The natural order, even in polling, has been restored. The Coalition government and Prime Minister Tony Abbott, five and a half months after their election win, are back in the lead in the polls. The ALP and Bill Shorten’s lead was short-lived. Their lead as a matter of fact was a polling aberration that lasted only two months.
Trying to interpret this reversal of fortunes in the polls, most commentators claim that the Labor Party and its leader pay the price for their stand on the issue of union corruption and the subsequent announcement of a Royal Commission by the Abbott government. They also state that the new secretive ‘stop the boats’ immigration policy implemented by the government is paying dividends.
However, what they forget to mention is that the electoral win of the coalition parties last September was decisive. They also do not mention that before the election the coalition lead in the polls was running for more than two years. Such a lead, such a political and social climate, cannot be reversed within months, just because Tony Abbott did not start his Prime Ministership well, because one industry after another is closing down, or because the Australian Labor Party elected a new leader after a month long internal party campaign where party democracy and hopes were rejuvenated.
What commentators also do not highlight is the overwhelming political, institutional, budgetary and ideological firepower that a newly elected government in Australia has, especially if this government is a conservative one, supported by vested business, media and other interests.
Some, like Tony Bramston in The Australian, claim that Tony Abbott’s team is ill-disciplined, messy and lacking in strategic direction on a range of policy challenges.
However, as much as this claim does have elements of truth in it, a closer observation of the government’s priorities and initiatives is quite revealing. The Coalition government does have certain hard core of beliefs and priorities and a determination to implement them with initiatives that have the potential to politically cripple its opponents. A government that does not hesitate to summon former prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard and another five former senior Labor ministers to provide any and all documentation and be ready to appear before a Royal Commission into the ALP’s home-insulation program must never be underestimated.
A prime minister who announces a Royal Commission in order to ‘examine’ the possible illegal activity of trade unions, and one of those unions under examination is the Australian Workers’ Union, headed for a number of years by current Labor leader Bill Shorten, can never be underestimated politically.
The Abbott government is trying to alter fundamentally the ideological, economic and political landscape of Australia. It is an ideological government, like the one headed by former prime minister John Howard. If Labor and other forces on the opposite side of politics wish to confront this government successfully in the polls and in an election, they need to articulate an alternative national narrative that encompasses every aspect of life in Australia.
This narrative has to offer another way of doing things in this country, in the name of the national interest. The alternative Labor narrative will not be heard easily, amongst other things because of the conservative dominance in the media, but also because of the prevalence of conservative ideas in the wider society at this historical and political period.
Furthermore, the alternative way of doing things in Australia might take more than one electoral cycle in order to be heard and to be understood, but this work, this narrative, this kind of political fight has to start now.
Labor and the Greens cannot afford to be seen as parties that just react to or oppose government initiatives. They need to give to the electorate their own narratives, their own tools, their own ‘glasses’ of seeing various political issues and government policies as they evolve.
