It had to be political oblivion for the Australian Labor party leader Bill Shorten when Malcolm Turnbull, who had for years portrayed himself as the Liberals’ once and future king, toppled Tony Abbott to become Australia’s fifth prime minister in five years. The installation of the charismatic and centrist self-made millionaire in September 2015 could only mean doom for the ALP’s softly-spoken former union leader.
But it did not happen. Australia faces a period of uncertainty, but the Coalition looks to have lost its majority and a hung parliament seems likely. How did Shorten, this wonkish, slightly geeky, former backroom boy – insert your own UK comparison here – manage to take the ALP to the cusp of power after such a devastating 2013 loss?
Even before Abbott’s downfall, Shorten had decided the next election could only be won on ‘policies not personalities’. Unlike so many before him, he set out to make that phrase mean something. Over two years Labor developed a ‘100 Positive Policies’ programme. On health, education, climate change – the issues polls showed were the most important to voters – ALP politicians did not have to just spout slogans, they came to the fight armed with well-thought out proposals they were able to defend in detail.
‘Better Medicare’, for instance, was a phrase repeated often by ALP politicians, but it was used as the beginning of a point instead of the whole purpose. They followed it up with concise policy details that had been hammered out over a period of years: a detailed Healthcare Reform Commission; new palliative care packages; bursaries for young carers; expanding a National Disability Insurance Scheme. ‘An NHS with time to care’ carved on a giant slab of concrete in a car park this was not.
It is true that Shorten was helped by the disappointing performance of Turnbull. Paul Keating had previously called the Coalition leader a ‘cherry on top of a compost heap’, but he proved unable even to live up to that description. An increase in the number of votes for independents also helped to wear down the Coalition majority. Nevertheless, Shorten was able to do what so many UK Labour leaders have failed to do time and again – develop detailed policy that can resonate with the public and exploit government weaknesses effectively.
It might not be enough to clinch the Lodge for Shorten this time, but in less than three years he has taken his party back from the edge to the brink of power. In doing so he has demonstrated that a disciplined and positive campaign focusing on issues that actually matter to voters, with the detail to back it up, can overcome any mismatch in personality.
For this Shorten’s ALP does not just deserve our credit, it deserves our study. After Blair and Brown studied the work of Hawke and Keating over the 1980s, we had the longest period of Labour government in our history. This time our aim is to recover, and it is for us to learn lessons from the ALP again.
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Sam Mannion is a Labour activist. He tweets @SamMannion
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I hope the Australian people don’t come whining to the rest of the world when their Labor government bankrupts them. Who am I kidding? They’ll probably just blame us Poms, just like everybody else blames England when something goes wrong.
Silly boy, they are not yet in power
Sam, this is a good article, but (a) describing Bill Shorten as a “wonkish, slightly geeky, former backroom boy” is inadequate. He led one of the key Australian unions, the AWU, and was a battl-hardened campaigner & union negotiator; and (b) you ignore – as neither Turnbull nor Shorten did in their responses to the early results – the role of the Australian trade union movement in piling resources into marginal seats. It wasn’t just policy that brought Labor back.
As for “the cynical realist”, do you know anything about Australia? When the global financial crisis struck in 2007-8, the ALP government – despite being deeply split by the Gillard-Rudd fight – took the steps necessary for Australia to be the only developed economy to avoid recession.