Paul Keating, by his own admission, “used to suck experience out of people".
Keating was well known for his attempts to learn from his elders, including and most notably from the former NSW Premier Jack Lang. Indeed, Gough Whitlam wryly observed, "You seem to have this fascination for old men".
Keating was learning the game. Yet while many of today’s politicians are just as eager to absorb the iron laws of politics, the problem is that fate has flipped over the board, and rules that have been respected for generations are now all but meaningless.
Take, for example, the rule that governments have at least two terms to bed down reforms.
There has traditionally been an understanding that a patient and understanding Australian public will always give a new government two goes to prove itself.
Recent experience in the Victorian and Queensland state elections put paid to that. If the polls are any guide, the Abbott government is likely to follow the trend.
This changes everything. Governments in recent decades have relied on the two-term assumption to bed down reforms and ensure they are not reversed by the next government. Any less than that and you get a disruptive seesaw effect. Julia Gillard's carbon tax and John Howard's WorkChoices are classic examples of one-term policy.
Australian governments have assumed they could work to a set pattern. In the first year, commission a series of reviews. A year or two can be used to sell the reform to the public, to hammer out the details, and to implement. Once implemented, the government can spend its final year giving a weary public a breather while it showers marginal seats with largess and creates the alliance of demographics needed to win the next election.
The rule is based on an assumption that reforms are, by default, unpopular. As Machiavelli noted: "It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reform has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this luke-warmness arising partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had the actual experience of it".
Of course, any reform can be reversed, but it's much harder if they've survived for a while. Policy settings that have been around for more than a term gain acceptance from the public, and provide certainty to business. They become the new status quo with stakeholders who are now invested in them and willing to defend them.
Yet the old order that allowed a government to divide its term into phases - review, reform, recover – is gone. Neither Rudd nor Gillard nor O'Farrell nor Ballieu were permitted to complete the terms they had won for their parties. Leaders are no longer given the luxury of a recovery phase. They are not permitted phases of unpopularity.
In addition to this, the rule that good and necessary reforms would get bipartisan support is long gone as well.
A key ingredient in the success of the Hawke/Keating economic reforms of the 1980s was the support of the opposition. Similarly, the Kim Beazley-led Labor Opposition offered bipartisan support to the Howard Government on key measures.
The wild success of Abbott in opposition has now well and truly set the standard for obstructionism. This is now the default.
So if the old iron laws have rusted away, what is left? Well, perhaps amidst the chaos we are seeing a new rule evolve: governments need to be elected ready to govern and that means detailed reforms must be developed and sold in opposition.
Future governments do not have the luxury of selling reforms to a cynical public during their terms. Future governments must take their place on the treasury benches having already convinced the public of the merit of their plans.
Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen has flagged this is something that Labor had learnt and would look to apply. If so, it will be the first time since John Hewson’s Fightback in 1993 that it had been attempted.
Upon winning an election, governments will need to seize their mandates quickly.
When Franklin D Roosevelt assumed the Presidency of the United States he passed 15 major bills and rewrote the political landscape. Gough Whitlam moved at a similar clip.
Speed may once again be the key to reform in the modern era.
Yes, there are extreme risks involve in pushing an aggressive reform agenda under the unrelenting gaze of the 24-hour media cycle.
Yet these risks exist without reform as well. The news cycle abhors a vacuum and without the juicy red meat of reform it will feast on minutiae that can be just as damaging. Kim Beazley confusing Karl Rove’s name with Rove McManus, Julia Gillard losing a shoe, or Tony Abbott using an unfortunate cliché while talking to diggers in Afghanistan.
An emerging rule of the future is that it may be better to ensure the media are feeding on something nutritious than to have them hungrily hunt for themselves.
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