New Blood, Old Battles For Labor

The Sunday Age

Sunday February 5, 2006

MICHELLE GRATTAN

Bill Shorten would strengthen Labor's firepower. But party renewal could be messy for Beazley.

HIGH-PROFILE union leader Bill Shorten, who announced on Friday that he would challenge federal frontbencher Bob Sercombe for preselection, enjoys excellent PR.

Shorten is talented and personable. Whether he is, however - as is often claimed - Labor's future messiah with a mark on the job of prime minister, is something else. It's not immediately apparent that he is another Bob Hawke, whose charisma was obvious many years before he set foot in Parliament.

Shorten, overwhelming favourite to win the ballot, will be an excellent addition to the caucus after the election and should go immediately onto the front bench. The rigours of political life will test how high he can climb after that.

To have people like Shorten as candidates must strengthen Labor's firepower at next year's election, and shows the party is serious about getting some renewal. But generational change is coming at a price. Factional infighting over preselections in Victoria is poisonous, as incumbents - including former leader Simon Crean - dig in to try to defend themselves.

With several frontbenchers under threat - another is agriculture spokesman Gavan O'Connor - Opposition Leader Kim Beazley could have a messy situation after the Victorian preselections in March. Losers should not stay on his front bench. There is no sense in them working up policies they would never be able to implement. They should be prevailed on to step down to the back bench - which might leave them even unhappier but could give the chance for more finetuning of the shadow ministry.

This middle year of the electoral term is a difficult one for Beazley. If he does badly, his chance of regaining momentum in 2007 will much diminished.

Last year, with much help from the Government's tough industrial relations measures and an effective union campaign, Labor got a surge of energy and support. But the first polls of this year show the Coalition back in the ascendancy. While Labor writes the polls off as a product of the summer snooze, there is a question mark over whether Labor can crank up IR again. Partly, this depends on the economy. If the labour market continues strong, most workers might not notice little change for quite a while.

Beazley has promised to release his IR blueprint soon, but indicated last week that it would not be a fully-fledged version, given uncertainties like the High Court challenges. It will be vital for Beazley that whatever he does produce looks credible. If he doesn't have enough detail, he will be criticised. He says a Labor government would tear up the legislation, but to try to wind things back too far would just land him in a stoush with business.

Also tricky on the policy front will be how he responds to whatever the Government does on taxation in the budget. Last year's monumental blunder in declaring it would oppose the tax cuts is still a painful memory for Labor, although Beazley last week was still "owning" it as his decision and defending it. The ALP's attitude this year - when it no longer has Senate muscle - is academic but presumably Labor has learned its lesson. Even the rhetoric of opposing gives Treasurer Peter Costello ammunition that can shoot Labor into pieces.

The question for Beazley is when and in what detail he starts to outline the bones of Labor's tax policy, and what room is left after the Government spends a lot of forward revenue.

Meanwhile, Beazley is dribbling out policies, trying to get new angles in traditional areas of strength such as education and health. Last week started with a promise to remove TAFE fees for traditional apprentices and ended with promises for health screening of newborn babies and action to combat childhood obesity. The problem is cutting through with them. They are getting drowned out by other political noise, although they can be niche marketed to those to whom they are likely to appeal.

With Parliament resuming on Tuesday, we will see the first Beazley-Howard head-to-head for the year. Labor could not have asked for a more propitious start to the contest.

The AWB scandal provides endless material for questions. The ALP is well prepared - foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd has had his staff member sitting in on the inquiry. Material will continue to come out of the commission in Sydney. That means the Government never knows what bit of paper is going to turn up, or what fresh revelations will come from witnesses. But nothing has emerged suggesting that ministers knew of the bribery, which is what Labor would need for a king-hit.

The Coalition that comes back to Parliament is rather changed, and the full implications of this are yet to be seen. It's intact, but less in tune. Most obviously, the Nationals have lost Julian McGauran to the Liberal Party, which formally admitted him on Friday. As a result, they are down a minister. At a deeper level, there is suspicion and bad blood between some Nationals and Liberals, and a general mood in the Nats that they need to be more assertive.

Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile knows he has to pick up on the feeling in his party. Even before the McGauran departure he was being pushed by the party's state organisations to go further in promoting the party's identity.

Last week he was out articulating a distinctive Nationals line on tax. The Nationals will be announcing their tax policy "in the coming weeks", he said, which will put them squarely as a separate player in the tax debate running up to the federal budget.

So potentially we have the Deputy Prime Minister articulating publicly a "Nationals" policy while he and other senior ministers are discussing a "Coalition" budget policy.

Vaile's quick statement defending the "single desk" system of selling wheat, after Costello suggested AWB's monopoly should be broken, was another indication that Vaile and the Nationals are going to strike back rapidly when issues affecting them come up.

The single desk has been a core cause for the Nationals and the sentiments of NSW Nationals senator Fiona Nash indicate that even quite limited reforms that needed legislation would face problems in the Senate, where the Nationals have their muscle.

Nash disagrees with Costello about the desirability of replacing AWB's monopoly with multiple licences and says: "While the majority of farmers tell me they want to keep the single desk, I will fight tooth and nail to keep it." Whether AWB should run it, she says, is a matter for after the Cole inquiry reports.

The Nationals have a full party meeting tomorrow that will discuss the aftermath of the McGauran defection. It is clear the ramifications potentially could be wide. These include, for starters, the heightened tension between Liberals and Nationals in the approach to the state election, the future of the joint senate ticket arrangements in Victoria, and the invidious position of cabinet minister Peter McGauran, who is very close to his brother.

Amid all his problems, Vaile has had some relief on one front: the Queensland Nationals decided on Friday to defer the Senate preselection - which had been coming by mid-year - until after the state election. Depending on when that poll is called, the preselection fight in which Nationals Senate leader Ron Boswell is under serious challenge will now be in the second half of this year or the first half of next. It doesn't remove the issue but at least puts it off, which is a bonus in these difficult times for the Nationals.

At a personal level, managing the McGauran defection will make for some awkwardness when Coalition MPs return to Canberra this week. It will be a delicate moment in the joint parties' meeting on Tuesday when McGauran takes his seat among the Liberals. "It will be a historic day," says Victorian Liberal Sophie Panopoulos. "Interesting to live through it and be part of it. " The Nats just want to get through it.

JUST for something different, the first week of the new parliamentary year will see much attention on an issue that cuts across parties and partisanship.

On Thursday the Senate is due to vote on a private member's bill, sponsored by women from the Democrats, Nationals, Liberals and Labor to remove ministerial discretion over the abortion drug RU486.

This is a free vote but the Government is anxious to have the issue, which is divisive within its own ranks, over as soon as possible.

There have been efforts by those against the bill to have the Senate inquiry, which reports on Wednesday, extended to take more evidence.

The chairman of the committee, Gary Humphries, said he needed to run this past the Government and the word came back that an extension did not fit in with the Government's program.

The bill's supporters believe they have the Senate numbers to carry the bill there. That will make for a fascinating lobbying battle before the bill goes to the House of Representatives, where the numbers are said to be tighter.

© 2006 The Sunday Age

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