Laboring on a long, hard road
The remarkable success of Jim Bacon’s Labor is at the heart of the party’s present problems, writes Michael Lester
SOON after taking office in 1998, Labor premier Jim Bacon sat his staff and parliamentary colleagues down and said the political task was not to just win the next election in 2002 but to establish a 20-year unbroken term of Labor government.
Labor fell short of that vision by four years, but in anyone’s reckoning, 16 years was a pretty good effort.
However, that success is also at the heart of the problem facing the present day Labor Opposition.
Major factors in Labor’s loss to Will Hodgman’s Liberals was a long run of illdiscipline by ministers and members, three leadership changes over a relatively short period, and the return to the electorally unpopular coalition with the Greens.
Importantly, there was also a public perception Labor had run out of gas. Many felt Labor had run out of ideas, run out of talent and was being run by “kids”, by which they meant the elevation of ministers with little life experience, let alone political experience.
That may be harsh, but in politics perceptions are reality.
Consequently, Labor polled just 27.3 per cent of the statewide vote at the 2014 election — lower even than their result in 1992, previously considered to be the party’s nadir of the modern era.
The hard-learnt lessons of the 1980s — and particularly of the Labor-Green Accord years between 1989 and 1992 — had been forgotten.
Clearly, periods of minority government in any form of deal or coalition with the Greens are electorally toxic.
After the collapse in voter support in 1992, then Labor leader Michael Field embarked on a long process to rebuild. That required first regaining the confidence of the Labor membership — particularly the union movement — and then general public.
Field badged the second part of the rebuild as “Labor Listens”, which was initially viewed sceptically by the public but eventually it started to make ground.
Field and his colleagues coupled the rebuild with a consistent parliamentary performance, capitalising on the mistakes and internal divisions within premier Ray Groom’s Liberal government so that, within a year, the polls were showing Labor and the Liberals on about the same level of support.
Since the last election, Labor has embarked on a similar rebuild to that undertaken by Field but the recent ReachTEL poll commissioned by the Sunday Tasmanian shows it has not yet had the same impact.
Labor is still hovering around the rock bottom ground of the last State Election. Commentators like former Labor premier Paul Lennon noted there are a lot of Labor MPs with little experience. That means they are not yet well-placed to mount a parliamentary-based resurgence as occurred in the early 1990s.
As well, Labor is hampered by the smaller parliament.
In 1992, even with such a low vote, they still had 11 seats in the 35-member House of Assembly and most were experienced parliamentarians.
Again, as Lennon noted, the focus is all on the Government and Labor is struggling to be heard.
Two other problems facing Labor are the re-emergence of a wide gap in their support between the northern electorates of Bass and Braddon (as well as Lyons) and southern sets of Denison and Franklin, and the unpopularity of Leader Bryan Green.
This divide is partly to do with Labor’s coalition with the Greens in the last government.
Since the late 1980s it has been abundantly clear voters who rely on older industries like forestry, mining (and formerly, dam building) for a living do not support parties that appear to be in thrall to green policies. More voters in Bass, Braddon and Lyons fall into that category than in the other two electorates.
The recent polls showing more support for relative newcomers Rebecca White and Scott Bacon for the Labor leadership aside, with little depth of experience and fewer MPs, Labor can’t do much
right now about the leadership.
Any disunity would further damage the ALP as well as the careers of those young MPs who Labor sees as its future.
Recent Labor victories in Victoria and Queensland over previously popular Liberal and coalition governments scared the daylights out of other incumbent governments and gave oppositions everywhere much hope. The theory goes that if Labor could go from just seven of the 89 parliamentary seats in Queensland in 2012 to 44 seats and take government in February 2015, then anything is possible, right?
Maybe, but the political landscape in Australia is volatile, as it is worldwide, and Labor in Tasmania cannot rely on a quick decline in the popularity of the Hodgman Government to hand it an unlikely victory at the next election.
It must find a stronger parliamentary and public voice and it has to rebuild public confidence in the party’s brand.
History shows that even with Field’s hard work and a new more popular leader in Jim Bacon, it still took Labor six years to return to office last time they were in this position, so they should prepare for a long, hard road back.
Many felt Labor had run out of ideas, run out of talent and was being run by “kids”, by which they meant the elevation of ministers with little life experience, let alone political experience.