We seem to have hit the ground running in Queensland. Cyclone
Marcia has left us with no obvious political fallout. The Callide overflow was
artfully diverted, notwithstanding the Wivenhoe fiasco not so long ago; and the
press and the Opposition have been restrained. It is comforting. After all,
Labor did not expect to win government. And the LNP did not expect to lose it.
Hopefully ‘Abbottism’ – tearing down an elected government by hook or by crook
- has finally run its course.
Yes, these are grounds for rejoicing!
But is the victory all due to our superior campaigning?
Connecting with the community, targeting those to be persuaded? Whilst all the
while bugling about the Unions’ boisterous campaign to expose the Newman regime,
and lauding the boundless energy and dedication of Young Labor?
Yet, the morning after ‘the ball’ awaits us. The high
unemployment, the much bandied about budget deficit, the decline of mining
royalties. The list goes on, and the best of plans could go down with just one unforseen
by-election.
Such being the case, is it time to take a cool look at how an
alternative scenario to our triumphal narrative might inform the “substance” of
our future endeavours?
Bill Shorten was interviewed on ABC24 TV on the morning
after ‘the ball’. He made a point about style and substance. I do not remember
anything else about that interview, save that it struck me as another move on
his part to keep his reform drive on the road.
The Australia Institute commissioned an exit interview for
the Queensland election. Inside Story
published the results, a few days after the election, which suggested that one
third of voters were influenced by the interview that Tony Fitzgerald gave just
days before the election. Did a proportion of these voters confer us the unexpected
windfall?
It is just possible. If so, are we putting too much faith in
our campaign strategy? Particularly if we were to embark on a permanent campaigning
mode, as though we have found the golden formula? (Did we use that same formula
in 2012?)
There is little doubt that such a state is helpful in
keeping the troops on a war readiness footing, and some of their commanders in
honing their leadership styles for their ascent through the hierarchy of the
Party and into the seats in Parliament.
What is wrong with that?
One thing is obvious. The exclusive way in which we traditionally beget
MPs, and Senators especially, through our Party and Union nurseries has
bequeathed us a legacy that makes John Faulkner counsel us, more than once, on
our need to make the Party “electable and worth electing”.
Just think of Craig Thomson, or that Senator in WA. Just two
rotten apples or the tip of the iceberg? And lest we forget, Caldwell and the
faceless men had sewn up the deal to expel Gough Whitlam in 1966. For many of
us, the Union-spawned power brokers’ role in the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd era is still
burning in the ashes of our collective despair.
Perhaps there is the glimmer of a light at the end of the
tunnel first lit more than a century ago.
If Bill Shorten is to succeed in his ambition to increase the
size of our membership by 50%, or as some say 150%, and to urge those from
outside our traditional base to join us, he would do well to ensure that the
quality and substance of the candidates we present for the next Federal
election is second to none.
He could open up the selection process with published
selection criteria, in line with how jobs are generally won in the real economy.
He could replicate the successful primaries trialled in NSW. That would make
candidate selection more democratic and believable, and attract those who would
otherwise feel daunted by the burden of going through the Party nurseries. The
more we attract candidates who have had substantial careers in the real world,
and put them in reasonably safe seats, the more we will look electable and
worth electing as a modern democratic political party.
This is Bill Shorten’s do or die challenge. As a leader he
has the prerogative to decree this new dawn if he so chooses to exercise it.
Precedents abound: Whitlam in defying the 36 faceless men; Hawke and Keating in
ignoring our socialism shibboleths; Bill Hayden in doubling the number of
delegates to the National Conference; Gillard in her captain’s pick to install our
first Indigenous senator; and Rudd with his 50/50 leadership plebiscite.
Bob Hawke, Bill Kelty, and Greg Combet, all union princes,
managed to take the unions into new pastures, by convincing them of their need
to survive and at the same time do the right thing in the interest of the
generations who will come after us. Bill Shorten’s place in history might be a
new breed of MPs, a reinvigorated democratic Party released from the strangle
hold of union power brokers, often scions of comfortable middle class families,
nurtured with the wherewithal to reign over fiefdoms of relatively lowly paid
workers.
We scored a few of this ‘new breed’ of MPs in Queensland at
the recent election, thanks in large part to the 2012 near wipe out. This new
breed comprises people who have made a success of their careers over decades outside
political nurseries. In Parliament they are likely to feel free to make
enlightened contributions, based on their substantial career and life
experience, as they are not tethered to the power brokers or the Administrative
Committee through their apprenticeship in the nurseries. They will exude the
demeanour that every day voters will see on the whole as believable,
honourable, and trustworthy. Peter
Wellington comes to mind.
In the Federal arena I can think of Andrew Leigh, Mark
Drefus, and Melissa Parke. And on the other side, Susan Ley, who found
her own way to become a traffic controller and a commercial pilot before raising
a family on a farm and then became a tax accountant at a regional ATO centre. These
are MPs who speak with authenticity about what to do with the ailments of our
nation. They do not have the predisposition or need to resort to the unseemly
trench warfare that so many MPs with no career or life experience outside the
political nurseries rely on for justifying their pay and privilege.
In Queensland, the LNP’s Tarnya Smith is one I would put in
that same category. She possessed no university degree. She left school to pursue
her dream to become a beautician, and ended up as the manager for Harrods at
the London Airport. This is a woman of substance, committed to hard work, adjudged
to have been of high value to successful businesses. No alluring style of any sort that I could discern.
She retained her seat of Mt Ommaney by some 170 votes. For my money, she does not
look as though she has the requisite intellectual endowments for a reasonably
highly paid position in public life.
Would we have won that seat if we had a more substantial
candidate? One with the requisite intellectual and knowledge grounded through
higher education, demonstrable career achievements, and considerable exposure
to life’s many facets? Would such a candidate win over at least 90 more of
those voters who value substance over style - among the professionals, business
people, and the educated who form a significant part of that electorate? What
difference that would have made to our Parliamentary position! And needless to say, there may be two or three
other marginal seats in that situation.
The ball is over.
One swallow does not make a summer. Drumming up war readiness
is all very well, but let it not divert us from our duty to become more
“electable and worth electing” on an enduring footing. Having competent,
believable spokespersons in Parliament would go a long way towards that. As they say, the medium is the message.
Chek Ling
