A lot has already been said on the occasion of Kevin Rudd’s retirement from politics. Having already written a great deal about Rudd while he was active in politics, I’m not going to add to it. Rather, I’ll reflect on the achievements of the Labor governments of the past six years, which were substantial. They included
* The uniquely bold and successful management of the Global Financial Crisis
* The creation of the NBN
* The design and implementation of a price on carbon
* The National Disability Insurance Scheme
* Plain packaging for cigarettes
among many others. How much of this will survive what, I hope will be one term of LNP government remains to be seen, but Labor can campaign for years on defending and extending this record.
Against that, there were some failures. Most obviously, the government failed to come up with a workable solution to the problem of asylum seekers, and eventually capitulated to the xenophobic rhetoric of Abbott and Morrison (though with the important qualification that Labor greatly increased the total refugee intake, while Abbott has cut it). In addition, despite Rudd’s recognition that the GFC marked the breakdown of the post-Bretton Woods capitalist order, he(and even more, Wayne Swan) rapidly came to treat it as a momentary aberration, and to return to the policy orthodoxy that created the crisis in the first place.
The biggest failures, though, were personal, not political. Rudd’s abrasive egotism was matched by Gillard’s unprincipled tribalism (for her, Labor was an extended family, not a political movement) to produce a series of catastrophes that eventually destroyed the government. If they had managed to work together, as they did with reasonable success for the first two years of the government, they could have been a better team than Howard-Costello or Hawke-Keating. But it seems to be the nature of Australian politics taht such partnerships never worked for long.
John Quiggin 
I would put extending the “Intervention” on the negative side of the ledger.
Rudd’s dropping of the carbon price under pressure from Gillard was not a good look. Gillard’s subsequent reinstatement of the price under pressure from the Greens and the independents was necessary. But an indication that she had been pressured into the decision was her inability to sell the policy. They went for brightsiding a “clean energy future” rather than aggressively point out its role in dealing with climate change. This allowed Abbott to seize the narrative and turn clean energy into expensive energy. Sums up that government. Some good policy with a lot of crap politics.
To be fair and non-sexist, Rudd and Gillard both had their good points. However, they politically failed both individually and as a team. Labor’s overall dysfunctional culture played a big role in this. It pre-existed Rudd-Gillard and probably continues now. That is the real problem. Labor has forgotten they should be the party of the workers and this includes middle class workers. Labor need to cease being pseudo-neoliberals.
Handy summary. Thanks.
I would suggest that the ‘series of catastrophes that eventually destroyed the government’ is almost entirely as a result of the whiteanting of Rudd and his special little team after his removal during the first term. A removal that was ugly and destructive, but seemed in retrospect to be the only way of solving Rudd’s chronic inability to implement.
JG appeared to me to be smart, hard working and principled, even if I didn’t agree with all of her policy directions, and I think has been given far too little credit on this blog for her efforts in delivering in a minority government (an impediment largely created by Rudd’s ‘abrasive egotism’ and leaking during the election campaign).
There was a recent discussions of ‘strong priors’ on this blog. I think Prof Quiggin needs to re-examine his own attitudes to JG.
I welcomed the change to Rudd in 07. However, it didn’t take long for that feeling to disappear. I don’t agree with the handling of the gfc, although it was certainly bold. Too much for too long. The NBN was a great idea that was implemented terribly, hence the current mess. Ineffective handling of the carbon tax killed them and potentially put us back a few years. The NDIS is an achievement they should be proud of as with the plain packaging. After 6 years of dysfunctional infighting and politics they did not deserve a 3rd term. Now it is up to Abbot to leave a legacy, which way that goes is still undecided (although pretty much a foregone conclusion around here!)
Rudds major GRC stimulus was infrastructure which is probably at the end of its cycle so it’s no surprise that Tony Abbott needs to extend the deficit to be “the” infrastructure prime minister.
GFC
The coup against Rudd was stupid. As Latham etc.. love telling everyone: those who knew him hated him and those who didn’t thought he was OK.
About the only real aspect of our democracy is that every few years we get to sack or re-employ our PM and taking that decision away from us was what poisoned the ALP’s well.
Apart from all the “carbon tax lie” propaganda, shafting Wilkie and the Greens is something I think played a big part in the dislike of Gillard. Windsor and Oakeshott were wily enough to do well for their electorates out of the hung parliament but it should be noted that (I don’t have exact numbers) most legislation passed under Gillard did so with the LNP vote in the Senate.
@Megan Gillard went to the polls quickly to capitalise on the bouce labor received from getting rid of Rudd 1.0
That is such a splendid summary. I can add nothing but an expression of admiration.
Rudd lacked two key qualifications for the top job – the ability to administer, and two o’clock in the morning courage. Shame, because he is pretty bright and seems to have his heart in the right place. But these two lacks made him a very poor PM, because he could not get what he wanted quickly and cleanly, and because he would not stick to his guns under attack.
Nice summary JQ.
Both Rudd and Gillard could have done much more to acknowledge the increasing insecurity that people feel at work with the continuing moves to contract, casual and part-time work – change the debate away from the incessant rabbiting from the Right about “productivity”. And of course the decision to reduce the income of single parents was just shameful.
Giving Darwin to the US Military probably wasn’t one of the ALP’s brightest moves either.
I would add the MDBP to that list.
-het
And of course, handing Australia to Abbott on a no-strings-attached neo-con platter wasn’t much of a legacy.
Sucking up to Murdoch also tells against them.
Calling Assange a “criminal” wasn’t too bright.
Going silent on CSG was perhaps not their finest moment.
Retaining the worst aspects of the ABCC while pretending to do the opposite really didn’t work.
My favourite will always be Arch Bevis endorsing the use of torture “in certain circumstances”.
Are any of these achievements something a turnbull led government would not do? Where is the point of difference? The labor values?
It won’t last.
Good performance by a government is largely irrelevant to reelection chances. Voters are pretty boneheaded. They vote for fear,greed and envy. Fear that they won’t get a pony, greed that they don’t have enough ponies and envy that someone they don’t know is getting one.
Good government think they can be clever with pony distribution and bad governments simply give all the ponies away. Either way out you go.
“Where’s my pony?!”
I’ve said way too much on Rudd-Gillard and won’t add to it here. I will simply note that the negative side of the ledger included:
a) surplus fetishism and the need to be seen as a fiscal conservative
b) following the Costello middle-class tax cuts
c) not pressing hard on a Garnaut-style scheme for pricing carbon when the LNP was onWith the exception of g)the ropes
d) apologising for HIP/BER
e) asylum seekers obviously
f) their opposition to unions concetised in their refusal to abolish the ABCC
g) their refusal to appoint people on merit in an effort to appear bipartisan
h) Rudd’s disingenuous push for RSPT
With the exception of g) and h) all of these were joint efforts by both, but the one that probably hurt them the worst was a). They ought to have rejected this at the outset. So too was e) as this was an emblem of the Howard era that had momentarily become discredited. Yet they rehabilitated it and asked to be judged by it, when they should have known that short of barbaric conduct, they would fail and that even if they succeeded, few inclined to vote for them would do so on this basis.
Agree with all that PrQ with the sole exception of your point about boat arrivals. A harsh program of deterrence complete with xenophobic rhetoric is the best possible response to a wicked problem. Of course the harshness should be made more palatable by
– a decent refugee intake (Labor did this as you note)
– vigorous attempts and maybe a cash splash to make sure the home countries take back the boat arrivals and do not persecute them
– work, education etc in the detention centres so that the inmates have something to do.
I’d like to see you recommend a program for the next Labor Government at some stage.
I would add paid parental leave to Labor’s list of major achievements. Even though the scheme is miserly it can be built on. This leaves America as the only country without such a scheme.
oops- This leaves America as the only western country without such a scheme.
I agree with Kym’s last point.
Rudd is almost singlehandedly responsible for the demise of the Labor government, although he had help from Swan.
The game was lost when he went to water on the insulation and school infrastructure schemes. There was a good story to tell, but the only one he entertained was the Murdoch/LNP narrative. He then set about confirming the Murdoch/LNP narrative about Gillard with a campaign of undermining that would have put Iago to shame.
The Rudd casualty list among the Labor best and brightest says all you need to know about what he was like. I have worked with and met the man. Listening to Roxon unload recently about his behaviour as PM was deja vu. His charm – and he could be very charming – was of the sort learnt in books and not some natural feature of his personality. I really don’t know if his ideological leanings are genuine or a means to the end of power. Like Howard, the sum total of Rudd’s vision for Australia was of a country with himself as PM.
If Rudd had never existed, Labor would still have won the ’07 election. The difference is, they’d likely still be in office.
On Labor’s achievements, I’d put in a plug for Infrastructure Australia as for the first time a mechanism for rationally assessing infrastructure priorities rather than the traditional LNP pork barrel. It almost certainly won’t last – never stand between a Country Party or state politician and a bucket of money!
Rudd and the ALP meltdown</a
@Fran Barlow
The link doesn’t work, Fran.
try this:
Rudd and the ALP Meltdown
Hmmm
the mouseover shows the correct argument for the URL but it doesn’t parse …
try this:
http://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2013/meltdown/chapter_1.html
@Hal9000
There’s plenty of blame to be sheeted home, and plenty and quite a lot to Kevin specifically but statements such as “Rudd is almost singlehandedly responsible for the demise of the Labor government, although he had help from Swan”, with JG presumably exonerated in your view, are completely indefensible given the facts on record about the conduct of both leaders.
As there is no ‘Weekend Reflections’, I’ll put this here:
nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/the-impossible-refugee-boat-lift-to-christmas-island.html?smid=tw-share
(I won’t risk eternal mod, just put the http and www stuff infront of it and stick it in the address bar or search for it)
Every Australian should read this and ponder at the woeful state of what passes for journalism in this backward neo-con country. We are an international embarrassment.
Somewhere between Programmatic Specificity and Fair Shake of the Sauce Bottle lies the real Kevin – the Kevin who even though he had 60% support, according to the opinion polls, did not have the intestinal fortitude to call a double dissolution and introduce an emissions trading scheme/carbon tax that would actually do the job needed. Not smart or bold enough to be Whitlamesque and even more boring than John Howard.
Megan, a very interesting example of authentic investigative journalism. The spotlight has been focused on the “people smugglers” rather than the humanity, stories and motives of the asylum seekers and refugees. As always, with this political orchestration of information and scapegoating, overt violence follows, as in recent reports.
Personalities play a role in the failure to address the “problem” of refugees and asylum seekers, and the policies and expense directed to denying them human rights. Other aspects including institutional and organizational dysfunction of the political parties, perhaps reflecting underlying economic changes. Primitive xenophobia is hard to credit, and apparently equally applies to Climate Change policy. The problem may be explained (provisionally) by “psychographic wedge politics”, the great contribution of social science and marketing to modern politics in which the parameters for membership in different groups is not set, for example, by social class but by cognitive styles. Some voters in marginal seats, while not representative of the population at large, exercise a disproportional influence on electoral outcomes and as a consequence public policy.
@Fran Barlow Seems to be a reasonable rendition but without policy achievements as per JQ synopsis. In comparison the Howard/Costello years are remembered for what – scandals over numerous human right issues, simmering leadership tensions, the GST and simpler Super?
@wmmbb That account of the politics of refugees makes me ashamed of Australia.
The workable solution to the problem of asylum seekers depends on what the problem is.
People drowning in a leaky boat is solved by not accepting applications for asylum from them. The aim would be none come by such as dangerous route.
The size of the refugee quota is an unrelated issue to illegal boat arrivals.
treaty obligations are irrelevant because they unintentionally encourage dangerous behaviour.
@Nathan
I don’t exonerate Gillard. I just say she’d probably still have won if it weren’t for the white-anting from Rudd fuelling the ‘chaos’ narrative. She made some dreadful, unforgivable, policy blunders to the extent it was difficult for me at least to give Labor a vote. I just don’t think her blunders were what cost Labor government. Swan’s peddling of deficit fetishism and the crazy, needless surplus promises and predictions however are right up there with Rudd’s performance in damaging Labor’s chances.
Watching the Keating interviews with Kerry O’Brien reminded me of what Keating had and Rudd/Gillard/Swan lacked, namely the ability to reduce complex policy issues to a single, cogent, argument. I doubt whether Shorten has it either.
It is important to note that two of these policies have been an abject faliure. Plain packaging has not caused a decrease in smoking; smoking levels appear to have increased (negating potential health benefits), and the black market has risen in response to the associated pricing changes (taking away tax benefits from the measures).source The carbon tax failed to generate projected revenues and arguably harmed our major growth industry, making claims of Australia avoiding the GFC perhaps premature.
From your link BM:
“University of Sydney Public Health Professor Simon Chapman says … there has been a decrease of between two and three per cent in overall consumption of cigarettes since the introduction of plain packs.”
Hmmmm … who should we believe BM … one of BAT’s corporate shills … or an actual health professional? Tough call. Not.
BM, assuming that you are correct, and plain packaging has led to an increase in smoking, are tobacco companies in other countries following this successful strategy to boost sales?
Or are you blowing smoke out of the wrong orifice?
I love the internet!
Others, above, are on to BM – but here’s my 2c worth, from the incredibly creditable source linked to:
Unfortunately, since a Christian fundamentalist took over control of Rupert’s ABC, they no longer have any automatic credibility.
@Hal9000
I strongly agree with most of what you wrote here, certainly Swans inexplicable decision to adopt a Costelloesque deficit fetish should rate a mention in halls of shame. But I don’t agree it’s particularly likely Gillard would have won, regardless of what Rudd did. I accept as a virtual certainty that Rudd *was* constantly white-anting the Gillard government, I just think there were more than enough self inflicted wounds to do them in anyway, along with the help of the absurdly biased Murdoch press.
@John Brookes
Those tobacco spivs are shameless in their circulation of cant. As you say though, it would be in their interest to support plain packaging if it was creating new long term addicts.
On the deficit issue, yes it certainly showed how bad Swan is at politics (has he never even heard of the term “managing expectations”?). As economic policy, its not so bad – there are powerful arguments why we should be trying to get our deficit down at the moment, ones which do NOT rely on “we’ll end up like Greece” type debt hysteria.
I’ve never understood why people are so IDEOLOGICAL on both left and right about deficits. How much the government spends and what it should be spent on should be an entirely separate question from how much of that spending should be funded by us and how much by our children.
yes it’s all the Labor/Greens/Independents’ fault that Australia came throught the most scary financial debacle since the great depression.
from this point of view(moi),responding to the implacably hostile commercial (mis)information industry was a lose/lose proposition.
it just meant no body knew what was happening because the of noise.
how i longed for a daily (or so) rundown sans commentary, dept by dept of what,why, when,where,who and where applicable,how much.
then just let the commerces do what they do.
with a commerce free source of information, i could check fact from the breathless doomsters for myself.
at least then if i stuff up it’s my own doing and not a result of being herded into an opinion i wouldn’t have held if i knew the real situation.
on a scott free ABC?
my word though,the commerces do loathe and want public funded broadcasting dead and buried don’t they?
but the ABC is a sad shadow of it’s potential under it’s charter.
after all,the huge attention being paid to the possibility that our sovereign government can be hauled to court and the people be liable for costs and penalties paid to commercial interests for getting in their way,currently under negotiation in the latest FTT round is front and centre.
ain’t it.
their “cry of not fair,the pinko/lefty anti competitive anti free market is standing in our way to service all the non profitable areas”is heartrending.
@derrida derider
As far as I can see, the mainstream ‘left’ position (deficits in downturns but a balanced budget over the economic cycle) is the definition of evidence based rather than ideological policy. Furthermore, I’ve yet to see empirical evidence supports the idea that governments can’t in fact run budget deficits on much larger timescales than that without severe consequences.
test Ideolog
test para 3 in response to DD:
I agree but let’s unpick that, taking acount of the context here that frames your argument. We currently have two centre-right populist parties contesting the political field. Fiscal policy seem to most people a quite opaque thing but one can dumb it down to simple (but grossly misleading) analogies with household balance sheets “worked out over the kitchen table” and the sense of control over their lives that people feel when they see their bank account swelling, and the worry they have when they owe money on major assets like a car or a house.
test para 4 first quarter
Both parties want to seem authentic and “speak common sense” and the “common sense” of the people is to be found in mythologies about virtue and ancient aphorisms like “neither a borrower nor a lender be
test next clause
and the authenticity of the man who “brings home the bacon” and denies himself gratification so as to provide for his family.
and denies himself gratification so as to provide for his family. Being frugal and staying away from the “money lenders”