RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

As a hard left Labor warrior famous for ‘fighting tories’, many expected Anthony Albanese to be the sort of Opposition Leader who doesn’t back down.

But the pandemic has seen a more muted Albanese emerge… and left many wondering what he - and the Australian Labor Party - actually stand for.

This comes at a time when other Labor leaders, like NZ’s Jacinda Ardern, have leveraged their values into electoral success.

Today, writer for The Monthly Richard Cooke on Anthony Albanese’s leadership and whether the Labor Party is out of step with progressive politics worldwide.

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RUBY:

Richard a couple of weeks ago in New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern won a second term in government… can you talk me through that victory and what you think it says about progressive politics?

Archival Tape -- Jacinda Ardern

“[Welcome and Acknowledgement in Maori]”

RICHARD:

Well, yeah. I mean, it's a landslide victory first of all.

Archival Tape -- Newsreader

“New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern has made history, her Labor Party recording a landslide victory in the country’s election.”

RICHARD:

From memory, I don't think that there's been a win like that in New Zealand since the 1940s.

Archival Tape -- Jacinda Ardern

“New Zealand has shown the Labor party its greatest support in at least 50 years”

RICHARD:

And this was after a scenario in which New Zealand restructured their electoral system to try and make it so that people had to govern in coalitions. So an outright victory in those circumstances by itself is a huge achievement.

Archival Tape -- Newsreader

“With almost 50% of the vote, entrusting her with another term in office”…

Archival Tape -- Jacinda Ardern

“So let’s step forward together…[phrase repeated in Maori]”

RICHARD:

And when you look at the sort of state of progressive politics federally in Australia, it really feels like a very significant contrast.

RUBY:

What in particular do you think stands out, in terms of that contrast?

RICHARD:

Well, I mean, I think a good example of that is that both in New Zealand and in Canada, the legalisation of cannabis has become a big issue for the left.

Archival Tape -- New Zealand Newsreader

“What we’ve seen over the last three years is that support for Cannabis law reform has been increasing over time”

Archival Tape -- Interviewer

“Jacinda Ardern, have you ever used Cannabis?”

Archival Tape -- Jacinda Ardern

“Yes, I did. A long time ago.”

RICHARD:

That seems a very, very long way off in Australia because people are spooked by the tabloid culture here, they don't think that there's votes in it, that they're not willing to sort of put themselves out there like that. Alan Jones possibly has a more socially moderate view on this than the official line of the Labour Party. So I think that's an example of where those sort of bold, socially progressive initiatives have stalled here. We saw something similar with gay marriage, Australia instituted it a lot later than Alabama did. We're pretty slow on the uptake these days.

RUBY:

Ok, so Australian politics is less progressive than we’ve seen in New Zealand, and on some key issues our Labor Party has been unwilling to take a more bold stance. How do you think Anthony Albanese, the party’s leader, fits into that context?

RICHARD:

I think that he has struggled to get his message across. Sometimes that message has been clear.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese

“Tonight I announce that a Labor government will from 1 July 2022, remove the annual cap on the childcare subsidy eliminating once and for all the disincentive to work more hours…”

RICHARD:

Sometimes it's been firmly in the Labor tradition.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese

“The pandemic has shown that Labor’s values of fairness, security and the power of government to change lives for the better are the right values in a crisis… “

RICHARD:

And sometimes it's been a signalling exercise where you've really wondered who its intended audience is.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese

“The LNP/Green coalition in this campaign should be called out for what it is…”

RICHARD:

And while all over the world people are responding to the pandemic, saying the role of the state is going to change. We’re going to look at things like universal basic income, one of Labour's first instincts, I mean, I did get a head on wage subsidies, but they then turned around and said, well, the Liberals are running up this huge debt and deficit.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese

“Literally billions of dollars being added to what will be a record deficit and record debt…”

RICHARD:

That is a very strange concern to have at that time.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese

“We’ll examine the details. It’s good that the government finally woken up to some of the waste in that scheme.”

RICHARD:

And it's really a way of trying to bolster these supposedly shaky foundations that the ALP has on economic issues federally. You know, that that is a line borrowed from Tony Abbott and it's a line that he used to hurt them.

Archival Tape -- Tony Abbott

“The former government was spending like drunken sailors…”

RICHARD:

So when Albanese is drawing on things like that and my understanding is that that was a ‘captain's decision’, if you like, he's trying to speak to that weakness. And I think that has been very ineffective.

RUBY:

Mmm ok. Let's talk a bit more about Anthony Albanese’s leadership style. How does he sell himself and what do people expect from him?

RICHARD:

Well, I think those two things are already in contrast with each other. Albo is someone who famously described his life's ambition as fighting Tories.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese

“I like fighting Tories… that’s what I do. That’s what I do… it has been…”

RICHARD:

And instead of becoming a sort of carping, negative, aggressive opposition leader, like in the Tony Abbott mould, he instead found himself in a situation where Scott Morrison is facing a couple of crises in a row. First, the fires and then the pandemic. I think for a Labor politician to be a kind-of aggressive counterbalance to that would be quite difficult. I think it would strike the wrong tone. So there's already a tension where you have Albo, who is a fighter, you know, he's a fighter with a big heart, put in a situation where he really can't fight. And also he doesn't want to. So people start to wonder who he is now. And I don't think we still have a clear answer to that.

RUBY:

Ok. So if Albanese is not coming out swinging, he’s in a situation where he can’t really fight, and therefore we don’t know who he is.. what does it mean for the party he leads, the ALP?

RICHARD:

Yeah. I mean, I think that the tentativeness of it, the kind of ‘pull punches’ aspect of it is because they're moving so cautiously. I mean, the ALP here have taken a licking. They are still hurting from leadership ructions which are partly reflecting the fact that social democratic parties like the ALP are struggling or have struggled all over the developed world. You know, it's easy to look at these chops and changes and think that they're just personality issues. You know, people just don't like Bill Shorten. In fact, what is happening is what the Labor Party represents and who it represents is shifting. And that means that areas like leadership become contentious because of that.

RUBY:

We’ll be back in a moment.

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RUBY:

Richard, over the past few decades there have been some big structural changes to the way the Australian economy operates and therefore, to who the Australian worker is… so lets talk about those changes and the impact they’ve had on who votes Labor..

RICHARD:

Those changes have been... have been very, very significant. You know, if you go back pre 1970s, the graduate proportion of the population in Australia is small. The number of people who are union members is high. And there's a very large public sector. And some people say that this decline goes all the way back to the 1950s, that the number of people who are kind of a natural voter blocks of parties like the ALP who are not graduates, they are union workers and public sector workers, that's started to decline.

The other aspect is that traditional working class constituencies that used to flock to the Labour Party aren't a guaranteed lock for them anymore. That's really to do with the changing nature of work. So there's a very fine balance. They have to strike where they can't talk, you know, they say they're not going to talk about things like the “top end of town” anymore. But they also have to advocate on behalf of people who are less well off.

But another cohort, and I think this is very important in Australia and weirdly kind of undiscussed. I mean people talk about Howard's battlers a lot. But the kind of fortunes of tradies in Australia, of tradesmen and tradespeople is quite different from what's happened in other countries. And that tends to be an asset-owning class, that tends to be an entrepreneurial class and also, to some extent, a socially conservative class of people that have carved this kind of shape out of the ALP that they've never been able to get back. That is quite distinct from what's happened in other countries, I think.

RUBY:

Mm and so where has this left the ALP? What has their response been to this shift? How have they tried to get those voters back?

RICHARD:

Their response has kind of changed over time and that they've tried out lots of different things. One of them is to sort of insist on a conservative credentials. You know, you look at people like Julia Gillard being opposed to gay marriage, for example.

Archival Tape -- Julia Gillard

“What I believe, what the Labor Party believes is that marriage is between a man and a woman…”

RICHARD:

It's to be very harsh on immigration.

Archival Tape -- Kevin Rudd

“From now on any asylum seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees…”

RICHARD:

It is to constantly sort of try and repudiate the Greens and the possibility of a coalition with the Greens again.

Archival Tape -- Bill Shorten

“While I see that the Greens are sort of trailing their coat and saying ‘look at me’. The fact of the matter is that if we get elected, we’ll be making decisions in a Labor cabinet…”

RICHARD:

But then if you look at the you know, the Gillard approach was to be in coalition with the Greens. So they have tried out different things to sort of find this natural supporter base or a new supporter base to replace the old one.

I think if you look at the people that they're going to for advice, the parties that they are trying to model themselves on from elsewhere, they are pursuing a bit of a kind of what you would call a “Liberal Lite” strategy that they are following the lead of conservative government. And and trying to make sure that they appeal to people in marginal seats who are more socially conservative. I think that that is a hard sell. There is not very much evidence of that working elsewhere in the world.

But I think they're really looking to the UK where the Corbyn experiment failed. Labour has moderated. The Conservatives have faltered. And they are now in a decent position to potentially win government again.

I think that the ALP would like to do something like that, but their approach and the person they've chosen to lead that approach is again quite different from UK labour.

RUBY:

Right, and the person they have chosen to lead them - the former conviction politician Anthony Albanese - how is he grappling with this change in the people who would vote for his party?

RICHARD:

I think that he still is a conviction politician, but he is being forced for strategic reasons to modulate some of those convictions.

There's also, I think, another aspect where he feels like the ground has shifted on his feet. You know, he's a guy from Marrickville. He's now had to deal with a whole new group of people in Marrickville who are, you know, essentially hipsters or hipster adjacent. I mean, he talks about how people would never talk to him about gay marriage and then would just suddenly out of nowhere, constantly hammering him and the Labor Party over its stances on gay marriage that they had in some cases had no problems with only a few months before.

That is something that he has struggled with. So he is still trying to advocate on behalf of those people. You've seen him now start looking at university cuts as one of the sort of priorities for the ALP. That wasn't always the case, especially in the past, and has probably limited efficacy. Now, that is a way that he's trying to bridge this divide, I think.

RUBY:

Mm hmm. And so you're saying that Marrickville, which is the area that Albanese represents, is sort of representative of this broader shift at the ALP is facing?

RICHARD:

I think so. Absolutely. You know, that that's if he was going to lose that seat, he would lose it to the Greens. And that is that is not something that seemed plausible, even, say, 10 years ago. 15 years ago.

RUBY:

Richard, given everything we’ve been discussing, can Anthony Albanese beat Scott Morrison? What do you think Labor's chances of electoral success are at the moment?

RICHARD:

Look, I don't think that they're great, and that's partly because unless your hideously incompetent, incumbents just have an enormous advantage at the moment.

If you take on the pandemic and do it well, it's debatable how much credit Scott Morrison deserves for that, considering the approach has really been led by state premiers. But Australia's response to Covid has been largely successful.

I think taking out a Prime Minister, under those circumstances, is a hard, hard thing to do.

RUBY:

Richard, thank you so much for talking to me about all of this.

RICHARD:

My pleasure. Thank you.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today -

Australia Post chief executive Christine Holgate has resigned from her role, ‘with immediate effect’. Her resignation comes after an investigation was ordered into the purchase of four luxury watches, worth $20-thousand dollars, as gifts for senior employees.

And in Queensland the Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington has stood down, following her party’s defeat in the state election on the weekend. A new LNP leader is expected to be announced in the coming days.

I’m Ruby Jones this is 7am, see you tomorrow