Blame the love media as Labor chooses politics of unelectability
ON present trends it can't be long before Bill Shorten asks questions in parliament about union corruption and links to the ALP. After all, Labor seems intent on sticking to the issues that do it most damage.
Inside State Circle, the Opposition Leader has been given a warm welcome as the love media desperately tries to wreak vengeance on the incoming Abbott government. Much of the commentary has characterised the government as struggling to find its way against an opposition resurgent after the exhilarating democratic experiment of its leadership contest.
This, as has become typical, is a false narrative that perversely does Labor harm by quarantining it from reality. The Coalition is enduring run-of-the-mill wrestles with the challenges of government - an expenses brouhaha, a diplomatic spat with Indonesia and a wrangle with the states over education funding - that have been portrayed variously as gaffes, stumbles and own goals.
Whether the government inspires you, fills you with confidence or irks you, these issues are being handled.
And Tony Abbott is setting about implementing his agenda. His path - as much as it can be without having control of the Senate - is clear.
So counter-intuitively, the important structural alignment in politics of the past three months has occurred on the opposition side. Surprisingly, Labor has refused to clear its decks to focus on scrutinising the government. It has been presented with the obvious opportunity to reset after a disastrous decade - and it has rejected it
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This gives shape to how politics and the policy debate will unfold across the next three years. Labor has burdened itself with three great weaknesses that will retard it, and most likely nobble Shorten's leadership from the outset.
For a decade, Labor has consistently placed itself on the wrong side of the border protection debate. Across the past five years it has surrendered moral authority on climate policy to reflexive political expediency. And since the global financial crisis it has created a millstone around its neck with incompetence on debt and deficits.
Climate change, asylum-seekers and government debt: these are three powerful political issues that trigger visceral responses in the electorate. And under Shorten, Labor has stubbornly and short-sightedly kept itself offside on all of them.
It has been encouraged down this path by the love media commentariat; progressive barrackers who seem to value emotional posturing over practical policy.
This is a delusional and self-defeating exercise because the only people convinced Labor has been on the right path are some within the ALP and some of its supporters. The rest of the country seems to have moved on.
So to see Labor suffer such a historic electoral defeat, mainly because of this triumvirate of issues, then proceed without a recalibration is almost inconceivable. But there can be no doubting it is happening.
The commentators urging the opposition down this path as the road to relevance will only be wrong again. For Labor, the price will be much higher - it risks making itself unelectable for a long time to come.
So it is that this week, a dozen years after the Tampa standoff and five years after Labor restarted the people-smuggling trade by weakening our border protection regime, we saw Labor vote in parliament to again weaken border protection measures.
The old debating points about temporary protection visas have been dusted off, and the same inane arguments about whether they worked have reverberated on Radio National.
The message to voters - and to people-smugglers - is that Labor is more interested in compassionate gestures than stopping a pernicious and dangerous trade.
Voters know the suite of measures that were once in place worked. And they are seeing the boats slow to a trickle now as tough measures are again enforced with resolve.
That Labor could again choose gesture politics, after all the human trauma, tragedy and political pain of the past five years, is almost unthinkable.
That this could happen just months after Labor's own deathbed conversion to offshore processing and a harsh deterrent regime in Papua New Guinea defies credulity.
Like watching distressed whales that have beached themselves, you just look at Labor and wonder why.
Yet as if this self-harm won't do enough long-term damage to Shorten and Labor, they are doing the same on the carbon tax.
Having imposed it against their own explicit promise, and rhetorically promised to "terminate" it in the election campaign, the opposition now votes to thwart the Coalition's repeal mandate and keep the tax in place. This is the political equivalent of a pod of humpbacks deciding to swim up to the Bondi Surf Pavilion.
Just to cap it all off, after a series of record budget deficits, a steep descent into debt, lifting their own debt limits and then failing to make good on their promised return to surplus, Labor has now decided to play politics over government debt.
Instead of allowing the government to increase the debt ceiling, then scrutinise its performance across time, Labor drew attention to the magnitude of its own debt and its concerns about how high it might go. Clear the beach; more marine mammals seem to be heading for the sand.
This is not a joking matter for Labor, or for the more than 40 per cent of the population who want a viable force on the left of politics.
Unless the ALP can finally fathom a way to demonstrate it can be trusted with border protection, comprehends the need for predictable and responsible budgetary management, and will live up to public expectations on climate policy, it can't expect to govern the nation.
Sure, the Abbott government's fate now lies in its own hands. Competence will entrench it; incompetence will play Labor quickly back into contention. But this is precisely why Labor must use the opportunity of being freshly out of power to put its house in order - to make itself electable or at least remove any impediments to electability.
Then it can set about carefully watching and pressuring the government, and holding it to account. This is not rocket science. It is how our system works.
Instead, by entrenching its own weakness on borders, climate and debt, Labor has extended its pain.
The siren song of the progressive commentators has lured it badly off course.
