Chris Bowen - Hearts & Minds: A Blueprint for Modern Labor

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For Grace and Max

Contents

Acknowledgements

T wo days after I resigned from federal cabinet I was walking, perhaps a little aimlessly, through Stockland Wetherill Park shopping centre when I got a text message from Louise Adler, Chief Executive Officer of Melbourne University Publishing, suggesting that I use my time on the back bench to write a book about the Labor Party. It is a book I had always intended to write eventually, but I wouldnt have written it at this time without the spark of encouragement from Louise, so to her goes my first note of thanks.

The support of MUP through a rather intensive writing process is greatly appreciated. Executive Publisher Sally Heath and copyeditor Sarah Bailey were constant in their advice, quick turnarounds and guidance.

As well as developing the books structure and doing the writing, a title had to be chosen. Thanks go to Jackie Mifsud, who happens to be my mother-in-law, for making the winning suggestionalways the consummate English teacher.

This book was written over a period of six weeks, but the ideas contained here have been fomenting for a lot longer than that. Ive discussed and workshopped the ideas in this book over a long period of time with members of my very talented former ministerial staff, led by James Cullen, Ashley Midalia and Bill Kyriakopoulos. I thank everyone with whom I worked in my ministerial office over five years for all their steadfast loyalty, breathtaking work ethic and cheery good humour through the highs and the lows.

Thanks also go to the people who read all or part of the manuscript and provided their feedback: Nathan Alexander, James Bond, James Cullen, Ed Husic, Brett Gale, Zoe Clarke and Jackie Mifsud. As the hackneyed but necessary disclaimer goes, all errors of fact or thought are mine and mine alone.

A very large thank you goes to Miss Grace Bowen for lending her dad her laptop so that I could get the writing done at all sorts of hours and in all sorts of locations.

Thanks of course go to Ross and Christine Bowen, there at the beginning and still always there.

And the biggest thank you goes to Rebecca. For everything.

Chris Bowen, May 2013

Foreword

C hris Bowens resignation from the Gillard ministry, amid the apparent decline in his governments fortunes, has encouraged him to write this compact text exploring the central questions in our public life: does Australia need a Labor Party? Can the political role of Labor be replaced in some bifurcation between the Liberals on the right and the Greens on the left?

Bowen notes that in 2007, Labor held office federally, and in every state and territory for the first time in Australias history. And that since 2007, Labor has lost office in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, begging the questionis this change cyclical or is it structural?

Has Labor done its job? Is the project begun 122 years ago more or less complete? Bowen is questioningthough not explicitlywhether Labor has outlived its relevance.

He answers those questions firmly in the negative and gives us his reasons.

He places great store in Labor being the party of both growth and opportunitygrowth in itself not being enoughwhere Labor believes in opportunity in a way that the Liberals never have. The Liberals, he says, state they believe in the individual, yet they do not stand for the things that matter in individual development. And here he instances the trebling of Year 12 retention rates in schools during the Labor years 1983 to 1996, and the trebling of university places to match, with the application of the Higher Education Charge augmenting that opportunity.

Likewise, Bowen references Labors belief in access and equity in health. Not simply the common justice of universality under Medicare, but quality in the delivery of myriad life-supporting services.

Growth, and the utility of it, is very much part of Chris Bowens lexicon. He sees growth and the application of wealth as the locomotive lifting up the great body of the community. He is taken by the nostrums of the great reform period of the last Labor governmentwhich doubled the capacity of the economy to grow, importantly, in the context of a low inflation environment. A growth, he says, which has now lasted a continuous 22 years, longer than any period in Australias history.

Yet he reminds readers that not all parties embrace economic growth and instances the manifesto of the Greens in turning its back on it.

Chris Bowens text focuses on not only Labor and its philosophy, but the Partys organisation. He believes the Labor Party requires urgent modernisation and lays out his thoughts about how this might be achieved.

He takes on the issue of union affiliation, saying the relationship between the party and the unions needs to be recalibrated. He makes it clear that Labor must appeal to the wider spectrum of the community and not constrain itself to the narrower interests of the unions.

In this vein, he makes a case for clarity in the explanation of Labors underlying philosophy. Having no truck with the traditional socialisation objective, he attempts a new objective, which he says needs to contribute to a coherent, consistent and compelling narrative.

With time on the parliamentary backbench, Chris Bowen is pondering his ownand his partyscircumstances, and thinking out loud. This book will not be his testament on Labors role and its future, but it does reflect his thoughts at the end of six years of executive office. In doing this, Chris has made a valuable and timely contribution to the important debate about the future of Labor and Australia.

The Honourable Paul Keating, June 2013

Introduction

I f you open any newspaper, magazine or other periodical in Australia at the moment, you run the real risk of being confronted with an opinion piece about what is wrong with the Labor Party. If you turn on the TV, you are likely to hear a commentator giving you their views on exactly the same thing. We are told that the Labor Party doesnt stand for anything, or that we stand for outdated values. We are told we are not clear enough in our message or are too focused on our message for the 24-hour news cycle. Sometimes these polemics come from former senior ministers or activists who genuinely despair for the state of the party. Other times it is conservative commentators taking the opportunity to score a few cheap points. Often it is simply an armchair general venting on the failures of current leaders.

I thought about this as I sat alone in my Parliament House office very early on the morning of 22 March this year and sketched out some notes for the announcement of my resignation from cabinet a couple of hours later. The night before, I had decided that resignation was the honourable option, having strongly advocated a return to Kevin Rudd as party leader and Prime Minister. But I wanted my press conference to be about more than just thismore than the immediate political crisis, more than the substantial difficulties facing Labor at the next election. I wanted it to be, in part, about the future of the party that I joined twenty-five years ago. Heres how that section of my speech came out when I faced the Canberra Press Gallery:

I want to say something about the Labor Party. The Labor Party, a strong Labor Party, is vital to the future of Australia. Labors the only party that believes in growth and opportunity. The Greens understand opportunity, but they dont understand growth. The Liberals understand growth, but they dont understand opportunity. We believe in both. Were the party that knows that economic growth lifts people out of poverty. Were the party that knows that opportunity is what means a kid from Western Sydney can make it into university and federal cabinet. Were the only party that combines growth and opportunity and lifts people and provides for the aspirations to become a reality. If the Labor Party doesnt do it, who else is going to? If the Labor Party isnt strong, whos going to care about the kids from Western Sydney, the kids from Weipa, and getting them a fair chance at life and the opportunities of world-best education? The Labor Party is so important. We have to make sure that the Labor Party is strong.

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