AFTER the March 1993 election defeat the Liberal Party made a strategic error: it wrongly interpreted that defeat as a rejection of giving priority to economic reform. It was abetted in this by some who refused to acknowledge that, but for the ill-advised proposal for a new tax (the GST), the coalition would have won.
John Hewson was re-elected as leader with a commission to develop a more compassionate and more caring face. There was nothing wrong with that. But it was not a substitute for policies.
The coalition now has an opportunity to correct this error and to avoid the adoption of positions that all too often evaded the issue.
For example, while correctly attacking the Government for inadequate progress in reducing the deficit and for increasing the overall burden of taxation, the coalition has given very little indication of what it would do to reduce both. Yet Commonwealth spending for its own purposes is running almost out of control.
Such evasions not only left an increasing policy vacuum which allowed the Keating Government to even reverse economic reforms with comparative impunity. They also reinforced the feeling in a community already deeply distrustful of politicians that the coalition would be unlikely to perform any better than the Labor Government.
The coalition must surely now set about more clearly differentiating itself from Labor. Far from moving to the "middle ground", as some argued, it has been seduced left field as the Prime Minister, Mr Keating, himself moved Labor closer to the left boundary.
Reforming the party structure or emphasising social policies to help the genuinely disadvantaged are not the the solution. The overriding requirement is for the coalition to operate on the basis that it is opposed by a bunch of tough professionals. To win it will not be sufficient to be "practical and commonsense" amateurs.
There should be no question of differentiation for the sake of it.
There is a real opportunity -- and a need -- to offer substantively different policy approaches. To do this successfully, however, the coalition must first get across that there is no contradiction between economic reform and being compassionate. Indeed, as the lowering of unemployment and the raising of average living standards are dependent on wide-ranging economic reforms, it is absurd for Mr Keating to portray reforms as "mean-spirited". He should not be allowed to get away with that. The electorate will support change if backed by a convincing brief.
The coalition should also identify those areas where the Government is vulnerable and then go in hard. Paul Keating's rather pathetic caricature of the Melbourne Club determining the election of Alexander Downer, for example, exposes his own vulnerability to the (accurate) charge that Labor is beholden to the trade union movement. The greatest single obstacle to economic reform in Australia is that movement's stonewalling to protect the restrictive practices of its members: yet Mr Keating's Government can do little about it. Even the dwindling trade union members are starting to realise that their leaders' actions do not in the end save jobs.
Mr Keating's own attempt to make some progress on industrial relations reform after the election was firmly rejected by the unions and he was forced to step backwards to the recently passed Industrial Relations Reform (sic) Act. That act, running to more than 200 pages of detailed regulated and inhibition of reform, is one important manifestation of the damaging effect of union power in holding up unemployment.
Union power is also the principal reason why both Commonwealth and state governments are making heavy weather of the privatisation of public enterprises; and it is preventing much needed reforms in the delivery of education, health and general public services.
The trade union movement's influence over federal Labor provides one basis for the coalition to differentiate itself -- and in a way that would attract support. This should not involve "union bashing".
Rather, there should be a continual parading of those areas where the Government is unable to implement reform because of its close union associations.
There are many other opportunities for the coalition to differentiate itself in a substantive way.
The dangerous increase in the centralisation of power in Canbera and the ceding of power to international bodies are obvious candidates. So too are the pursuit of social policies that extend the social welfare safety net beyond the genuinely disadvantaged at a time when overseas countries are identifying that as a major problem; the charade of a policy that purports to lead Australia into Asia -- but after business has already done it; the incredibility of a macro-economic policy which is justified on the argument that we did it in the 1983-89 period -- a rationalisation which conveniently "forgets" the high foreign debt, recession and increased unemployment that also eventuated; and so on.
It is difficult to understand how Paul Keating has managed to build up an image of invincibility when there are so many holes in his armor.
The coalition now has the opportunity to penetrate those holes and to put Australia back on the right track.
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