Queensland Premier Anna Bligh called it ``the New South Wales disease’’ where the leadership of the ALP, even in office, became a revolving door decided by faceless factional heavies.
Last Saturday, the NSW branch of the party, the source of that ``disease’’ and the biggest single brick in the Labor wall, crashed to the ground. The 16-year-old government, led defiantly by Kristina Keneally, was not merely defeated, it was humiliated. The backlash was unprecedented in its ferocity with voters dishing out the worst defeat of any government in Australian electoral history.
Facing a state election within a year, Anna Bligh, of course, is desperate to stop the rot at the Tweed River. But she may not be able to hold back the tide. Fear in Labor ranks is now giving way to panic just as conservatives are rubbing their hands. In a world of diminished party loyalty, instant information, social media, and a borderless 24-hour media cycle, Labor’s hardheads worry that the old boundaries between states, and even between levels of government are blurring.
A dramatic re-alignment appears to be underway with a palpable shift in political momentum. Volatility may be emerging as the new norm.
Labor’s utter domination, its crowning achievement of wall-to-wall governments, was is so often the case, a poisoned chalice.
Now it’s on the other end of history and in the wake of the NSW result, politicians and analysts from all sides have begun the dissection.
This flurry of analysis is providing onlookers with an object lesson in the contemporary art of political spinning - or if you prefer, re-arranging facts to suit your own case.
The victors, as is well known, usually get to write the definitive version and senior Coalition figures wasted no time linking the electoral tsunami to Julia Gillard’s carbon tax. It may have been a small federal issue in a state campaign but even as premier-elect, Barry O’Farrell said the carbon tax had played a role. Tony Abbott of course, enthusiastically agreed, desperate to tag his opponent a serial deceiver and her government as illegitimate.
Ms Gillard, operating with the same set of facts, had an entirely different spin.
To her, Mr O’Farrell’s triumph was a win for a ``reasonable’’ and ``moderate’’ man - a clear, if transparently desperate jibe at Mr Abbott whom she brands an extremist.
Besides, she said, what happened on the weekend was a state election, ``participated in by the people of NSW and they delivered their verdict in that state election’‘.
I believe the people of New South Wales know the difference between state issues and federal issues.
Versions of this message have been trotted out by federal Labor figures ad nauseam since the poll. State MPs however, have been less scripted such as this remarkable explanation from SA’s Mines and Energy Minister, Tom Koutsantonis:
``... they were asking for 20 years and even fair-minded people would say, after 20 years, its a very hard ask,’’ he told 891 ABC’s Matt Abraham.
``I cant think of a single reason why they should have been re-elected on the weekend ... and after 16 years, asking for 20, its difficult. They had Members of Parliament go to jail, it was an appalling, an appalling soap opera and it ended, and I think everyone in New South Wales is relieved.’’ Where was that kind of frankness before the election, one might ask.
That idea of widespread relief is the only hope Labor has at present and it shows. Yet it is a hope that owes as much to the dubious field of pop-psychology as it does to any observed political reality. It is premised on the heroic assertion that if voters let off steam in a state poll, they will calm down. Unburdened, the argument goes, they will feel more positively inclined to the Gillard Government. Complete bollocks of course.
Coalition MPs certainly think so and say the afore-mentioned ``NSW disease’’ had already been transmitted to Canberra anyway. They list Ms Gillard’s leadership as ``exhibit one’’ arguing the demise of Kevin Rudd in a midnight coup last year was a classic of the NSW Labor genre. Few believe Mr Rudd would argue with that.
The next domino, if one is to fall, is Queensland. A Galaxy poll over the weekend showed Ms Bligh would struggle to hold on against the man she now faces, Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman. Indeed, despite Ms Bligh’s resurgence after the summer of disasters, Mr Newman is now the preferred premier, and he is yet to even enter parliament. She is said to weighing the damage to her credibility if she jumps early after promising not to, against her chances now or later, and all this in a very doubtful political environment.
What is beyond doubt is that Labor as a party is now in big trouble in its heartland, a point being made by some in the ALP such as NSW MLC Luke Foley.
Yesterday he wrote to rank-and-file members laying out some home truths and arguing the party only has a future it if is brutally honest with itself. ``With 20 or 21 seats, Labor will be weaker in the Legislative Assembly than at any time since the 19th century,’’ he wrote.
``If we are honest, we must admit that we are as weak in the community today as we are in the new Parliament.
``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.’‘
This is the real gravity of the situation. By this time next year, Labor could be reduced to just the two smallest states and the two territories accounting for little more than 12 per cent of the population. And it will be vulnerable in those too when elections fall due.
Julia Gillard’s main advantage right now is incumbency, however difficult it might be. To that end, she is re-positioning to deal with Mr O’Farrell government leader, to government leader. It is the right play but the smell of NSW politics hangs heavy in the air and will for some time yet.
And the selection of a former union boss, John Robertson - the very same John Robertson who fomented the crisis over electricity assets and forced the removal of then premier, Morris Iemma - will do nothing to help. Mr Robertson’s ruthless manoeuvrings led directly to that ``revolving door’’ through which Mr Iemma did the full 360 as did the hapless Nathan Rees and finally, Ms Keneally.
His promotion is a big risk because as critics argue, he is precisely the kind of factional manipulator voters have so resoundingly rejected.
One of those critics is Paul Keating who penned a devastating letter to Mr Robertson in October 2008 in the wake of the electricity debacle.
``Let me tell you,’’ the former PM wrote, ``if the Labor Party’s stocks ever get so low as to require your services in its Parliamentary leadership, it will itself have no future.’‘
Well, they’re that low I guess.
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