Shorten to cement his position at the apex of the party leading up to a 2016 election.  A nuanced concession to the left on asylum seeker policy, the correct attenuation of party rules for the right and a compelling Leader’s Address aimed squarely at those points of differentiation that actually matter to the electorate and the background noise of bad personal poll numbers will fade.


And the commentariat?  They’ll be looking for the next bright shiny thing -maybe an MP misleading parliament would be a worthy subject.

Activism, Social Media and the Zeitgeist Illusion

The dominant paradigm with any tribal grouping, including social media – is that we tend to congregate with “like-mindeds”.  Facebook and Twitter are our new tribes.

Photo courtesy of businessinsider.com.au

 My Facebook pages are chock full of leftist, social justice-laden content which I dutifully “like”, “comment” and “share” on in the knowledge that my “friends” will also “like”, “comment” and “share” them too.  I can tell by the number of times a story – outrage on Asylum Seeker policy for instance – comes around on my newsfeed, that this is absolutely the case.

 

 

This “self-indoctrination” informs me and my like-minded friends, that the horror we might have towards asylum seeker policy or the continuing inequality of women in society or the appalling plight of fruit cannery and car manufacturing workers in Australia represents the groundswell of popular opinion in this country.  We collectively believe that the era of the neo-cons up the hill in Canberra will be mercifully short lived and the progressives will sweep back to power in 2016.  But, maybe it doesn’t.

Could it be that  Australians actually agree with Morrison’s asylum seeker policy?  Or maybe we just don’t want to contemplate the untold horrors and deprivations our fellow humans are escaping.  Maybe the prevailing mood is that workers do have outrageous employment conditions that give them just about enough to buy a house and a car and have a lifestyle that you might expect for a developed economy.  Maybe a return to work choices is justified in order to save the ‘tanking’ economy that the Treasurer constantly reminds us in such bad shape.  Maybe Australia fundamentally doesn’t believe that we can afford Medicare or that a disability insurance scheme benefitting all Australian families coping with a family member requiring 24/7 care and a school funding model that benefits all students regardless of where they attend school are bridges too far given our “parlous fiscal condition”. 

For me, it beggars belief that this might actually be true.  Australians pride themselves on the clichés of egalitarianism (a fair go for all); on mateship.  Indeed, in many respects the average Aussie farmer (for example) is the quintessential agrarian socialist and there is still a preponderance of collectivist ideology in many of Australia’s rural communities – common ownership of equipment, growers collectives etc.

But our political history is littered with evidence of deeply entrenched bigotry and conservatism: from the original declaration of terra nullius to the rejection of non-white immigrants from the 1930s. 

Prime Minister Stanley Melbourne Bruce opined in 1925 that he “wanted Australians to remain essentially and basically a British (and white) people" and, in general, the “Australian community supported this ideal and favoured policies which prevented alien immigrants from competing for (white) 'Australian' jobs”.  Up until 1939, there was official support across the political spectrum for a policy espousing that 97% of immigrants should be of Anglo-Saxon origin and that all migrants from Europe were to be considered "alien" http://www.holocaust.com.au/mm/i_australia.htm).

The White Australia Policy, which informed Australia’s policy on immigration from federation until the latter part of the 20^th Century took many years (25) to dismantle.  The essence of that policy remains in the psyche of many Australians.

Indigenous Australians were only allowed to vote as recently as 1967 and we are still debating the inclusion of Indigenous Australians in our Constitution and the recent “closing the gap” report shows huge room for improvement.

Universal women’s suffrage was adopted Australia-wide by 1911 but inherent sexism and objectification of women in Australia continues.  Gender stereotyping in advertising, “traditional” gender roles in television dramas, residual pay inequality and a raft of other discriminations show Australian society is as sexist as it ever was.

So maybe the Australian zeitgeist is conservative, self-interested, racist, sexist and bigoted.  But how would I know?  All my “friends” would rather “un-friend” their entire friends list on Facebook and pretend that a society reflecting these ideals in their newsfeeds just couldn’t exist.  We would rather abandon our Social Media tribe.

If this is the ugly truth, how did we get here?  Why are we like this?  And, at least for those of us who find the possibility that we are like this totally abhorrent, what can we do about it?

From a grassroots perspective, quite a lot: 

Billy Bragg said it quite well in Waiting for the Great Leap Forward: “You can be active with the activists or sleep in with the sleepers while you're waiting for the Great Leap Forwards”.  Embrace activism then: in your community, in your local paper, at your local show, at the pub, in your workplace.  Join your union, or a political party, have a voice.  “The revolution is just a t-shirt away.”

The social media zeitgeist is still helpful.  Support for and vindication of a set of values and ideals by the tribe is healthy for any societal group.  Social Media, by any definition, is a ‘society’.  Belonging, then, is everything and, if belonging creates security and security motivates action then I’m all for it.  So bring me my iPad and Facebook newsfeed!  Don’t forgo social media: your friends will support you and, who knows, through the organic nature of this medium, you never know who you might reach and influence.  The zeitgeist might be an illusion but at least you have a voice!

The tribe has spoken.  Don’t forget to: “Like”, “Comment” and “Share”

Labor Leadership and the Fire in the Belly of New Labor

Albo and Bill - Parliament House Canberra
Photo courtesy of enpassant.com.au

My ballot papers arrived yesterday in time for me to make my decision on the Labor Leadership next week.  Albo or Bill?

My wife and I collected the mail from the box as we were on the way out for a walk with the dog.  On confirming that it was, indeed, the ballot papers, my wife asked me who I was going to vote for: “Albo, no Bill, no Albo. I don’t know” was my decisive reply.  My wife’s response was to suggest paper, scissors, rock as a means of determining my voting intention.  She may have a point.

What does this really say about the leadership options for the party and, more importantly, with such a lack of clear distinction between the candidates, where does this leave Labor in Opposition?

Perhaps surprisingly, I actually see this as a rather encouraging situation.  Let me explain. 

Both Anthony Albanese and Bill Shorten are widely considered (not least by each other) as outstanding candidates for the Labor leadership.  Notwithstanding the perception of “baggage” that both bring to the contest from the recent past, they both do stand for Chifley’s “light on the hill” values that Labor fundamentally holds dear.  Both are advocates for the underdog; champions of the workers; and guardians of the Labor cause.  Apart from some ”fiddling around the edges”, there’s not a great deal of differentiation.  On that basis, either will be excellent.

But a choice has to be made, so on what criterion should this decision be based?

Anthony Albanese
Photo courtesy of 3AW.com.au

Let me offer some thoughts: 

Labor has just entered perhaps one of the most crucial rebuilding phases of its long, proud existence.  Leadership during this period will require strong governance; team building skills of a high order; a captain who can encourage debate while weathering the inevitable storms of internal criticism; and steer the Labor ship towards common goals and ideals based on our traditional values. 

The new Labor leader must be able to do this while keeping an eye on new communications strategies and while developing the internal structures necessary for a modern Labor party that can be an effective and constructive opposition for the next three years.  And they must be able to do this in a manner that continues to engage and involve the broader membership – as Bill has so eloquently put it “the era of the messiah is over”.

Do our candidates have these attributes?  Well, yes, they probably do.

Bill Shorten
Photo courtesy of SBS.com.au

There is a school of thought that the next Labor leader may only be leader for the rebuilding of the party and will not lead the party to the next election and, with luck, back to power in 2016.  Historically, there is some substance to this theory, but, were it to happen, it raises a particular challenge for Labor in switching to the new leader post the re-building phase. 

A rebuilding leader would need to recognize (perhaps without admitting as much to the electorate) that they would have to voluntarily relinquish the leadership of the party after many months of sweat and toil to rebuild it and at a time that would give the new leader sufficient time to step in, establish themselves and take the party to the election.  To be ousted, as has been emphatically proven in the last 3 years, spells disaster.  So voluntarily it would have to be; and the broader party would again need to be involved in the election (assuming, of course, that there was more than one candidate) - immensely problematic but not impossible.

So do either of our candidates have these attributes?  Again, yes, they probably do, but would either of them sign up to the idea that they are not there for the long term and probably won’t be the next Labor Prime Minister?  I don’t imagine so, at least not publicly.

So, realistically, the choice we have is between two very well credentialed candidates with the best interests of the party at heart – couldn’t be simpler.

Paper, scissors, rock anyone?

Horizontal Collectivism and the Fire in the Belly of New Labor

PM Rudd press conference on Syria during the 2013 campaign

When I first raised the term ‘horizontal collectivism’ with my wife there was a profound blankness in her expression.  This was not due to any lack of intellectual rigor that she applied to understanding the term; it was merely an acute demonstration of the need to address your target audience in the appropriate way – in other words, to speak in the language that your audience understands.

Communications professionals in the Labor movement since the 2007 election of Kevin Rudd, have largely ignored this message.

But, as Sean Kelly has advised in his Sydney Morning Herald article of 9 September 2013 regarding the legacy of the Rudd-Gillard era, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Let’s ‘unpack’ this term to see if there isn’t something there that might begin to stoke the fires of revival that the party now so poignantly needs:

So, a definition to start with: ‘horizontal’ – well, in itself, entirely self-explanatory – on the same plane; flat; parallel.  Ok, that was easy. 

What about ‘collectivism’ – this one’s more problematic and brings up nods towards communism; Marxism; Leninism; even Stalinism; and, infers, at least for my purposes, a notion of ownership or management by the people for the people. 

Together ‘horizontal collectivism’ denotes, at least for my purposes, a common and equal ownership and management of commonly held ideals and values where the individual has equal ownership and responsibility for the ideals and values of the collective whole.

So how does this tie into the current position of the Labor party in its struggle to become relevant again to the political discourse in this country?

Quite simply, whilst ‘horizontal collectivism’ might, by definition, form the very heart of Australian Labor’s philosophical foundation it is a meaningless and entirely pretentious term that will completely fail to ignite the fire in the belly of the coming Labor generations until it is applied through conviction and belief to the entire organisation.

Somewhere between fervent hope and utter conviction lies my belief that the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era of Australian political history will ultimately be regarded with respect, congratulation and more than a grudging acknowledgement.  That immense achievements were made during this brief history – achievements that were the equal if not superior to Medicare; superannuation; the floating of the Australian dollar; and the economic, structural and social reforms of previous Labor governments from Whitlam to Keating – is clear on any dispassionate inspection. 

PM Gillard announcing regional
development assistance  in Bendigo

Labor’s problem is that we neither owned nor communicated these achievements as the commonly held ideals that they were and, until we do so, we are condemned to the Tory view of recent history that would depict us as bickering, chaotic; dysfunctional and, most seriously, divided.  The result?  The only story was the interminable and, frankly, ‘Game-of-Thrones’-esque series of plots and counterplots of the last 3 years that, last Saturday, delivered Labor opposition.

So how do we ‘own’ these achievements?  How do we make known to what will undoubtedly become an electorate increasingly disappointed and frustrated by the direction that the Abbott government will take us?  As entrée, witness the completely indefensible appointment of only one woman to cabinet in the just-announced Abbott ministry; only 6 women in a front bench of 42; and, the total disregard for the importance of science by the non-appointment of a minister for that portfolio (of either gender).

During the course of the Gillard-Rudd government, those of us fortunate enough to be more closely involved, witnessed the utter conviction of a number of portfolio ministers who were not always in the political limelight.  Jenny Macklin immediately comes to mind but others including Jan McLucas and Kate Lundy could not pass without mention.  Their selflessness and tireless activity bettering the future of many Australians, particularly those to whom fate has dealt a bitter hand, was exemplary and did not beg headlines or particular reward.  These Labor stalwarts executed their portfolio duties with grace, efficiency and tireless commitment because they believed in what they were doing and understood how this indicated the Labor way.  Labor’s failure to properly recognize and own the efforts of these individuals as depicting fundamental Labor values and ideals speaks more about the shortsighted pursuit of power – ‘Whatever it Takes’ - thanks Richo for imposing that legacy – than it does the promotion of fundamental Labor values.

PM Rudd announces plans to move
Garden Island Naval Base to QLD

Strategically, Labor’s communications gurus need to constantly connect and re-connect with these values – we need to steer the political debate away from power for the sake of it and back to values.

It would be far too simplistic – although enormously tempting – to say that the Murdochracy is responsible for the dilution of the Labor message over the last three years.  Tempting because it was undeniably a huge factor, simplistic because our strategic communication failed to counter this bias.  An undiluted and consistent message based on fundamental Labor values would have cut through – it is what people wanted to hear and were unable to because of our own self-generated background noise.  That Murdoch (and the coalition for that matter) ‘turned the knob to 11’ merely served to amplify our self-inflicted dilemmas rather than provide amplification of any particular policy deficiencies.  We did good things but who knew?

During his commentary on QandA on Monday 16 September, former Labor leader Mark Latham proposed that Labor must get its leadership and structure right before dealing with policy and ideals – I disagree wholeheartedly.  Labor must first return to what it believes and values; it must learn to communicate those ideals and values to a policy-starved and disengaged electorate that did not vote in droves for the major parties at this election but voted against them – witness the 5.8% swing towards “others”.  Then, and only then, should it spend time and energy debating the structure and internal governance that will lead it into the next election.  As noted Australian playwright David Williamson mentioned on the same QandA program; “the people didn’t vote Tony in; they voted Labor out.”

The grass-roots participation in the selection of the next Labor leader is a good start – this might be an example of horizontal collectivism in action.  But we need to go further:

PM Gillard at the signing up
of the NT to DisabilityCare Australia

Communications professionals – the much maligned (although often deservedly so) spin doctors of the political process - are both the villains and, potentially, the heroes of this piece.  Villains because of our complete failure to adequately sell the significant and, frankly, life changing reforms of the Labor government from 2007 to 2013; and potential heroes because we can regroup and address our deficiencies; we can develop strategies to defy an ostensibly biased media and we can counter the destructive conservatism of the incoming government. 

And how do we do this?  We return to the light on the hill; we return to the core values and ideals that brought the Labor movement in Australia together and, through these ideals, we reignite the Labor cause in a country that I have no doubt will crave a return to these values in the next three years of conservative rule.

Through horizontal collectivism – being harnessed together as equals striving towards shared ideals and values – the fire in the belly of Keating’s true believers can be reignited and we can and will prevail in three years time.  

We have much work to do.