Labor is down but it’s not out
AFTER the weekend they’ve just had, Labor folk can be forgiven for being in a glass half-empty frame of mind.
Aside from the small inner-circle around Scott Morrison, nobody in the world of politics or the media believed the government would be re-elected.
Of course, people understood it was possible in theory, but there was nothing in the published opinion polls that would have made one think it was anything other than an outside chance. Especially as everything we were hearing from inside Team ALP suggested their research was in line with those polls.
In hindsight, it turns out to be unsurprising the public and Labor’s private polling matched up, since, as we have subsequently discovered, the private polling was being done by the same company responsible for producing Newspoll/Galaxy/YouGov.
Of course, when things go wrong, it is tempting to wallow in the slough of despond and assume that everything was wrong. But without wanting to downplay their loss, I would argue that when the pain of Saturday begins to pass, Labor people will realise that they have a number of reasons to be cheerful and things aren’t as bad as they seem.
Let’s start with the scale of the loss.
To be sure, Morrison has won a famous victory that has secured him a place in the pantheon of Liberal immortals.
But the fact is that his government is in almost exactly the same position that Malcolm Turnbull was in after the last election in 2016. At the time of writing, the government has won at least 76 seats in the 151 seat House of Representatives — enough to give it the Treasury benches but not enough to pass legislation without the support of one of the crossbenchers — although it looks more likely than not it will get to 78.
In anyone’s language, that is a wafer-thin majority. In other words, barring a by-election win or a happy redistribution from the AEC, Morrison will go into the next election with virtually no electoral buffer.
By then, if the parliament runs full term, the Coalition will have been in office for the better part of nine years. That doesn’t mean Morrison can’t win again. In 2004, John Howard won a fourth term with an increased majority after eight years in office. But at that election, Howard got lucky in the form of Mark Latham.
Bill Shorten was no Latham but Morrison will be lucky if Labor makes the mistake again of running on a high-taxing, redistributivist manifesto.
Of course, it’s possible that Labor could go mad and disappear down the path of Corbynist madness, as their UK sister party did after their unexpected 2015 election loss to David Cameron.
Possible, but unlikely. The factional union bosses still run things in the ALP and are alive to the danger of where an outbreak of internal party democracy might lead. And as long as they are in control, their hunger for power makes it likely that Labor will move to the centre, where elections are won.
That is certainly the historical experience both here and in the UK after parties have lost elections they expected to win. In 1992, UK Labour thought it was a shoo-in under Neil Kinnock against John Major, Margaret Thatcher’s charismatically challenged successor. In an eerie echo of Shorten’s triumphalist Bankstown rally, Kinnock even had a premature election eve victory rally at which he introduced his Cabinet.
Five years later, having dumped Kinnock’s tax-and-spend policies, Labour won in a landslide under Tony Blair.
In 1993, John Hewson lost the unlosable election here to Paul Keating.
Three years later, having dumped the Fightback manifesto and made peace with Medicare, the Coalition won in a landslide under John Howard.
Finally, after that 2004 Latham disaster, the ALP got itself together under Kevin Rudd who won by running as John Howard-lite.
It doesn’t mean it will happen, of course. But if Labor exhibits clear thinking about what went wrong, there is no reason to believe it can’t win next time.
Whether rushing to replace Shorten with Anthony Albanese, 56, a NSW Leftist who recently separated from his wife and is not in the best physical shape, is an example of clear thinking, only time will tell.
BILL SHORTEN WAS NO LATHAM BUT MORRISON WILL BE LUCKY IF LABOR MAKES THE MISTAKE AGAIN OF RUNNING ON A HIGH-TAXING, REDISTRIBUTIVIST MANIFESTO