The polling supremacy of the Federal Labor Opposition over the Coalition government has been established for more than two months now.
The government and the Prime Minister bounced back in the game, regaining their pre-budget minority support, as the latest polls indicate, and they have time on their hands in order to regain the trust of the majority of the electorate, but because of the May budget and the negative response of the public, the task of a government comeback becomes difficult, at least in the foreseeable future.
As long as the Labor Opposition and other political and societal forces focus on the impact of the budget, the Abbott government will have polling and political difficulties. However, having said this, the fact remains that the date of the next federal election is a long way away yet and a lot can happen before then. Also, the negative impact of the budget to sizable sectors of the community is not enough on its own to create a coalition of electoral and political change for Labor.
Furthermore, re-opening or re-orienting party policies that do not really address issues of bread and butter, or of everyday life for the majority of the electorate, policies such as the off-shore processing of asylum seekers or the status of the occupied territories and East Jerusalem does not help.
The Labor cause is also not well served by looking backwards, for example, on the divisions of the past along the pro-Rudd and pro-Gillard lines, or allegedly on the way Anthony Albanese is undermining Bill Shorten, or by having former Labor people working for the Murdoch media such as Troy Bramston or Graham Richardson trying to define the parameters and the scope of ALP priorities.
It is not the dropping of the old 1921 Labor clause, dead in reality for many decades now, on the socialisation of the means of production “to the extent necessary”, in order to prevent exploitation, as suggested in The Australian and the Troy Bramston book Rudd Gillard and Beyond that will win Labor government at the next federal election.
Making the Labor party, its structures and its policies more reflective of the real life priorities, or of the needs and aspirations of the wider community, is what might give political and electoral momentum to the opposition and its leader.
Clarifying policies that address the needs and aspirations of the excluded as well as of the backbone of Australia, the insecure and struggling middle classes, is what might secure electoral and political supremacy in 2016 and possibly beyond.
Working out a way to deal with the political and ideological priorities of the voters for the Greens and the Greens themselves is what might contribute, along with other factors, and make a difference between winning and losing the next federal election.
Of course, the Labor message and the Labor argument cannot be conveyed only to the media, or cannot be contained only in Parliament House in Canberra. It has to be taken to the wider community in every significant corner of the country, not only through the use of social media or the phone but also through old fashioned face to face interaction. Neighbourhood meetings, town hall meetings, door knocking, at least in key electorates, are all a must.
Vast segments of the public are no longer engaging with politics, or in the democratic process, but a grassroots approach to politics can get you a long way electorally and politically. If this worked in the great social and political laboratory of the West, the USA, for Bill Clinton in the 1990s or for Barack Obama closer to our times, I cannot see why this cannot also work for the Australian Labor Party and Bill Shorten in Australia, in 2014 and beyond.
These strategic and time consuming considerations have to be addressed by Labor, sooner rather than later, if the party is to retain its supremacy in the polls, if it wants to win the election, if it wishes to re-define for some time in the future the parameters of the political mainstream in Australia towards more progressive politics and ideas.