After the Australian Labor Party lost the 1949 federal election to the Coalition, Labor leader Ben Chifley told his party not to worry because the electorate would quickly recognise the terrible mistake it had made in choosing Robert Menzies as prime minister and the ALP would soon be back in power. The rest, as they say, is history. Twenty-three years and three opposition leaders later Labor finally did return to government.
The factional warfare in the Victorian ALP in recent months has been about the installation of new candidates in safely held Labor seats. The fact that no one is willing to fight over the marginals suggests that few are willing to make a Chifley-like prediction about a Beazley government in 2007.
The delusion experienced by defeated political parties is not uncommon. The creation of the idea that voters didn't really know what they were doing and that their choice must somehow have been corrupted by deception or misunderstanding is perhaps a natural reaction. It is a way of dealing with the trauma of an election defeat. But while such a belief might be comforting it is profoundly undemocratic. Even worse, it does nothing to prepare parties for opposition and for the rigours of making alternative policy.
After the 1996 election the ALP was delusional about the causes of their loss, and they've suffered for a decade. Worse, the party's friends didn't help it overcome its affliction. The academic Left continues to blame the stupidity of the masses for Labor's losses. Some even suggest that attempts to influence the electoral process should be abandoned and that power should be sought through the judicial system and the manipulation of non-government organisations.
Last week, in the midst of the celebrations of the Coalition's 10 years in power, many commentators pointed out that the anniversary also represented 10 years of Labor in the wilderness. Comparing what has occurred to ALP over the past decade with what happened to others in similar predicaments is instructive.
Before John Howard's election, the Coalition had been in opposition for 13 years. Before the election of Bob Hawke, Labor had been in opposition for seven years. When previously out of power, both the Coalition and Labor changed dramatically.
In 1983 the Coalition was desperately clinging to the last remnants of century-old economic prescriptions. The fight between the wets and the dries was bloody, and in electoral terms costly, but there was no alternative. Even though it was not in government, and even while battling itself, the Liberal Party succeeded in framing the terms of the intellectual debate during the 1980s and Labor had no alternative but to respond.
In 1975, when Labor was sacked, Gough Whitlam was leader and Bill Hayden was treasurer. When Labor returned to office, it was with Hawke and Paul Keating. The men of the 1960s and 1970s reared in the tradition of socialism and class hatred were replaced with people like Peter Walsh and John Dawkins.
Certainly a recession helped the ALP accommodate itself to economic reality. And it is also true that the transformation of the party towards financial responsibility quickened once it was in government, but the groundwork has been laid years before.
For all of its faults the Accord, first conceived while the ALP was in opposition, signalled a major shift in attitude by the party and union movement.
By contrast, what are the outcomes of Labor's policy development over the past 10 years? Unfortunately, the answer is not much.
After the 1996 election, instead of trying to keep the party and the factions united, Kim Beazley would have performed a greater service by encouraging diversity and dissent. The spectacle wouldn't have been pretty but it could not have been much worse than what transpired. Until recently one of the ALP's best thinkers, Lindsay Tanner, was not even in shadow cabinet, while Craig Emerson, one of the few Labor MPs who understands the need for tax reform, languishes on the back bench. Tearing up Work Choices, implementing Medicare Gold and punishing private schools are knee-jerk political tactics -- they're not policy.
One reason Labor has been reluctant to lift the lid on policy debate is that it has been afraid of what it would find. There's a chance that the party might realise it has become completely out of touch with the community. The biggest issue facing Labor is not its factions. It is its policies. Simon Crean's re-endorsement for Hotham this week is the least of Kim Beazley's problems.
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