As a Labor MP in the 2020s I often feel that if I need to look ahead someone nearby will turn my head 180 degrees to look four decades back. We are often urged to remember the past as we seek to sketch out a path to future electoral success. And we are reminded of the need to recall the legacy of the Hawke-Keating era.
There’s a rich vein of this supposedly free advice offered up by conservative politicians and their media backers. They keep telling us that we’re nowhere near as good as the Hawke-Keating generation and if we would only be more like them we’d do better, conveniently ignoring that Bob Hawke and Paul Keating were resisted by some of the same people and similar voices.
The Labor family rightly respects the achievements that endured from Hawke and Keating’s reform agenda. But the biggest impression I want to leave with readers of this chapter is this: the trajectory of the Hawke-Keating Government wasn’t defined by the guard rails laid down by their predecessors, or those laid by their opponents. They tore up those rails and refashioned them. We must think the same.
History is something to learn from, not to be handcuffed by. Applying learned lessons — without the strictures of a pre shaped mold — will be important along with lateral problem solving as we face up to varied challenges: responding to climate change, adjusting to accelerating technological change, a recast of fiscal policy, shifting relations among global neighbours, a reshaping of how our country trades and makes its wealth on the world stage.
Lessons learned
The prime recollection of the short-lived “Hawke Opposition” was the focus on a theme: “Bringing Australia Together”, recovery through consensus, dragging the nation out of a debilitating recession by getting capital and labour working as one, spearheaded from the outset by a prices and incomes accord. That was step one.
The steps that followed over a period of time included floating the Australian dollar, financial deregulation, major budgetary, tariff and industrial reform, privatisation along with social reform that saw a lift in the income of the lowest-income households, the introduction of Medicare, taxation reform that helped go some way to rein in — albeit not entirely — the growth in inequality.
When I think back to the Hawke-Keating years, I inevitably think about my own family’s experience. A single income family, Dad the sole breadwinner, a blue collar worker, making his wages from welding. I recall three things vividly.
First, I remember how tough that job was for him: how often Mum would have to patch Dad’s burn-pocked work uniform or how often Dad would come home sporting gauze over eyes injured by flash burn. Second, I remember how often he would be out of work and then back into a job as booms and busts messed with his employment. Finally, I remember how often he complained that “this Hawke Government was nothing like Whitlam’s”.
He wasn’t alone: ripping back layers of tariff protection along with a move to reform industrial relations disrupted the world of work. Workers would complain there was no way their wages would let their firms compete against low cost overseas competitors. And could this even be happening under the watch of a Labor Government, they’d ask. As much as we celebrate the record of economic growth, behind glory is a reality that dogs debates about change today: who benefits from change, who pays?
Trusting politics
Those reforms of the Hawke-Keating years were carried out when trust in government was significantly higher. Now we’re trying to convince the children of those blue collar workers that we have another series of reforms to undertake, from tackling climate change to technological change. And that they should trust us to get it right.
It might be boring, or perhaps uncomfortable, for a government to account for the performance of its announcements. But it means something in the longer term if you’re pushing reform. Vulnerable communities with fewer options relative to those living in the inner circle of our major CBDs can’t build serious futures off the empty promises in a media release.
The regular refrain we hear is ‘RE-TRAIN!’ because ‘jobs in the services sector are booming everywhere’. Will displaced workers have faith in government job programs getting them into work, employment providers with patchy success in getting them into jobs or conservative governments unwilling to clamp down on age discrimination that cruels opportunity for the older unemployed?
Why do we struggle to understand why our former supporters are attracted to fringe parties offering false promises to stop change? We need to not only face up to the frustrations and concerns felt by our supporters — we need to prove we listened.
Technology — it’s not an either or choice
Polarisation is an easy choice these days. Picking a side and fighting the other mercilessly — throwing whatever claim you can, regardless of mis-truth — that’s the zeitgeist. As much as I’m a fan of technology, it hasn’t helped. Gone are the days when we thought the internet would bring the world closer together, helping to build understanding by better access to facts.
Aside from tackling climate change, technological development will be a major issue for our nation. Not just because of its impact, but because we don’t take it seriously until we absolutely have to — by which point responding to and managing change is so much harder.
Australian firms invest in technology at a lower rate relative to overseas rivals. We are starved of skills, conservatives more comfortable in importing talent as opposed to investing in the long term prosperity of locals. Worse, when it comes to innovation their attention span lurches between enthusiasm and resignation. While other countries recognise the economic and strategic benefit of investing in the development of areas such as artificial intelligence — our government says it can just adopt someone else’s technology. Terrific: a Cronulla Sharks scarf draped over Menzies-like inertia.
Since humans fashioned their first wheel, they’ve continued to make tools that make life easier and work more efficient. There’s no way we can stop the march of this change. But we can think ahead and make sure people are looked after, and we can make sure the benefits don’t simply accrue to capital.
The problem in our nation at the moment is that the reward distribution from productivity gains are completely out of whack. Labour productivity is up 9.8 per cent since 2013 yet wages growth is mired in quicksand. The power of workers and their representatives to change this is hampered by wave after wave of conservative driven industrial relations reform and a timidity by our own side to even up the game.
How do we get business and labour coordinating effectively? While Labor can and should argue for Australian firms to grow into big, profitable businesses it’s only going to be our side that will care to — or can push for — a better share of that profit. It can either be achieved through active engagement with business or via serious reform of workplace law to improve the bargaining power of labour. Neither option is easy, both fraught with challenge.
Finally, belief in government
Conservatives have taken as an article of faith their need to sap confidence in the ability of governments or the public sector to effect meaningful change. We will need to rebuild and defend the institution and concept of government itself.
For decades Australia has privatised government business enterprises or outsourced public sector functions. Fiscal policy has driven this: to relentlessly steer towards near term surplus even if it’s detrimental to the broader health of the economy. Only now, as a pandemic threatened crushing long term economic damage, have we seen conservatives forced to drop their caricature of the demons of “debt and deficit”.
Importantly, how has the conservative approach to public service created a self-fulfilling prophecy about the capability of government? A key function of government — public servants providing advice and acting on it — has been steadily and surgically removed, transplanted by consultants and external labour hire. All of which has slowly run down something else that is vital: that residual quality valued by organisations, “corporate memory”.
This is not a precursor to the conservatives bogeyman of “big government and high taxes”. What I’m really championing is effective — not bigger — government. If governments are going to undertake the reforms Australia so desperately needs and have the capacity to genuinely follow through on the promise of a better and fairer future, we will need to fire up a belief in the role of our public service.
While talking about ‘delivery’ is hardly the stuff of political inspiration, it speaks to a value that does inspire: the character of a political movement and the ability to trust in it. Labor, after all, is not a debating society — it aims to be a party of government. Effective Government.
(ends)
This an excerpt from a contribution I made to the book The Write Stuff, edited by Misha Zelinsky and Nick Dryrenfurth. You can get your copy of The Write Stuff here
