Labor heavyweight Mark Butler gave Wayne Swan a boot yesterday:
“When you get your backside handed to you by Fozzie Bear and Kermit the Frog, it’s time for some serious reflection.
Every federal election is monumentally tough for Labor and 2022 will be no different. That’s why our policy and campaign review must be ruthless and unsparing.
It will, and it should be, deeply uncomfortable.
Nothing should be excluded or treated as sacrosanct.
The area I had responsibility for — climate change and energy — must be part of that thorough examination.
As should all of our taxation policies and the spending commitments they were directed at funding.
…I deeply value all of the traditions of our party and the perspectives on our future.
We just lost our third election in a row. The only majority we’ve won in the past 25 years was the majority of eight seats in 2007. And let’s not sugar coat the result in May. We got our lowest primary vote in a century.
Rightly or wrongly, we face a much harder task when it comes to the bread and butter of federal politics: national security and broad economic management. Our only three victories over Liberal governments since World War II all involved an immensely popular leader, a compelling national vision and a superior campaign.”
Sensible enough. But if we’re going warts and all then where’s what matters most? Labor has lost three elections in a row because it has lost QLD. It’s really that simple, an seat swing that it cannot offset elsewhere.
Why has it lost QLD? Fundamentally we have to come back to what QLDers voted for to understand what Labor lacked and that was fringe nationalist parties that embodied:
- economic nationalism;
- less progressive globalism;
- less immigration.
My greatest hope is that Jay Weatherill is running the major Labor review and he is no shrinking violet on these matters.
