On Saturday NSW Labor suffered the heaviest defeat in our 120-year history.
Losing an election after 16 years in office is part of the natural cycle of politics. Receiving our lowest vote since 1904, and winning our lowest number of seats since 1898, is anything but cyclical.
The voters expressed their fury at the way Labor has run this state for at least the last four years. One in three voters who expressly identify themselves as Labor did not vote Labor on Saturday.
The State Parliamentary Labor Party conducted its affairs in recent years in a way that destroyed the public’s faith in NSW Labor’s integrity. Labor will only recover if it is searingly honest about what happened on the weekend.
Many felt that we stopped being a Labor government - that we weren’t on the side of the people, but rather hostage to self interest and to special interests. Labor - the party formed to fight for the outsiders - ultimately became identified as a government for party insiders and property developers.
Voters look to their state government for communal services: Modern schools, state-of-the-art hospitals and community health services, accessible public transport, safe streets, protection of vulnerable children, a flourishing artistic and cultural sector, social housing, our natural environment protected for all to enjoy.
For the past 70 years, our social democratic politics have dominated New South Wales, capturing the middle ground and delivering social reform we are right to be proud of. Yet the breadth of state Labor’s agenda was, after Bob Carr’s retirement, assaulted by a very small clique inside the government.
If we are honest, we must admit that we are as weak in the community today as we are in the new Parliament. In the past 16 years, more than 130 Labor Party branches shut their doors. One in four branches closed down, and many of those that remain are on life support. While Labor governed, the Labor Party was disappearing from the everyday lives of many communities. NSW Labor won elections without the Labor Party.
A political model of corporate donors funding massive electronic advertising helped deliver election victories in the good times. When the tough times arrived, the corporate donors were long gone. The cost of the long neglect of the Party’s membership became clear. On Saturday, Labor was able to staff fewer polling booths than at any election since the 1930s when the Lang tyranny tore Labor asunder. We must rebuild the Labor Party from the ground up.
NSW Labor’s organisation and rules must be overhauled to democratise the party and empower individual members. The road map is there: The 2010 ALP National Review Report delivered by Carr, Bracks and Faulkner.
This result does not spell the end for NSW Labor. How we respond to this result will determine our party’s future. Our internal governance – our structures, rules and culture – failed us. In turn, we failed the people of NSW.
In the 1930s, Ben Chifley and Bill McKell knew that Labor in this state had to reform before it would ever regain the confidence of the people. In the 1960s, Gough Whitlam understood that the party had to change in order to become a credible alternative national government. Once again, Labor has to have the courage to change.
As we rebuild, there will be big policy challenges to grapple with. But there is a core principle that should guide us along the way – our belief in active government as a force for good.
I believe that Labor values are Australian values. Since 1891 Labor has stood for a fair go for all and a decent life for everyone. As we set out on an arduous and long period of rebuilding State Labor - first as a fighting opposition, and later as a credible alternative government - let us reapply that ethic to all of our work.
This year, there will be a contract cleaner – she’s likely from a non English speaking background, she’s in her 50s and she’s been doing this for 20 years at just above the minimum wage – who will get long service leave for the first time ever.
And she’ll get it because – for one brief, shining moment amidst the indulgence and debauchery of the last four years – a Labor government did what Labor is supposed to do, legislating for this right. When we debase the standing of the Labor Party, it is the people who most need a Labor government who pay the price.
For that cleaner’s sake, and for the sake of hundreds of thousands of people for whom markets don’t always deliver a fair or decent outcome, we need to find the way back.
Luke Foley is a Labor member of the NSW Legislative Council.
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