Federal Labor leader Julia Gillard can thank the conventions that underpin the Westminster system of government for the fact that she is still Australian prime minister (albeit in ‘caretaker’ mode). The need for her to negotiate with a host of cross-bench MPs in order to see if she can form a minority government and stay in the job as prime minister is obscuring the fact that she has presided over an election disaster for her party.
…Julia Gillard is going to have to confront one of the uncomfortable realities of leadership. The federal leader takes responsibility for the federal election – not Anna Bligh, not Karl Bitar, not the bloke who cleans the Labor party offices.
The 2010 federal election has been a calamity for the ALP. It has lost sixteen seats – fourteen to Tony Abbott’s Liberal-National coalition in Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, one to the Greens in Victoria and one to an independent in Tasmania. Were it not for the Liberal party’s failure to defend its marginal seats of McEwen and La Trobe in Victoria, Tony Abbott would probably be on the verge of forming a government and becoming prime minister. These results are an indictment of a series of poor political judgements on the part of Gillard and those who advised her. There was, of course, her complicity in the downfall of Kevin Rudd – an event that may account for the serious decline in Labor’s position in Rudd’s home state of Queensland. It has been Labor’s collapse in Queensland that has cost Labor majority government.
Opinion polling in the immediate aftermath of Gillard’s ascendancy to the leadership revealed a surge in support for Labor no doubt on the back of euphoria about the historic nature of Australia having its first female prime minister. This feminist exaltation proved to be temporary, however, and Gillard and Labor embarked upon a campaign strategy that focused on a narrow band of electors in western Sydney and in regional Queensland.
Central to this strategy was an attempt to neutralise what was perceived as a Labor weakness on border security and immigration policy by recanting the previous economic orthodoxy that immigration helps stimulate the economy, and reversing a Labor tradition of showing compassion to refugees. In taking this approach, Gillard kissed the historically safe Labor seats of Melbourne and Denison good-bye.
Apart from the fact that it didn’t work in Queensland at least, this approach prevented Labor from campaigning on its strengths. Instead of basing its campaign on its tradition of supporting state health, state education and state participation in the economy, Labor chose instead to campaign on Coalition strengths of border security and immigration. It was as if the Labor party wanted to fight John Howard all over again.
Meanwhile, in Tasmania, where Labor had a positive message where it could show what government co-ordination of a major project like the national broadband network could achieve, Labor was rewarded with a swing towards it that now makes the previously marginal seats of Bass and Braddon amongst the safest Labor seats in the country. The brilliant success in Tasmania for Labor was blighted by the Denison result – yet another insight in to how misguided was Ms Gillard’s strategy of trying to out-Liberal the Liberals on matters like what Australia should do with political refugees and asylum seekers.
Who is to blame for the Labor disaster? Almost from the moment it became clear that Labor was in trouble in Saturday night’s election count, Ms Gillard and her supporters have tried to blame everybody else but themselves. The Queensland result has thus been blamed on the state’s Labor government and its premier, Anna Bligh. In New South Wales, the fault lies with Kristina Keneally and her government. In the Northern Territory and Western Australia, it’s the fault of national secretary Karl Bitar, or perhaps the sources of the evil leaks that dogged the second week of the campaign, or perhaps Mark Latham, or perhaps a combination of all three.
All of this is grist for the mill of analysts who have to sort through this statistical mess and make sense of it all for the historical record. For the Labor party, and for the legion of people who vote for it and believe in it, however, a more immediate explanation is required and here Julia Gillard is going to have to confront one of the uncomfortable realities of leadership. The federal leader takes responsibility for the federal election – not Anna Bligh, not Karl Bitar, not the bloke who cleans the Labor party offices. This election result is all Julia Gillard’s own work, starting with her role as the second most important person in the Rudd government she was so quick to repudiate in her complicity in the ill-advised and ill-judged coup launched against Rudd ahead of the election.
It may yet to be that the cross-benches come to Ms Gillard’s aid, allow her to form a minority government, and give her the opportunity to show that she does have some serious political qualities after all. If this happens, she may end up being remembered as a Labor hero. If, however, government should pass to the Coalition, Ms Gillard will have a struggle on her hands to retain the party leadership.