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.
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