Now, The Real Challenge

Sydney Morning Herald

Tuesday June 17, 2003

Fifty-eight federal Labor MPs yesterday made the wrong choice. Their support for Simon Crean over leadership challenger Kim Beazley is going to make it very difficult for the ALP to hold its ground at the next election. Voters will not see this as an emphatic vote of confidence in Mr Crean's ability to lead Labor from the bog. They have decided that they do not much like Mr Crean and are not much interested in hearing from him.

With the decision taken and Mr Crean more likely than not to lead the Opposition to the election, however, it is important he makes as good a fist of it as he can. But not for his benefit, or even Labor's. Political leaders come and go and political parties ride with them the electoral fluctuations from despair to exhilaration. It is a business of high risks and high stakes. Mr Crean needs to perform well in this second phase of his leadership because good government needs strong opposition. Without it, government gets sloppy, arrogant and dismissive. It can lose sight of those it is meant to serve. Leaders of the opposition have an almost sacred contract, therefore, with the people because it is their job to ensure governments are ever mindful of their greater purpose.

His backers would find the judgement perverse but the failed leadership challenge might do Mr Crean some good. He cast the ballot as a contest between populism and policy. He must now demonstrate it. He must craft detailed proposals that articulate national aspirations and calm public concerns while courageously advancing national growth for the benefit of all Australians.

Portraying himself as a policy rock will mean nothing while Australians know little of what Mr Crean is about. To date, his leadership has been mostly a sequence of largely uninspiring responses to government actions, not the setting of alternative agendas. His parliamentary support is strongest in Labor's left wing, suggesting that if he has a defined belief system, it encompasses much of the old Labor book. The few policy strands he has enunciated resuscitation of bulk-billing, lots of environment spending hark back to these old values. A former ACTU president, he must balance protection of a declining union base with ongoing demands to modernise and refine workplace productivity. At the same time, he must try to win back middle Australia.

Mr Crean must strike early in education, health and work and family, with all that implies for tax and community support review. We need to know Mr Crean's positions on the intricate weave of foreign and defence policies and where he sees Australia's future in a changing world and region.

A turnaround in the polls will not come easily. Before he dares to win, Mr Crean must dare to think. And he must commit himself with passion and vigour to innovative solutions, even when they annoy or infuriate elements in his own constituency.

© 2003 Sydney Morning Herald

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