Chris Sheil puts forward a somewhat tentative case for the return of Kim Beazley to the Labor leadership, prompting me to clarify my own views on the subject.
In my view, it’s a mistake to expect an Opposition leader to be a votewinner. There are exceptions, such as Hawke in 1983, but most of the time the best an Opposition can hope for is that the leader should not drag the party down. An illustration is the fact that the incumbent Prime Minister, no matter how unpopular, almost invariably beats the Opposition leader on the question “Who would make the better PM”.
In current circumstances, there’s also not much point in trying to distinguish between alternative leaders on the basis of their beliefs about policy. To the extent that apparent differences have emerged from time to time, they are more about political positioning than anything else. So, for example, Beazley is now attacking Crean and Latham from the left, arguing against tax cuts, but the positions could easily be reversed. Similarly factional allegiances, while they are important in lining up numbers, now have little or nothing to do with policy. The Socialist Left faction, for example, might as well be called the Impressionist Blue faction as far as the significance of the name is concerned.
My view therefore, is that Labor needs someone competent, without substantial negatives, rather than a savior.
I’d rule out Crean, Beazley, Latham and Swan both because they have been damaged by their participation in the leadership brawl and because of the pre-existing negatives (small target strategy for Swan and Beazley, general unpopularity and wasted chances for Crean and loose-cannon behavior by Latham, unimpressive performances by both Crean and Beazley as ministers in the last Labor government).
Rather surprisingly, once you look at it this way, there a quite a few acceptable candidates. The plausible candidates are Rudd, McMullen, Tanner, Gillard, Macklin and Faulkner. Most of these are, in my view, more competent than the average member of the current Cabinet, despite the capacity of extensive public service backup to make even weak ministers look good.
In practice, I’d go for Rudd, McMullen or Tanner. Macklin has unfortunately done very little to impress since becoming deputy leader, Gillard is too new, and Faulkner is in the Senate. Of the three remaining, Rudd is probably the best choice, especially since he has the strongest chance to neutralise the defence and foreign affairs issue or even (if the Iraq story continues to unravel) turn it into a winner for Labor. McMullen is capable, but doesn’t seem strong enough in attack, while Tanner is in the Left faction (this shouldn’t matter but it does).
To reiterate a point I made above, none of my preferred candidates comes across as an exciting performer on TV, but this doesn’t matter. Howard was, and remains, dull. The Labor State premiers (except Rann and Gallop, who haven’t been in long) are incredibly popular, but none of them (except maybe Beattie) were seen as major assets when they were in Opposition. Rudd in particular comes across as a pair of safe hands, with enough extra-Parliamentary experience to offset the fact that he’s never been a minister.
John Quiggin 
I think I agree with all of that, and should have mentioned the always sensible and astute Bob McMullen in my post. If we can’t have Faulkner, Rudd’s the best option … except for this lack of ‘common touch’ argument. Don’t know what to make of such things really, except that when I raise it in talking to my labouring mate who lives up the central coast, he just goes “Pixie!, ha, ha, ha” … which always unsettles me. If this line holds (and I don’t know if it does, let alone if it should), and McMullen (*hair theory*) and Tanner (*left theory*) are ruled out, I’m left with the Bomber (*communicator theory*) by default.
“… none of them (except maybe Beattie) were seen as major assets …”
Don’t you mean, “none of them (except maybe Beattie) was seen as a major asset”?
Fixed, thanks
The problem with Rudd is that he comes across as too clever by half. This is not a turn on for the average punter.
“Too clever by half”
I don’t think this is true in the most negative sense – that is, that he is seen as an artful dodger.
He’s not seen as having the common touch, but that did no harm to Menzies or Whitlam (at least before he became unpopular for other reasons) and hasn’t hurt Carr either. It was used against Fraser, but with only limited success. I don’t think the average punter is particularly concerned that the PM should be a good bloke.
Beazley annoys me – he’s like a pop-up ad. Geez, mate, accept defeat gracefully and go away!
Swan does nothing for me, and Latham lost me when he said Singo was his kind of mate.
Rudd has pretty good profile through his appearances on Sunrise and at least he’s been seen to take on the Libs on Iraq, compared to Mr Invisible. Rudd’s problem is that he comes across as a bit of a smartypants schoolboy. maybe he just needs a good stylist?
Tanner hasn’t had much profile though I did see a pretty candid interview he did recently with George Negus where he came across fairly well.
McMullen, Macklin and Faulker have next to no profile, which goes against them at the moment. I quite like Gillard, but she’s still a pretty unknown quantity.
Incidentally, while I agree Howard’s public speaking style is dull, I think his paternalistic manner comes across as comforting to voters.
Of course, none of the above is about policy. but i think people elect leaders on personality at least as much as policy.
IMO electors in the marginals will vote for a drovers dog when they feel the incumbents are on the nose or just plain stale. In order to take the jump into the unknown, they will ask themselves where has the Govt failed?
The Govt’s strengths are- historically low inflation, interest rates, unemployment and fiscal deficit with a strong economy that seems to defy the ROW. The GST has been a success, to the point where its detractors now have total amnesia on ‘roll-back’. With a record like that Costello is grinning like the proverbial Cheshire. Teflon John has ‘done our bit’ with the demise of Saddam’s regime in Iraq without a single body-bag. His tough stance on illegals has seen the end of the boats coming and the slow emptying of the detention centres. All he’s got to chase off now are fish poachers.
Where are the Govt’s weaknesses. Well from what I’ve been reading Richard Alston has hashed Communications. Personally my mobile, TV and internet are working just fine and anyway I hear Richard is retiring. Wilson ‘speeding tickets’ Tuckey is likewise off the scene. If Labor thinks spending more on education(particularly the tertiary sector)will thrill the electorate, then it needs a damn good lesson in demography. With demography in mind, the one sore point for the Govt is health and Abbott is about to put that to bed before the next election campaign, with a war chest of fiscal surplus. As long as the punters feel they won’t have to queue for hospitals and have enough medical professionals to look after them, the details won’t interest them. Howard’s reinvention and reinvigoration of his team, reminds me a lot of that old Essendon fox, Kevin Sheedy.
When you gather all this together you have to ask yourself why the average punter would even vote for John Curtin if he was opposition leader. Mind you JH knows a week is a long time in politics.
If the Socialist Left faction change their stupid name! (what an anachronism!), then I reckon Lindsay Tanner is the man!
IF Crean is that bad then why is the Government only neck and neck with the ALP no matter what poll given the margin of error.
John Howard is Prime Minister and is by no means a dud. He doesn’t have a great intellect, possess no vision, is no great orator and only understands the electoral winds sometimes.
Crean is very similar.
Anything but Beazley or Crean.
Rudd is one of those people who deliberately talks fast so that people don’t have time to contadict him. This makes him seem slippery.
The fact that Latham actually says what he thinks, is intoxicatingly refreshing. In fact he may not even think what he says, but at least he says things, i.e. produces concrete, meaningful, falsifiable statements. This is surely a unique propensity. I’m prepared to forgive almost everything else about him.
Stick with me my friends. I won’t let you down.
I disagree with one half of Pr Q’s formulation:
The ALP has to:
give voters a positive political reason to change their vote ie attractive policies
not give voters a negative personal reason to not-change their vote ie aversive leader
I think that the heart of the ALPs political problem is it’s politico-ideological sterility which stems from it’s professional-organisational moribundity.
TO make it more electable, the leadership need to kick factional heads in the interests of party solidarity.
In short: the ALP needs a purge of the dead wood in order to infuse fresh ideological blood.
The ALP have a reasonable suite of alternative leaders, but precious few of them appear to stand for a coherent, distictive and popular ideological platform.
Howard has a coherent ideology, with a somewhat machiavellian tactical implementation.
He has campaigned on real issues:
economic prosperity: fical consolidation/credit expansion through higher taxation eg GST
political security: military expansion through increased defence expenditure eg Timor
cultural identity: citizenship based on resolutely defined nationality eg border protection
One may disagree with him, but they at least these policies provide a recognisable & saleable bill of public goods.
The big problem for the ALP is that the Australina people do seem relaxed and comfortable with the prosperity of the housing boom, and to the extent that they are tense and nervous about the insecurity of terrorism, they will stay with Howard.
Why should they change their vote?
Crean has good policies, but is unelectable for personal reasons, he is the AL Gore of the ALP.
Rudd would certainly be acceptable, and might win, but he does not have a coherent politico-economic ideology or a committment to organisational reform.
Latham is a more attractive & aversive person than both Crean and Rudd.
The conventional wisdom is that Latham is a bit erratic. There is a grain of truth in this, but nobody is perfect. Whitlam faced the same charge, remember Whitlam’s Crash or Crash Through reforms of the ALP executive?
However Latham has built up a reasonably coherent set of ideological policies. He also has a vision of the ALP’s social base, wired workers etc.
And he has at least made a reasonable stand against organisational factionalism.
I conclude that Latham would be the best alternative leader of the ALP, so long as he could channel his considerable personal energy into professionally responsible directions. The best proof of that would be if he could break the factional grip on ministerial portfolio allocation.
My impression of Simon Crean is of a hardworking bloke with his head down (hence the radio silence) trying to achieve two very difficult results before the next election:
give the party machine the massive overhaul/reconfiguration it needs at the ‘nuts and bolts’ level; and
develop an appropriate contemporary policy package.
The electorate isn’t as dumb as commentators often believe beneath all their platitudes about how sensible it is. In 1998, its attempt to re-elect Howard yet scotch his ability to introduce the GST was most impressive. It would have worked, too, but for the failure of Meg Lees to realize that we intended to use the Constitutional role of the Senate as an ‘insurance policy’, just as we did in 1972 when electing the first Labor government in 23 years (Whitlam’s government of course).
So how about a bit of faith in the ability of the electorate to ignore Simon’s perhaps ignominious physiognomy and make its electoral judgements based on the quality of the policies Labor eventually come up with, however innocuous the media coverage may get and however low the polls go. I know it’s the Crean line, but I do suspect that, if we’ll just exercise a bit of patience, we’ll end up with a timely policy platform of character, substance and decent values. About time we got a leader with those qualities. If and when the electorate perceives them (which I readily admit may not happen), then shrill media clamour and popularity poll results tend to very quickly become yesterday’s news.
[Isn’t everybody yet immune to the shrill cries sent up by the media whenever things get a bit quiet for them? Remember, they have to make noise, even when there’s not much to talk about, because of the media organizations’ enormous investment in political reporting resources. The editors and reporters are all on big salaries, in return for which they have to fill the often-excessive space in the news bulletins for political copy, even when not much is happening. If there’s no news, it’s their job to make it; and one of the old, unimaginative standby stories is the complaint that there’s no political news: eg, “Simon Crean’s been too quiet, so he must be hiding from us intrepid reporters”. There’s precious little self-critical media commentary to keep this sort of behaviour in check (apart from Media Watch, ABC-TV, Monday evenings), so its up to us to do so ourselves.]