I’m agnostic as to whether Simon Crean should have stayed on the front-bench or not. What I do have strong views about is the way in which his front-bench position was saved. It illustrates many of the reasons why the electorate didn’t have the confidence to vote for Mark Latham and Labor. I deliberately twin the man and the organisation, because the underlying reasons not just for the 2004 loss, but the 2001 one as well, are corporate.
Electors like what they hear Labor saying, but they have no confidence in its ability to deliver. In 2001 the critical issue for a key group of voters was refugees. Beazley was making the right noises, but many of his backbench weren’t. Electors didn’t trust the party to stick to its policy if it was elected.
This last election the electorate’s lack of knowledge and experience of Mark Latham amplified these concerns. The issues may have been more economic, but the underlying concerns were the same. They were to do with the leader’s ability to enforce policy decisions and his team’s ability and willingness to back them.
Those themes of indecision, disunity, disloyalty, weakness and incompetence play again in the Crean decision. Crean was turned down for a front-bench position by his own faction, despite Latham’s clear wish to have him there – disunity, disloyalty, incompetence and plain bloody-mindedness. Then there was a proposal for the independents to give him one of their positions – indecision, weakness and incompetence. Finally the impasse was resolved by simply expanding the number of frontbench positions – yet more incompetence, weakness and incompetence.
Of all the possible solutions to the problem probably the worst was expanding the size of the cabinet. It is the “every child player wins a prize” model of political leadership which is unlikely to be appealing to electors worried about mortgage repayments. What would Latham do if faced by a tough economic decision? Go for the easy option so as not to upset anyone? Are interest rates susceptible to the easiest option?
I can just hear the government working up its lines for the first sitting week of the new parliament – “If you can’t govern your own party, how can you govern the country? If you can’t manage your party, how can you manage the economy?”. I can also here the Labor factions working up their own special pleadings, conscious that here they have a “leader” who is not game to say no.
So Latham goes into this sitting of parliament likely to be squeezed from both sides. No wonder a number of other erstwhile frontbenchers have decided to stand aside – better to be a spectator this next quarter than a player.