Federal election review 2019: Labor’s analysis of Bill Shorten’s election loss barely mentions WA in another oversight by ALP

Labor’s 2019 election review will be tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapper. At least that is the feeling of many within the party who think it was a good, but relatively pointless exercise. The key findings of the four month-long review — that Bill Shorten was unpopular, too many messages were pumped out during the campaign confusing voters and the divisive rhetoric pitting everyday workers against the “top end of town” — were nothing wise heads within the party didn’t already know. The ALP continued to lose its base during this year’s election campaign, as it has done for decades. The party’s primary vote has been on a steady decline and in 2019 it alienated low-income, hard-working Aussie battlers and instead saw the biggest swing towards it from high-income, inner-city, latte-sipping, hard-left voters. As the review’s co-author, former South Australian premier Jay Weatherill, said on Thursday: “Sadly for us we presented at this election a public policy agenda that paradoxically frightened the very people we were trying to support.” The 92-page assessment of Labor’s shock election loss made 60 findings and 26 recommendations and spared Bill Shorten a massive skewering. Instead Clive Palmer’s “carpet-bombing” of the campaign against Labor, a lack of campaign procedures and weak digital strategy were the main culprits thrown under the bus for the election loss. Many said it had been strategically watered down in order to prevent a revolt from the Shorten loyalists. But while failures on a national level were discussed within the review and WA was touched on during the report slightly — it was still very eastern States centric. For a party that claims it cares about WA (Anthony Albanese has said he will visit every six weeks and made the first of his policy-vision statements in Perth last week) the 10 mentions of our State compared with the 66 of Queensland was telling. The Hunter Valley region in NSW had just three fewer mentions than WA. The report said the anti-coal rhetoric on Adani and the Greens’ Adani Convoy hurt them in Queensland — but it failed to look at the fact that voters in WA also heard the anti-resources sentiment and turned away from a party that was a potential threat to their jobs. The clumsy climate change lines also resulted in Labor not effectively discussing the cost of inaction “or the job opportunities a transition to a renewable energy future could bring” the report said. It was not a unified team behind the scenes on policy development before the election and even on the review — the very thing that was designed to help the party heal and move forward — Labor MPs on Thursday were divided. Some were nonchalant, some were impassioned, some defended Bill Shorten, and others said the party had not abandoned working people. The meeting of the National Executive in Melbourne on Thursday went overtime due to a fight over the direction of the review and if it should be fully released. Certainly not the signs of a party that is demonstrating it is anywhere near a position to govern. On Friday Labor Leader Anthony Albanese will front the media at the National Press Club in Canberra and give his own defence of what went wrong in May. He will outline the vision for his party going forward and reveal how he is going to return Labor to the party it once was. The party of working people and jobs. But words are just that. What is not clear is if Labor will learn from its mistakes and be able to rebuild in a timely way that will see it in with a chance at the 2022 election. When WAs own Kim Beazley failed to win the 2001 election it began a period of Labor internal reflection that saw the 2004 election also lost. Labor focused on itself rather than what was needed to win and it took eleven years of the Howard Government for them to return from opposition with Kevin 07. Anthony Albanese is just one man. He alone cannot lead the party to victory in 2022. If Labor truly wants a shot at winning in 2022, if it wants to show blue-collar workers it cares about them more than the Coalition, it needs to draw a line in the sand and move on from the 2019 election pounding. And it needs to do it soon. It needs to develop strong, clear, cohesive policies that benefit hard-working, everyday Aussie battlers. The ones that Scott Morrison so efficiently and strategically captured. The quiet Australians.