Three things Labour can learn from Australian Labor’s experience of minority government

On 21 August 2010 Australia elected 72 representatives each for the Australian Labor party and the Liberal-National coalition. After 17 agonising days of negotiation Julia Gillard formed a government with support from four non-Labor members of parliament: independent country conservatives Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, the Green party’s Adam Bandt, and Andrew Wilkie, a wildcard who won the Tasmanian seat of Denison with just 21 per cent of the primary vote.

Gillard – who had been prime minister just under two months – had taken Kevin Rudd’s leadership in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the implosion of Labor’s programme for government. Within weeks the campaign degenerated from a commanding lead into a frenzy of self-destruction. It was dominated by Rudd’s deliberate sabotage, designed to maximise his political leverage and wreak revenge.

Afterwards, Gillard had a one-seat majority in the 150-seat parliament and Rudd, holding one of those seats, re-entered the cabinet by negotiation and immediately resumed a campaign of destabilisation. After three attempted leadership challenges in three years he was reinstated on 26 June 2013, lasting less than three months.

In government, Gillard influenced global and regional diplomacy, rebuilding Australia’s relationship with China and providing the platform for Barack Obama’s Asia-Pacific pivot. She introduced a carbon price, restructured Australia’s telecommunications, and created a world-leading national disability insurance scheme. Gillard reformed national school funding, and successfully defended workplace and higher education laws that increased equity and participation. Her government paid for its reforms with budget savings and maintained GDP and employment growth.

Less than two years after she left parliament, the dismal performance of Tony Abbott’s majority government makes Gillard’s run look better at every level.

Gillard achieved her policy legacy through methodical, occasionally steely, negotiation, working to secure one outcome at a time. Yet in office she was unpopular, framed by a hostile media and an opposition which abandoned all principle. What should Labour learn, as it contemplates the splintering of the United Kingdom’s electoral landscape?

First, know your enemy.

Different minority players have different interests and behaviours. Windsor and Oakeshott supported Labor on policy grounds, and were ready to weather political flak for what they judged to be in the national interest.

Wilkie, by contrast, made unrealistic demands of the government and then tied himself to ridiculous public demands. When they failed, he renounced the government, while negotiating pork for his own re-election campaign.

The Green party mostly worked to maximise its political leverage for future campaign purposes. Feeling slighted in negotiations, it voted against a carbon price in 2009. If it had gone the other way, it would probably still be in operation now, and Labor in its third consecutive term.

But the real enemy in all these cases were the Liberals, who promised to reverse every one of the long-term reforms in question and justified it by linking every compromise to the individual character of Labor’s leader.

The Green party may compete with Labour politically, but shouting public insults at it looks like childish self-indulgence. A better lesson in minority politics comes from David Cameron, who has disembowelled the Liberal Democrats by tying them to university tuition fees and destroying the campaign for electoral reform, all while sitting politely at the cabinet table.

Second, be consistent.

The greatest harm to Gillard and Labor came from the most glaring reversals, such as her language on a carbon tax, and from the cases where political circumstances prevented her from publicly acknowledging what was really happening. To be in office is to have failure and compromise forced on you by events. But the more you can pursue your goals with consistency, and explain your actions in those terms, the more credibility your public narrative will have.

Third, prioritise common purpose.

This may be the most difficult goal in today’s politics, but the emergence of multiparty politics makes it even more important. The only way to counter a cynical, atavistic political culture is to articulate and strengthen shared goals, and to find ways to renew people’s commitment to them.

What cost Labor was not the decision to work with non-Labor players, but the loss of resonance suffered by its own narrative, emanating from the persistent contrast between rhetoric and behaviour through internal disunity and an endless series of forced compromises.

Gillard’s government could have learned faster that trying to project ‘normality’ and offering a script based on control simply fed the counternarrative of chaos and dysfunction.

Inadvertently, this effort reinforced obsessive individual leadership speculation. By offering up her own leadership to try to save a ship of government listing out of control, Gillard became a human sacrifice to many different forms of self-interest, usually asserted by late middle-aged men.

What most undermined Labor during 2010-13 was the presence of Rudd and his refusal to accept that his political career was over. This behaviour gave licence to the worst forms of leaking and bargaining within the Labor party, killing off the appearance of ethical, effective government.

Tony Blair began in government atop a huge peak of political power and public support. No political leader in the foreseeable future will start there again. So political ideas, methods and tactics must focus harder on how to create and renew solidarity and resilience amid turbulence and cynicism. Those who do so will prevail.

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Tom Bentley was deputy chief of staff to Julia Gillard 2009-13 and director of Demos 1999-2006