Last October, deputy Labor leader Richard Marles admitted that working-class voters had turned away from the Labor Party at the election in May last year because then leader Bill Shorten offered them “handouts rather than hope”.
Fast forward six months, and not much has changed. Labor has another leader who prefers the language of handouts to human dignity and hope, a leader who is pushing the Morrison government for even tighter restrictions on the economy that will kill more jobs and shut down more businesses, causing greater devastation to people’s lives and livelihoods. Australian workers deserved better than Shorten. And now many might be asking if they deserve better than Anthony Albanese too.
There was a time when a Labor leader would have said this during the current crisis: “Now if you ask me who is an essential worker? Someone who has a job. Everyone who has a job in this economy is an essential worker.” A Labor leader would have made it clear that Labor wanted people to keep working, where possible, rather than to be given sit-down money. A Labor leader would have said “everyone who has a job needs to be able to keep doing their job and that means they will need to continue to be able to send their children to school for an education”.
A Labor leader would have said: “Every day someone is in a job, for just a day, is worth fighting for.”
Albanese has said nothing of the sort. Instead, a Liberal prime minister expressed these sentiments during the past 10 difficult and uncertain days, sentiments that articulate Australian aspiration, and our work ethic too. Almost daily Scott Morrison, not Albanese, has spoken about the human dignity that comes from working. The Coalition under Morrison has been confirmed as the party of the working class.
So here is another chapter in the existential battle within Labor, between a clique of university-educated “progressives” versus Labor’s traditional working-class base. Given the choice between these two sides during a monumental crisis, Labor under Albanese has sided with its inner-city voting bloc.
When Albanese says “I absolutely support stricter shutdowns”, that is the preferred view of people who have not and will not lose their jobs during this pandemic. Many of these same people may not even have any friends who have lost their livelihoods and the dignity that comes from having a job. Just as with climate policy, where Labor’s inner-city left flank can afford higher energy bills and is employed in service industries rather than mining or manufacturing, their financial pressure points when dealing with COVID-19 are far removed from working Australians.
Notice how vague Albanese and his shadow ministers are about the precise meaning of demanding that Morrison go harder and faster. Opposition health spokesman Chris Bowen lashed the Morrison government for changing the rules over a 30-minute visit to a hairdresser. Big deal. What else does Labor have in mind when Bowen says: “Labor believes more needs to be done; done harder and done earlier. We support stricter restrictions.”
Taken at face value, Albanese’s demand that the Morrison government must go harder and faster must mean a more severe lockdown of the economy. That will hurt working-class Australians. It will add more jobs and businesses to the economic scrapheap. Many businesses, built from years of hard work by small business owners and their employees, will never reopen. And many of the businesses that do manage to reopen will have fewer workers to match half their former size.
Does going harder and faster mean shutting down construction or manufacturing jobs? What about steel workers? Mining? These are the acid tests for Labor. Just as voters identified Labor’s forked tongue at the last election over climate change, without Labor clearly describing an honest and clear landing place over COVID-19, the opposition is simply posturing.
Albanese’s position is not just politically reckless after the last election; it is unconscionable. But this is a vintage Labor trick. A trick that has bombed before when Shorten settled on an uncosted policy of cutting emissions by 45 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030 and pretended to be pro-coal at the same time.
Shorten and Labor were left humiliated in defeat. Labor’s left flank may have understood, and endorsed, Labor’s chicanery about supporting coal but there are not enough of them to deliver government to Labor. Labor’s problem was that other voters across the country saw through the ruse too and the party bled votes from its traditional base.
Just as Labor tried to straddle both sides of the party’s deep divide over coal and climate change at the last election, Labor is again trying to have its cake and eat it too. Voters are unlikely to be fooled.
Back in October, Marles explained the need for a new direction for Labor by recounting an encounter with one particular voter. “A third-generation coalminer who was Labor born and raised, through and through, told me of his inner angst at what would normally be a matter-of-fact putting a “1” in the Labor square,” Marles said. “To the point where he laboured over the ballot paper in his hand for 10 minutes, just staring at it. Because, he wondered to himself: ‘Why would I vote for Labor, when Labor aren’t for me?’ ”
Under Albanese, that question remains unanswered.
Culpability for this continuing confusion rests with the Labor Party for choosing another leader who, on current performance, appears tone deaf to working Australians. Albanese’s ocker accent and scruffy suits are not enough to form a meaningful connection with working Australians.
When Albanese signs his letters to constituents “yours in solidarity”, perhaps he should be taken at his word — a Labor leader in solidarity with the inner-city clique of voters in his Sydney seat of Grayndler, a seat under attack from the Greens. The Marrickville class warrior took the leadership promising that Labor would better explain how to create wealth and grow the pie rather than just redistribute it. Almost a year later, we are entitled to wonder if this was yet another canny con job by a Labor leader. Recall Kevin Rudd promising to be an economic conservative, only to reveal his true colours during the GFC.
Albanese is betting that the policy responses to COVID-19 will mean big government is here to stay. He should be careful in that calculation. Do not confuse the acceptance among Australians of subsidies during a temporary crisis with the deeper, permanent aspirations of working Australians to be in work, not just receiving handouts. Inquirer understands that Coles has received north of 480,000 job applications. Coles has already employed an additional 8200 people in its supermarkets and liquor stores. It is recruiting another 4000 to stock shelves, and more than 300 to fill leadership positions such as store managers, assistant store managers and department managers.
Australians want to work. They want to be productive. In the long term, a real job, as opposed to being paid to be on the books of a business, is the essence of individual worth.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed how deep the confusion about the purpose of the Labor Party runs. Is it beholden to the inner-city left? Or does it represent working-class Australians? It cannot do both convincingly.
Modern Labor’s confusion about its raison d’etre means this divide between Albanese and Morrison will define the next election. Each day that Albanese and his ministers move Labor further away from keeping the economy open for real business, rather than handouts, is a gift for the Coalition.
After this crisis passes, voters will surely remember that Albanese has splinters in his backside from straddling Labor’s ideological fence, while Morrison was firmly on the side of keeping people in jobs by keeping as much of the economy open as possible.
