The Conservative Era cometh

Much discussion has raged in recent months about Labor's identity crisis. What does it stand for any more, as distinct from the liberals or the greens? It's a good question.

What is less well acknowledged is that the Liberal Party has also had an identity crisis of its own for the past 15 years. It’s been well acknowledged that from 2002-2008 every state and territory government in Australia was run by Labor governments. Despite the success of the Howard government, the liberals have struggled to articulate how they’d be different – in a positive way – to the Labor Party when running state government coffers.

In Victoria, the long shadow of Jeff Kennett has hung over the liberal party ever since his government’s sudden end in 1999. For the past ten years, the liberal party in that state has been associated with huge public service cuts, privatizations, sell-offs, and service cuts. This brand became toxic after 1999, particularly in regional Victoria, and it fed into a narrative about the liberals in state governments around the country – if they get in, they’ll just cut everything.

We must remember that Kennett was able to get away with this sort of government because Victorian labor was in a state of total collapse in the early 1990’s. Kennett was given one of the largest majorities in Victorian history in 1992 and 1996, and he didn’t hesitate to use it with impunity. But his government also suffered a significant crash by the end, when voters got frightened of the scale of what was happening.

The liberals have attempted to run away from that legacy, but have not replaced that vision with anything else. This has merely created political space for Labor, who have been able to argue that only they understand the bread and butter concerns of voters, and they are able to run the state effectively.

Voters in state government are not looking for large scale cuts to services. They are looking for a vision for the future of their state – a vision for roads, public transport, better schools and hospitals, and well run community services. When the only brand the liberals have been associated with is the brand that says all of this stuff would be cut, it’s very difficult to win a state election.

The Victorian election, just completed, showed the first glimmer of a conservative political revival. Ted Baillieu and the coalition sent a very clear message to voters about who they are – ironically not by talking about what they’d do in office, but by announcing their preference deal to put the Greens last. This was a game-changer – combined with their messaging about public transport, law and order, safety, waste and mismanagement of important projects, it gave voters something to cling on to. The liberals sent the message that they are a moderate conservative party standing on a conservative platform of fixing some bread and butter issues. It worked, and they won by one seat.

“Fix The Problems, Build the Future” ended up being a surprisingly effective slogan. Voters didn’t have the same level of anger at the Brumby government that voters in NSW had. But they were angry with the botched delivery of a few major projects, and were frustrated with a lack of Labor vision on new infrastructure development.

Worryingly for Labor, the ALP lost this election because it didn’t have a good enough vision for people living in those outer suburban marginals. Regional Victoria did not swing sharply away from Labor – this is probably because Labor has put a lot of work into making these regional towns into livable cities with good infrastructure and transport. But people in outer suburbia did not feel the same way.

People in the outer suburbs are the “squeezed middle”, worried about their quality of life, and a whole range of social and economic policy concerns. They see their quality of life diminishing through a lack of government investment in their area around new infrastructure, public transport and services. They get stuck in traffic or on unreliable trains (if the trains exist). They also worry about rising utility bills and crime, and were unsatisfied with current service delivery from government.

Compared to NSW, the level of service delivery to these people in Victoria is top-notch. Voters in NSW who watched ABC News 24’s election coverage would probably have felt a bit miffed when the guy from Labor said it was “offensive to compare Victoria to NSW”. NSW voters must have thought voters in Victoria were spoilt brats.

Regardless, there’s nothing wrong with asking a government to do better. Voters didn’t hear a message that appealed to them, and felt their government could be doing better for them. The liberals were offering something else, so they concluded that it was time to flick the switch and give the other guys a go.

There’s already been the inevitable commentary about how Labor lost an election because it ran off to the left on some policy. This is misleading.

Labor is a party that believes in the removal of discrimination, and the protection of the environment. None of that is new. Labor has a record of both pragmatic social reform (Neville Wran, Bob Carr, ), and radical social reform (eg Whitlam, Don Dunstan, some of the Hawke-era reforms).

It’s important to remember that Labor can’t be defined solely by its social agenda. It also must have an economic agenda that appeals to working and middle class people. Without this, it would not be a party of the workers. All of the above governments had radical economic and opportunity agendas.

For a while now, Labor governments at a state level have been struggling with the needs of outer-suburban voters, who worry about their quality of life. These voters will not turn away from Labor just because it supports gay marriage. Some of these voters support gay marriage. But they will turn away from Labor if they see Labor only pushing those issues without delivering on things that will reduce their cost of living and improve their standard of living.

The great irony here is Labor has suffered from not being radical enough on delivering key services and infrastructure. Gough Whitlam spent much of his time talking about how the outer suburbs still had open gutters and sewage. Much of this was caused by the neglect of liberal governments at both a state and federal level.

Today, the modern concerns are a lack of roads, railways, bus services, trams, hospital beds and child care places. Or, if they do exist, they are inadequate. Privatised utilities are now jacking up the rates for electricity and water, causing economic stress. PPP's charge huge tolls for using the roads. People are crying out for basic services, yet Labor has been strangely silent.

All of these are expensive problems to fix, and state governments have not been willing to cough up money, or go into deficit out of a fear of the state losing a AAA credit rating. Governments have prioritised the balance sheet over people’s quality of life. Many voters don’t understand why they don’t have adequate roads and public transport and they are getting impatient.

For a long time the liberals have been silent about these problems. However, now they are the beneficiaries of failure. Labor has vacated the space, and the liberals have gladly filled it with other things.

Check out Ted Baillieu's agenda: nothing about building new infrastructure. In fact a lot of it is about shutting stuff down, like the North-South pipeline, and potentially the Desalination Plant. His improvements to services are mainly in the areas of policing and safety, such as more police, and putting more protective services officers on the train. His promises to improve the cost of living are cuts to stamp duty and royal ambulance service memberships. More urban sprawl. This is a classic liberal state agenda.

NSW, prepare yourselves.

Two significant maiden speeches

Two significant maiden speeches were given in the life of this parliament. One liberal, one Labor.

The first was given by Liberal Josh Frydenberg, the new Liberal Member for Kooyong.

The second was given by Andrew Leigh, the new Labor member for Fraser.

I find them both particularly interesting because they sought to carve out the ideological territory of their parties, and sought to define what their opposition really stand for.

Starting with this passage from Josh Frydenberg:

Each member for Kooyong has sought a tolerant, fair and prosperous Australia. I will be no different, for this is an honourable legacy. How would I like to see the future unfold? I want to see an Australia that is safe and secure. I want to see an Australia where the only relevant consideration is the content of a person’s character. I want to see an Australia where families are valued and encouraged. I want to see an Australia where each citizen has the opportunity to be the best that they can be. And I want to see an Australia where individuals, not governments, invent the future. This is why I am a Liberal, this is why I joined the Liberal Party and this why I am here.

What drives us as Liberals are notions of individual liberty, individual responsibility and a fairness borne out of a particular kind of equality. The equality which Liberals seek in a society is the equality of opportunity, not the other kind of equality—the equality of outcomes. It seems to me that these two notions of equality reflect the fundamental fault lines between us and the members opposite. It is not a thin divide. Let me illustrate.

How can we all be better off when a teenager loses his daily two-hour job at the local store merely because his employer cannot afford to pay the minimum three-hour shift? How can we all be better off when the government targets independent and Catholic schools merely because parents are exercising choice? How can we all be better off when the government discourages private health insurance at a time when the public system is overburdened? These examples go to the heart of the other side’s preoccupation with the equality of outcomes. By mandating outcomes, the state removes responsibility from individuals and denies the worker, the student and the patient the opportunity to be the best that they can be.

In the writings of John Stuart Mill, Edmund Burke and Adam Smith, I have found what I consider the best elements of both liberal and conservative traditions. Mill’s argument that the state only has the right to intervene in the affairs of the individual in order to prevent harm to others is a fundamental building block in my political philosophy. Burke’s defence of the traditions of society and the institutions of the state and his opposition to utopian notions of change for change’s sake are also critical to my understanding of what is an effective role for government. The opportunity to prosper is given its best chance through competitive markets—the insight reached by Adam Smith more than two centuries ago.

My vision is to achieve what Menzies termed ‘civilised capitalism’, unleashing the power of the individual and his enterprise while always providing a safety net for those who despite their best efforts are unable to cope. These are my motivations, my cause and my way, and they not negotiable."

I thought it was a very interesting speech that touched on some of the major themes of the Australian Liberal Party. Individualism, Family, National Security, Freedom of Choice, Small Government, and Equality of Opportunity. Interestingly he cites Deakin and talks about social safety nets.

He accuses Labor of being in favour of "Big Government" that stifles individual innovation, and promotes equality of outcomes, rather than equality of opportunity.

In this place we are painting the canvas of the nation and its future. We have a responsibility to dream large and think of what is possible in a difficult world. It may appear a paradox but the first of my large thoughts is that we need to limit the government. Our government is too big. For problems large and small, bureaucratic outcomes always seem to be the default option. This comes at a price—paralysing monopolies and a culture of dependence. It removes incentives for innovation and creativity. It often crowds out a capable private sector, impeding its ability to create jobs. The net effect is a less productive nation. We must always remember that whenever we create a new arm of bureaucracy or expand a field of activity, we are not spending our own money; we are spending the money of our citizens who look to us as the guardians of their wealth.

More than 30 years ago, Margaret Thatcher said that the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money. Thatcher’s nemesis was socialism; ours is bigger and bigger government. My goal is to ensure that government learns to live within its means.

Andrew Leigh outlines what he considers the cause of Labor:

As an economist, much of my research has been devoted to the vast challenges of reducing poverty and disadvantage. I believe that rising inequality strains the social fabric. Too much inequality cleaves us one from another: occupying different suburbs, using different services, and losing our sense of shared purpose. Anyone who believes in egalitarianism as the animating spirit of the Australian settlement should recoil at this vision of our future.

But my research has also taught me that good intentions aren’t enough. As a professor-turned-politician, one of my role models is the late great US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan was innately sceptical about every social policy solution presented to him. Indeed, his starting point was to expect that any given social policy would have no measureable effect. But these high standards didn’t make him any less of an idealist, and Moynihan never lost his optimism and passion. What we need in Australian policy today is not more ideologues, convinced that their prescriptions are the answer, but modest reformers willing to try new solutions, and discover whether they actually deliver results...

...To me, the Australian project is about encouraging economic growth, while ensuring that its benefits are shared across the community. It is about making sure that all Australians have great public services, regardless of ethnicity, income or postcode. And it is about recognising that governments have a role in expanding opportunities, because no child gets to choose the circumstances of their birth...

...As elected representatives, one of our most important jobs is to speak out on behalf of those who struggle to have their voices heard. The Labor Party has a proud tradition of defending individual liberties. Past Labor governments outlawed discrimination on the basis of gender or race. This Labor government has removed from the statute books much of the explicit discrimination against same-sex couples, and strengthened disability discrimination laws. And all Labor governments strive to protect the right of workers to bargain collectively for better pay and conditions. Our party also stands firmly committed to democratic reform, including the simple yet powerful notion that every Australian child should be able to aspire to be our head of state.

The Labor Party today stands at the confluence of two powerful rivers in Australian politics. We are the party that believes in egalitarianism – that a child from Aurukun can become a High Court Justice, and that a mine worker should get the same medical treatment as the bloke who owns the mine.

But what is sometimes overlooked is that we are also the party that believes in liberalism..."



As that last sentence notes, what I found most interesting about both speeches is both Frydenberg and Leigh both lay claim to Alfred Deakin's liberalism.

Frydenberg:

"The history of Kooyong tells a powerful story about Australian liberalism over more than a century. On 18 March 1895 Alfred Deakin addressed a public meeting at St Columb’s Church in Hawthorn with a speech entitled, ‘What is liberalism?’ His speech was an early enunciation of the attributes which we now identify as a fair go. His clarion call for equality of opportunity and a society tempered by a safety net for those in need has resonated through the decades. The members for Kooyong have taken heed of Deakin’s words—many have been giants in this place..."

Leigh:

...what is sometimes overlooked is that we are also the party that believes in liberalism – that governments have a role in protecting the rights of minorities, that freedom of speech applies for unpopular ideas as for popular ones, and that all of us stand equal beneath the Southern Cross. The modern Labor Party is the true heir to the small-L liberal tradition in Australia.

Alfred Deakin was one of the earliest Australian leaders to make the distinction between liberals and conservatives. Deakin argued that liberalism meant the destruction of class privileges, equality of political rights without reference to creed, and equality of legal rights without reference to wealth. Liberalism, Deakin said, meant a government that acted in the interests of the majority, with particular regard to the poorest in the community.

As for conservatives, to quote Deakin’s description of his opponents, they are:

‘a party less easy to describe or define, because, as a rule it has no positive programme of its own, adopting instead an attitude of denial and negation. This mixed body, which may fairly be termed the party of anti-liberalism, justifies its existence, not by proposing its own solution of problems, but by politically blocking all proposals of a progressive character, and putting the brakes on those it cannot block.’

A century on, it is hard to escape the conclusion that if Deakin were in this parliament today, he and his brand of progressive liberalism would find a natural home in the Australian Labor Party. (And given the numbers in today’s parliament, I am sure my colleagues would welcome his vote.)"

Interesting indeed.