The Labor Party's big challenge is to win back the battlers -- the many millions of working class people working hard to get ahead and live the good life.
And there is little doubt that Mark Latham is, amongst potential Labor leaders, best suited to the task. He grew up in a working class family and in a working class neighbourhood. He is hard working and aspirational. He is a family man who has experienced a troubled family life. He is pragmatic, intelligent and keen on experimentation. Importantly he has a mind and he speaks it.
Part of the problem for Mr Latham and the ALP, is that working class of today is very different to that of the past. Today's working class is wealthier, better educated and more empowered, than that of previous generation. Its members are also more likely to be self-employed than work in a unionised factory. Thus the Party can no longer rely on allegiances based on union membership, distrust of "the boss", the desire for wealth redistribution, ignorance or tradition. It needs to go out and win its support with values and policies.
Also -- and this does to the heart of the ALP's problems -- there is a growing divide between the values and priorities of the intellectual elites, who have come to dominate the ALP, and the working class. While the elites remain focused on such issues as reconciliation, refugees and the republic, the wider community remains focused on jobs, education and health.
Mr Latham has done well in refocusing the broad values and policy priorities.
His speech to the National Conference emphasised the need for hard work and for governments to focus on helping people help themselves. He emphasised the need for personal responsibility. He praised aspirational values and social mobility. He took credit on behalf of the Labor Party for the economic reforms of the past two decades as well as the robust economy they produced. He emphasised the importance of competition and productivity growth in producing jobs and investment.
His speech contained none of the "them vs us" and anti-globalisation rhetoric common in the past.
As for policy priorities, the speech emphasised education, health, families and taxes -- the priorities of the battlers.
The speech avoided comment on reconciliation (and reportedly a pledge to deliver a national apology to Aborigines was dropped). The speech dwelled only briefly on refugee policy. And while Mr Latham promised a republic, it is one based on model chosen by the public, including presumably a directly-elected president.
While he has done well with the broad brush, he is struggling with the details.
Mr Latham has quite adroitly focused on the high taxing policies of the Howard Government and on the need to give tax relief. As Opposition Treasury spokesman he argued for tax cuts even for the higher income groups. This is logically popular with today's working class -- most of whom are paying over 50 cents of each additional dollar earned in tax. His proposal, however, upset many in the Party, particularly the powerful public service unions, who see tax cuts as a threat to their members' income and as a threat to their ability to redistribute wealth and to mould society.
Rather than go with his initial across-the-board tax cuts -- which incidentally would greatly reduce the many poverty traps currently in the tax system -- he committed to smaller more limited and as yet unspecified tax cut. In so doing, he not only lost a chance to attract overtaxed battlers, but wealthier people sick of Howard and Costello's high taxing ways.
While Mr Latham correctly emphasised the need to focus on education, he lost the plot in the detail. Education is without question on of the most important links in improving social mobility. There is also little doubt that the existing system, particularly the public system has flaws. The fact is that thousands of working class families are leaving the public system, at great personal cost, for the private system. This move is not based on ideology or desire to join an old bays or girls club, but rather by a desire to get the best education for their kids. The shift is not driven by changes in funding. Over the last decade, all States have significantly increased funding to public schools with higher salaries, more teachers, more teacher aides and better facilities. Indeed the expenditure per pupil in the public secondary schools exceeds by a substantial margin the comparable level of expenditure in the Catholic system. While the Commonwealth Government has increased it support for private schools ( as well as for public schools), private schools fees have continued to rise.
Instead of recognising the need to address the reason for the loss of student to the public system, Mr Latham slipped in the old public vs private debate. While this might solidify votes from the public school teachers, it will alienate the many working-class families struggling to pay private school fees.
Mr Latham also succumbed to the elites on higher eduction by promising to reduce tuition fees. In short he agreed increase the tax transfer from medium income earners (who provide the bulk of tax revenue) to the future elite. Put another way, he agreed to tax truck driver to subsidies doctors. This is not only inequitable, but starves the universities of funds.
Mr Latham's most serious problems lie with the environment, or rather the pursuit of the urban green vote. Over the last few decade the ALP steady abandoned it support for resource extraction industries in deference to the whim of urban voters. This has been most pronounced in native forest industries. While in the past Mr Latham has been a vocal critic of this process, as the new leader he has embraced it. He has committed to the ratifying the Kyoto Agreement, which will cost many thousand of jobs and achieve little. He is considering reneging on the agreement (passed by State and Federal Labor Governments) to continue limited logging of old regrowth forest in Tasmania. He has committed to taking 20 per cent of irrigators' water entitlements in the Murray-Darling River Basin, potentially without compensation.
Mr Latham is the person to bring the Labor Party back to it roots and to recapture Howard's battlers. The question is: will the Party allow him to do so or will it instead become more firmly the party of the chardonnay set?
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