from Crikey .....

Labor: still bearing the scars of the Howard years, needs defeat

Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

BERNARD KEANE ON THE FEDERAL ELECTION 2010, FEDERAL ELECTION 2010, JULIA GILLARD, KEVIN RUDD

This is not much short of a total disaster for Federal Labor, which less than a year ago was contemplating a 100-seat representation in the House of Representatives. Rarely has a party so comprehensively and swiftly obliterated a huge electoral advantage. The switch to Julia Gillard has failed to secure victory, and there's a real chance Labor will, as Daryl Melham predicted to Bob Hawke months ago, have burnt through two leaders in a short space of time.

There is much blame to go around, and go around it will. The powerbrokers who replaced Rudd with Gillard must now face the consequences of their actions; the best that Mark Arbib, Karl Bitar, Bill Shorten, Don Farrell and David Feeney - and extra-parliamentary figures like Paul Howes - can say is that they didn't lose outright, which they believed they were sure to under Kevin Rudd. But the thoroughly inept conduct of the Labor campaign suggests that if Rudd was the problem, he wasn't the whole story, not by a long stretch. Labor kicked off the campaign with a 10-point lead, according to some polls.

Gillard's own performance, noticeably lacking in the "cut-through" which has hitherto been the most significant characteristic of her political persona, must bear some responsibility. The perception -- partly fed by her confected "real Julia" break-out, and partly by her own demeanour -- is that she allowed her campaign managers to impose on her a formulaic presidential campaign style that cut her off from voters.

If true, this played directly against Gillard's strength, which is direct engagement with voters and a feisty political persona that had proven extraordinarily popular with voters until her elevation.

And Kevin Rudd, who spurned the opportunity to inflict a double dissolution election on the Coalition on climate change in favour of, ultimately, refusing to face the great moral challenge of our time, must carry the can for a disastrous inability to work out how to respond to Tony Abbott's relentless negativity.

But this loss - and it can surely be described in no other way - is also a last victory from beyond the political grave for John Howard. Howard so damaged Labor during his years in power, inflicted such psychological damage on Labor, that they have given the impression for most of the last three years of having a sort of collegial Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, characterized by nervousness, a tendency to jump at their own shadow, and second-guess how their opponents could outsmart them.

Labor never outgrew the mindset of opposition, never realized what was needed to lead the nation, because it remained - and remains - deeply scarred by its experience during the Howard years. Labor is a timid, lackluster version of the party of old, and even if it had been returned to power - as it might yet be by the Independents - it appears too timid to be able to exercise genuine leadership, preoccupied as it is with how its opponents might exploit it.

The best long-term result for Labor would be defeat. If it clings to power, the purge of apparatchiks and inept political operators that is necessary for a competent, purposeful political entity to re-emerge will not take place. The same outfit that lost this election will go to the next, and there is no reason that voters will like it any more than they did yesterday.

It's not certain that defeat will result in such a purge either - the main perpetrators are safe in their Senate eyrie. But it will drive home to the Labor Caucus just how badly they have been led.

I totally disagree with what Keane says... A country driven by Abbott's team would become a sad rag of selfish attitude. Imagine Julie Bishop as a representative of this country, staring at the diplomatic gnomes of other countries.

A country taken on by a stung Labor would have to be lean and more caring... Not perfect though, but we cannot waste another three years — or more — on the rabid policies of the right. Remembering Rattus... and contemplating his heir, Tony...

I would entice Malcolm-the-debonaire, once deposed by Tony-the-anti-anything-good, to join the Labor team and get a reconstructed ETS or another carbon reduction means through parliament. Malcolm hates the back benches in opposition... The Labor Party has shown it can manage the economy in times of crisis better than the Libs would have done...

I can assure you that the Libs would have paid off the banks and the rich, given nothing to the people and we would have had an unemployment figure in the nine point something, like in the USA... The unemployed would be flogged, the workers would have been flogged under an "improved" "workchoices", while the rich bastards would be smoking cigars...

Been there done that.

There are more good people in the front Labor camp than there is in the Libs. In both camps, there are vengeful, gnarling sarcastic characters, and none of them are perfect. No-one can never be perfect in politics or in any other artistic discipline. For once I would agree with Graham Richardson when he said that Labor would have been annihilated at the next election, with Rudd at the helm (that election would only have been six months down the track). For many reasons that many people will never fathom, Rudd had to go. The way it was done was damaging but was the only way, unless he had "abdicated" for whatever reason. Rudd is not a bad man but he was loosing the plot by doing too much.
Compromises will have to be achieved but some key policies can be adapted, thus adopted. The national broadband for one has to continue. This election will bring a lot of sobriety in the political landscape should the people cleverly analyse the resultant dynamics seriously. The rabid shock jock who cannot stop crapping on everybody who yearn for a social conscience shall be shut up. The dung beetles who grubbily comment on politics shall go back to their burrows for a political winter...

Long life to the republic.

While I respect Bernard Keanes' opinions, I am afraid that in his post, he has only done the Murdoch/ABC alliance proud in further blurring the real facts which caused this bastardized election.

In simplistic terms, it is correct that some people say that Labor could not get their messages through. But Why? Did Labor speak in strange languages? Or were the cameras so attracted to Abbott that they moved his way under their own initiative? Prior to the Abbott much vaunted "purge" Julia Gillard was marking up more meetings and talking to more people before Abbott even thought about it.  She challenged him repeatedly to debate her on the economy but – he refused – why?

Julia Gillard also took questions throughout her campaign while Abbott squibbed it by making questionless statements and then - handing over the microphone to some side kick to answer questions which he obviously was unable to do.  No one criticized his cowardly tactics and - Yet he got his message through?  How?

Given that the plans by the Rudd government to protect and create employment was a massive success; the Murdochracy and the Elbrechsten ABC concentrated on the problems with solar paneling (some caused during the Howard regime), the Schools revolution and the shonks (way down the line of responsibility) falsely claiming their ability to lay down insulations, the financial intentions of employment were achieved in the only advanced western economy.

Approved by the IMF – the World Bank – and the EOCD and a moving recommendation from the most renowned economist in the entire world – Professor Stiglitz.

But, was this given even a reasonable cover by the Murdoch/ABC anti-labor alliance – not on your bloody Nellie.

However, everyday the loyal anti-Labor media would get up to watch their Tony can ride a bike! Then he can have a surf.  Then he can have a run. Then – he can - exercise.  As if those apparent “Tampon like” ads would bring him closer to the women he believes should not even be in politics.

In almost all major events between two adversaries, it only takes a small measure of a rogue weight to cause an imbalance – one way of the other.

Murdoch and the ABC achieved their objective to the point of making the absurd shattered Liberals a viable alternative to a massively successful Labor government.  And Rattus said that Tony did it on his own. Fair dinkum.

Australian Labor can still win yet and the Corporation’s will be forced to employ OUR people at reasonable wages without WorkChoices.  NE OUBLIE.

Well said, Ernest... We're too old to be conned by the Tonys of this world, I hope...

The former NSW premier Morris Iemma has publicly repudiated Labor's federal campaign director Karl Bitar, saying if he had a ''conscience'' he would hand his resignation to the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.

In a blistering attack on Labor's five-week campaign, Mr Iemma described it as ''the most inept in living memory'' salvaged only by the ''personability and ability of Gillard''.

''Labor booth workers and Labor supporters to a man and woman agree that it was the worst campaign they can recall ... It is not for Julia Gillard to ask for Karl Bitar's resignation, it's for him to have a conscience and offer it up,'' Mr Iemma said, publicly stating sentiments that a number of senior insiders have voiced privately.

Karl Bitar