What Labor Can Learn From Itself

By Evan Jones

Labor was in Federal office for 13 years between 1983 and 1996. Everybody knows this except, it seems, the Labor Party.

Over its last 11 years in Opposition, Labor's policies have been fragmented and unstable. Occasionally it seems to want to up the ante on the Liberals in its commitment to budgetary stringency, but there is strikingly little continuity with its previous period in office. It is as if the Party is starting from scratch.

A lot of big changes went through Parliament in the 13 years Labor last spent in Government. Why doesn't the Labor Caucus invite in previous Ministers for discrete but honest briefings evaluating their portfolios -- the ambitions, the openings, the constraints, and the perceived achievements?

Dialogue would involve listening to Keating, but it would also mean listening to others who are now silent. The broad economic reforms over which Keating presided deserve detached reflection.

Even Keating has expressed frustration at the character of advice from his bureaucratic minders and the failure of the economy to respond appropriately to implementation of expert opinion. This frustration is disclosed indirectly in John Edwards's 1996 biography, Keating: The Inside Story, in which Keating is quoted decrying monetary policy and the twin deficits theory as 'bullshit.'

It is possible that the progenitors of economic reform, to whom Keating ultimately stayed loyal, not only gave us 'the recession we had to have' but played a role in Labor's loss of office in 1996.

Rudd and his team have taken a brave front against the grain on at least two occasions -- on industry policy early this year, and belatedly on industrial relations. On both occasions they have faced backlash from the guardians of the faith and from non-Labor vested interests.

The certain lack of resolve of Rudd's team to date does not bode well. The last word, appropriately, lies with the Herculean Keating: 'Leadership only ever had two ingredients: imagination and courage.'

The Rudd team needs imagination and it certainly needs courage. But it also needs a critical confrontation with the recent experience of its own Party in office.

New Matilda

Wednesday 18 July 2007