LABOR’S official review of last year’s election campaign offers a searing condemnation of the disunity that plagued the Rudd-Gillard governments and sharply criticises the party’s campaign structure, strategy and operations.
The 25-page report, presented to the party’s national executive yesterday and obtained by The Weekend Australian before it was released, argues that “debilitating leadership instability” drove down the Labor vote in 2009 and 2010.
The 550 submissions from party members overwhelmingly want Labor to “move on from this period of acrimony and in-fighting” and “ensure the mistakes of the past are not repeated”.
The report’s authors, Victorian state MP Jane Garrett and Queensland councillor Milton Dick, make 30 recommendations.
Labor’s polling showed that in May last year the Gillard government faced possible swings of 18 per cent in some seats and was on track to hold just 40 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives. The leadership change from Julia Gillard to Kevin Rudd in June last year saved the party 15 seats, the report argues.
“The only question was how severe the loss would be,” the authors conclude. “Labor has to accept responsibility for this loss, the factors leading up to it, and the dire consequences it has had for both our party and our nation.”
FULL REPORT: Read the ALP 2013 campaign review
But the leadership change “profoundly” impacted on the party’s “campaign strategy and infrastructure”, the report says.
Half the campaign staff quit when Mr Rudd returned to the prime ministership. Several MPs decided not to recontest their seats and new candidates had to be preselected.
Although the report highlights examples of the party’s “exceptional and innovative campaigning”, which helped to hold key seats in NSW and Queensland, it says overall campaign decision-making processes were “poor”.
The report does not specifically name Mr Rudd, his chief strategist Bruce Hawker or Labor’s national secretary George Wright, but the implied criticism of them is evident. It notes the liaison between them was often dysfunctional.
In criticism directed at Mr Rudd and his travelling party, composed mainly of his personal staff, the report finds their micromanagement hampered the campaign effort centred in Melbourne.
“Unit directors within campaign headquarters did not feel confident that decisions they made within their area of responsibility would not be overturned by the travelling party,” the report says. “People with responsibility for different areas lacked the authority to make decisions with the confidence that the travelling party would not overrule them.”
The report criticises Mr Hawker’s decision to hire US political consultants and his overruling of Mr Wright on key decisions.
“The new Prime Minister’s Office sought to make a number of specific changes to the campaign staffing and structure, including late involvement by overseas consultants,” the report says.
“This created some significant disruptions, confusion and inefficiencies within the campaign.”
Mr Rudd and Mr Hawker commissioned polling during the campaign that was kept from the campaign leadership. The “freelancing done in this area by others outside of the central campaign team did not assist our campaign efforts”, the report says.
There is also a frank assessment of headquarters overseen by Mr Wright and criticism of Labor’s West Australian and Northern Territory campaign teams.
The report calls for a leader’s candidate-selection panel to be established that will help identify possible Labor candidates who are “strong local champions within the community”.
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