The Guardian’s latest Essential poll shows nearly half of Labor voters at the last election would potentially vote for One Nation next time around. Labor’s primary vote is at 30% and One Nation is at 22%. The ALP should be very worried but their response so far shows they have no clue about how to stem the flow.
One Nation support is rising because people are angry – about the cost of living, about housing, healthcare, about living in suburbs and regions that are either too crowded or declining with little hope of turning things around. Add in crappy infrastructure or no infrastructure, lousy insecure jobs, wages that don’t seem to keep up or let you get ahead, and existential uncertainties around climate, energy, employment, AI, geopolitics, and the manifest residual anxiety that comes from every day feeling like an effort to get through, all the while knowing that something like another pandemic could come along to make it all worse. Then throw into the mix that this has been going on for years, no-one is listening, and things aren’t getting better. How would you feel?
One Nation articulates the anger, seems to share it, empathises and understands those who feel it, doesn’t talk down to them or at them, or discount or explain their anger to them. And it provides a ready set of scapegoats. Why wouldn’t you be drawn or at least open to listening? What have Labor and the Coalition done? Not that.
How is Labor responding now? By showing they still fail to get it. Albanese says One Nation has no policies. That’s true, but so what? It misses the point. Labor and the Coalition (sort of) have had policies, and here we are.
What about confected outrage over the ISIS brides and children? Not going to work. Why? First, it doesn’t come across genuine, and second, what does Labor do next? If it seems effective, are they going to continue to push right wing populism, alienating not just their disaffected aggrieved base, but the educated urban middle class and younger voters that constitute much of their current support? Some of us are still fortunate enough to think that politics should come with unconditional compassion and humanity.
Trying to protect themselves from One Nation by emulating them leaves Labor open to the current problem facing the Liberals – a fracturing of support among aggrieved voters open to authoritarian populism while haemhorraging support to others like Independents and Greens who offer more progressive alternatives.
Labor’s problems are several. First, they fail absolutely to undertand that politics and support are increasingly emotive, even visceral. Identity appeals play well and dividing people is easier than uniting them. Labor does not appear able to understand or authentically connect to people who feel, rather than think, their politics. Second, Labor is intellectually impoverished or at least appears so. They cannot articulate an inclusive and expansive vision or future that is better than the present and communicate it in a way that makes it seem achievable. They look like they’re doing small target politics and policy and being reactive and defensive. Third they seem to lack humanity, compassion, and the courage of their convictions. This manifests in not understanding the grievances of ordinary people, not understanding the trauma of Bondi and only reacting when pushed, not understanding what it feels like to be on the receiving end of racism, Islamophobia, or generalised neglect from the political class. And when called on it, responding with faux outrage while trying to outdo One Nation in reprehensible politics.
Fundamentally, Labor appears out of touch – trying to respond to anger, unhappiness, disaffection and neglect with professional politics as usual. Labor’s message and messengers appear too university educated, too technocratic but intellectually unambitious, too white, too urban, and unable to connect genuinely with ordinary people who are grappling with the difficult realities of the day-to-day.
Labor was lucky as well as disciplined at the last election. Dutton was deeply unpopular, the Coalition had no real policies of note, and the political dynamics that fractured Coalition support in first and other preferences were more deeply advanced than they were for Labor. Albanese held the Labor party together, but the electoral basis for Coalition support was also deeply fundamentally structurally riven. Labor should not be confident that their parliamentary majority is solid.
What Labor lacks most is a great communicator who is also a pragmatic visionary – someone who cuts through with humanity, authenticity, identification, empathy and understanding for people who have been forgotten while still being able to articulate the progressive ambitions of those of us who are not struggling, but want a genuinely better now and a better future, not for ourselves, but for others. Labor needs modern leaders with the vision, parliamentary and political skills and innate understanding of the electorate that the Hawke-Keating team had at their best, but updated for the 21st century.