Dear old Lindsay Tanner

[Earl Grey]

Poor chap, suffering from sauce bottle shaking deprivation?

Labor's future bleak: Tanner

September 26, 2012


Michelle Grattan

FORMER cabinet minister Lindsay Tanner has warned that Labor could be entering a time of ''unprecedented bleakness'', in a swingeing critique describing the party as ''an electoral machine largely devoid of wider purpose''.


Lindsay Tanner: grim assessment. Photo: Justin McManus

Mr Tanner slates the Gillard government's agenda as being driven by political circumstances and improvisation, and says the party needs a ''complete root-and-branch rethink about why we exist'', in his new book Politics with Purpose released today.

Finance minister until he quit at the 2010 election, Mr Tanner says Labor governments ''still do good things, but at the behest of random external forces, not any kind of inner calling''.

While it is possible to make a case that the agenda of the federal government is driven by great Labor purposes, ''closer examination reveals a harsher truth'', he writes, in criticisms that undermine the Gillard government's claims to be pursuing Labor values.

''The traditional Labor things that the government has done have mostly been in response to external political circumstances, like the substantial increase in pensions.

''The unedifying gyrations on climate change and asylum seekers over the past 15 years hardly suggest a clear purpose. The national broadband network was an improvised response to an unexpected situation.''

He cites the proposal for a national disability insurance scheme - frequently highlighted by Julia Gillard - as showing how modern Labor functions. Although this was an archetypically Labor mission, there was little impetus for change from within the wider labour movement.

''We effectively outsourced this particular policy development to the Productivity Commission. Past equivalents used to be nurtured within the party, the trade union movement, and sympathetic non-government organisations.''

Mr Tanner stressed yesterday his commentary was about the Labor Party not the federal government. While there was overlap, it was much broader than the current government. He would not comment on individuals or the Labor leadership.

Around the world social democratic parties like the ALP are slowly unravelling, he writes.

Historically, Labor has been ''a fluid amalgam of ideals and interests'' but both have been ''swamped by careerism''.

Read more: www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/labors-future-bleak-tanner-20120925-26jhp.html#ixzz27WPMZKiD

[Freddy]

Relevance depravation syndrome

[pim]

Mr Tanner stressed yesterday his commentary was about the Labor Party not the federal government. While there was overlap, it was much broader than the current government. He would not comment on individuals or the Labor leadership.

Context is everything. Criticism isn't a bad thing. I haven't read the book but I think I need to. I think there is a malaise at the core of modern social democracy.

From what I heard on ABC News Radio this morning, Tanner made the point that many people who supported Rudd's ouster by Gillard in 2010 now acknowledge that it was a mistake. I agree. I'm one of them. That doesn't mean that we have to make amends by reinstating Rudd. What's done is done and all the king's horses and all the king's men ... etc. Besides, just as Rudd stupidly and uselessly squandered his political capital during his Prime Ministership, he maliciously and destructively squandered his moral capital after his ouster, firstly with the leaks to Laurie Oakes during the 2010 elections - which Gillard was on track to win comfortably before those leaks, remember that Abbott had not been performing all that well prior to those leaks - and with the constant way he manoeuvred to undermine Gillard from the time he became Foreign Minister until the leadership ballot last February.

I know I've been critical of Gillard and I don't resile from those criticisms. She has shown appalling political judgement and her lack of communication skills has made her seem more like an android. I'm listening to Lindsay Tanner right now and he talks of "poll driven panic". He's right! Look at the way the Abel Tasman fiasco was handled as a case in point. Poor political judgement and poll-driven panic have caused the Gillard government firstly to run scared from Tony Abbott and secondly to run scared from the Greens. I'm encouraged by the first glimmerings of a bit of steel in the spine of the Gillard government and I just hope it isn't too little too late.

I think Tanner has a point in his critique of the way policy has been formed within the Gillard government. He says that the Labor Party has ceased to be an incubator of reform and that things like disability reform have been outsourced to outside bodies like the Productivity Commission. I'm not qualified to comment on that in detail but he appears to have a point.

Certainly he deserves better than to be dismissed with a crack about "relevance deprivation syndrome".

[Earl Grey]

I have a lot of time for Lindsay.

He did a lot of leg-work.

I remember him giving a speech to Telstra workers when the first sniff of outsourcing reared its ugly head.

He was good.

Too bad that Telstra stonewalled the (by then diminishing) union.


As for Rudd, I'm glad he has been put away.
I agree that Gillard has many problems, yet she does seem to be able to manage a hung parliament well.

[pim]

Phil, I agree about Gillard handling the hung parliament well. She's got guts. I also believe that in, say, ten years down the track, this Parliament will have been seen to have been one of high achievement in spite of the poisonous political atmosphere in which it has had to function.

I hesitate, now, to get into crystal ball gazing. I vividly recall during the Fraser years that Labor people consoled each other by saying that "History will judge Fraser harshly!" And yet these days it's Fraser's erstwhile colleagues in the Liberal Party who judge the Fraser government harshly as a period of opportunities squandered and foregone, while it's Fraser's erstwhile political adversaries in the Labor Party who tend towards generosity and kindness in their assessment, not only of the man but also of his government. History is a funny beast. Who knows what generations to come will make of Rudd's ouster, the 2010 elections and the subsequent hung parliament and minority Labor government?

But it's undeniable that they've achieved a lot during their time in government. What's more my confidence in growing that the legislative architecture left by the Gillard government will survive the depredations of any subsequent Liberal government, whether led by Abbott or anybody else.

Great destination!! Pity about how we've had to get there.

[zombie]

What Bob Carr stated....easy enough to critcise Labor, no need to write another book about what ails Labor, the key point is Jules is gettin' the job done.

[sonex]

Sept 26, 2012 19:24:05 GMT 11 @zombie said:

What Bob Carr stated....easy enough to critcise Labor, no need to write another book about what ails Labor, the key point is Jules is gettin' the job done.

Well yes Zombie, and the thing is, we have no idea how a hung parliament would have worked had the Libs won in the same circumstances. All the problems of the GFC, working with the Greens and Independants, not an easy situation for either of the major parties.

[pim]

Compare and contrast with a country like the Netherlands, where a government cobbled together in a hung parliament collapsed last April over the issue of austerity measures to address the crisis in the Euro and in which the continued viability of the EU was at stake. It was the sudden departure of Geert Wilders that provoked the political crisis. It took more than 3 months for new elections to be held and the Dutch handled the political hiatus brilliantly. The departure of Geert Wilders, whose "spoiler" role of demanding the Dutch exit the Euro and go back to the guilder, leave the EU and erect an Israel-style "cordon sanitaire" around the Netherlands to stop any more "minorities" from coming into the country, freed up the political culture for other politicians, who would have no truck with someone like Wilders, to talk turkey and sort out a (very necessary!) austerity package. The PM in the old government was sworn in in a caretaker role and the (Dutch) Queen dissolved Parliament and called new elections. Basically the public service ran the country for 3 months. Trains ran on time, garbage was collected, kids were taught in schools and hospitals remained open and functioning.

The fact that we can't handle a hung parliament at the federal level while we handle hung parliaments with no problem at the State level is a mark of our political immaturity - and a very stroppy and destructive Opposition Leader who must have set some sort of record for the Longest Dummy Spit in History.

[Freddy]

But it's undeniable that they've achieved a lot during their time in government. What's more my confidence in growing that the legislative architecture left by the Gillard government will survive the depredations of any subsequent Liberal government, whether led by Abbott or anybody else.

Read more: australiannewstalk.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=9#ixzz27ZO2f6cX

That's the point Darj, this Government has put through some tremendous reforms, that no Coalition Government will dare roll-back. Even despite Rudd, whose biggest problem is that he blinked when he shouldn't have and called a DD then ram the ETS right up Abbotts arsk.
The last thing that the PM and her Government needs at the moment, when finally, the Polls are turning, and she is inexorably gaining the ascendancy, we get another Former Government member who comes out publicly just to open old wounds, in the name of flogging his book.
The country needs this like a hole in the head.

[Earl Grey]