By George Droutsas
For some within the Labor Party there was no shock in John Brumby's defeat, just confirmation of what they had known for months.
MUCH will be written about Labor's ''shock'' loss in last week's Victorian election. Most will focus on the election campaign itself, but for the full picture of what went wrong for Labor, let's go back to the point I count as the beginning of the end: mid-2008.
George Droutsas: Labor needed to bring the narrative back to services.Credit: Angela Wylie
Victorian Labor knew then it had a problem, yet no one in government ranks would dare say it aloud. The problem was an abrupt man used to getting his own way. A man who didn't like hearing bad news. John Brumby.
The problem was revealed in mid-2008 by Labor's state secretary, Stephen Newnham. Newnham's examination of Labor's internal polling revealed that a healthy two-party preferred result was masking something. Labor's primary vote was soft, very soft. Well down on 2006. Voters didn't take to Brumby. And even at 54 per cent two-party preferred, Labor was losing seven or eight seats.
The alarm bells were sounding. Eighteen months out, there lay the opportunity to craft a winning strategy leading up to November 2010. Newnham set out to promote strategies to meet the challenges facing Labor. His views did not sit well with the upper echelon of decision makers within government. People who had become accustomed to acquiescence for a decade, and to being told how delightfully pleasant their policy excrements smelt, did not take kindly to being told otherwise. To the government's detriment, the straight-talking Newnham was hung out to dry - much to the delight of the Liberals who knew he had been instrumental in Labor's 2006 state election win and a string of byelections.
Brumby, with his place in Labor history at stake, wanted desperately to win. In late 2008, even he was conceding he needed a circuit breaker. Tragically, it arrived on the choking hellfire afternoon of February 7, 2009. Black Saturday was a chance for the economan to look human. A chance for the imposed one to show leadership. As it happened, Brumby was outstanding: supportive and compassionate, and clearly moved by the state's losses and people's suffering. He took Labor's vote to an unnatural high of almost 59 per cent two-party preferred.
With hindsight, Black Saturday was a curse in more ways than one. It hid the truth for Brumby's Labor. It delivered strong two-party preferred results for the remainder of 2009, a year that should have been spent fixing the government's underlying problems. It meant 2010 was spent reacting to problems and not putting forward a fourth-term agenda. Instead, it was a matter of pats on the back all round for the premier. Team Brumby could just sit on the board and ride the wave home to the finish line. I even recall Nick Reece's first Monday morning PowerPoint presentation to ALP headquarters as new state secretary, parroting the lines from
No. 1 Treasury Place that Ted Baillieu was unelectable. If only PowerPoint could win elections.
The underlying problems - the matters that were switching votes on the ground - were not being dealt with in 2009 when they should have been. Dilapidated public transport infrastructure; booze-fuelled street violence; the prevalence of government interference in people's lives (nannyism), particularly with traffic management; attorney-general Rob Hulls's attempts at social engineering; a police union claiming crime was out of control; utility bills and cost-of-living pressures for senior citizens; the perception that Melbourne was taking water from the bush; disingenuous consultation with local communities, particularly on planning; and poor management of key organisations and leaders, often contemptuously treating them as potential media adversaries instead of positive contributors in policy formation. Small sins on their own but, combined, a one-way ticket out of government.
The real problems were being ignored. A distrustful premier's office, full of self-adulation, wanted control of the impending campaign as well - imposing a novice, Reece, who was one of their own. Brumby was used to getting his own way. And he did. Some of us had witnessed firsthand the disastrous consequences of the West Australian election. When people of influence control the debates and the information flows, and don't properly thrash out strategies by consulting experienced hands, they invariably get things wrong. A few of us pretty much knew what was coming, but also understood that the prevailing culture did not embrace criticism, no matter how constructive.
The reasons for Labor's likely loss at the forthcoming state election were simple:
Reason 1: Loss of narrative. Labor's three previous victories were all fought on its stronghold: social services. On home turf, Labor couldn't lose. The narrative goes like this: Liberals cut X amount of teachers and nurses. Labor put Y back in. Liberals sold and closed X schools. Labor rebuilt Y schools. Liberals cut X cops. Labor put Y cops back in. It was a winning formula. Somewhere along the line, Labor got off-message.
Equally damaging for Labor was the prevalence of law and order as a key debate. The print media were relentless. Every time there was a glassing or a nightspot punch-up, it made for a two-page spread. The campaign was hitting the mark with swinging voters, namely mums and dads living in outer-suburbia. Labor's hapless police minister, Bob Cameron, was like Bambi in the headlights: motionless and oblivious to the impending carnage. The political debate was now firmly stuck on Liberal home turf and Labor's only answer was to keep following the Liberals' lead.
Reason 2: John Brumby. The punters on the ground, as in 1996 when he was opposition leader, just did not warm to the man. They found him arrogant, dismissive and a poor listener who refused to hear genuine community concerns. Note Brumby's response to the 12 per cent swing in the Altona byelection run by his nominee Reece. He concluded that voters sent him a message to press ahead and speed up the implementation of his policies. In fact, voters were telling him the exact opposite. Even on election night last week, when the bombs had obliterated all and sundry, we witnessed a painfully delusional and arrogant speech.
It told of a man who spent most of his time as premier flanked by minders instead of talking to and listening to real people. Many party elders who know Brumby well and had witnessed him rise to the top speak of his innate shyness. They say that the hard exterior hides the real, reserved man underneath. That may well be the case, but voters can only make an assessment on what they get at face value.
Reason 3: The electoral cycle. Victorian Labor was going to have to defy its own history to be re-elected for a fourth term. The ''electoral cycle'' reason is the most simplistic and obvious of reasons, and the one Brumby immediately alluded to when he referred to his government's ''wear and tear''. That this is the only reason Brumby has publicly given for the loss just goes to show how far the government's head was buried in the sand. It's a shallow response void of personal responsibility.
Reason 4: A party turning on itself. The Labor Right was imploding right at the time it needed to focus. Historically the party, at all levels, has had electoral success when the Right is united, disciplined, large and in charge. The preselection contest for the Kororoit byelection following Andre Haermeyer's resignation sparked a bitter power struggle within the Right that festered for years. Stephen Newnham, having made the mistake of being an ardent critic of the government's direction at the time, would be the fall guy in the dispute. By the time Newnham left, one part of the Right had reached a stability deal with the Left. For his replacement, half the administrative committee lined up behind Noah Carroll, half behind Reece, the latter hand-picked by Brumby. The party's loyalty to the premier meant the numbers were never going to be exercised against Reece, no matter what the electoral consequences.
Reason 5: No political agenda. Labor's agenda, like that of most long-term governments (John Howard's excluded), was not being driven by an unquenchable thirst to hold marginal seats. Operationally, the government wasn't being run by cabinet or political hardheads, but by the
premier's media unit. While all governments need efficient and proactive media units, as Bracks had put in place, those systems ought not flourish to the point where they end up serving as the government's quasi think-tank. The 24-hour media spin cycle was quashing medium and long-term political decision-making. There was no political agenda.
Reason 6: Brumby's B-Team. Brumby surrounded himself with people who were afraid to challenge him. Throughout history, successful leaders have surrounded themselves with fearless individuals smarter than themselves. Compare the mastery of Bracks's inner circle - chief of staff Tim Pallas; media adviser Sharon McCrohan; campaign directors John Lenders and Newnham - with Brumby's equivalents. When it comes to political expertise, experience, courage and judgment, there was zero comparison to Bracks's team. Brumby's sycophants consistently got things wrong.
There was a last, unforeseen seventh reason: the 25-day election campaign itself. Brumby got the campaign he wanted, having installed his own staffer to call the shots - a presidential-style campaign where the leader is placed front and centre. Keating's 1996 mantra of ''strong leadership'' showed its face again. It was exactly the same losing model canvassed by Alan Carpenter in Western Australia. Brumby's men basically, and I do mean basically, compared the two leaders' overall approval ratings, saw that Brumby was way in front, and then based the entire campaign strategy around Brumby. Labor's campaign director must take full responsibility for what turned out to be a lethal mistake. It was nowhere more evident than in the late, turbulent response of undecided voters to the kilometres of bunting adorning polling booths across this great state with the image of the glorious leader John Brumby. Ho Chi Minh himself would have blushed at such splendour. The image of a respected - yet fundamentally unpopular - man was the last piece of information a voter got before casting their ballot.
It did not have to be this way. Labor had two distinct paths to choose from in this campaign. Either present a compelling case where you ask people to vote for your future agenda, which is hard for any 11-year-old government to do, or, better, make a compelling case not to vote for the other guy. Labor failed miserably at both. And then meerkats in Labor campaign advertisements reinforced in voters' minds the feeling that Baillieu would not hurt them. He was inoffensive and safe. They could feel comfortable voting for him.
What Labor desperately needed to do was bring the narrative back to services. It needed to attack Baillieu on his blown-out costings and link that back to his need to slash numbers of teachers, nurses and police to pay for his promises. This ''jobs - not cuts'' formula was the winning model championed in the most recent Queensland and NSW elections. In each instance, the conservative opposition leader was shredded. Liberal director Tony Nutt must have known this weakness and, quite brilliantly, released Liberal costings on the Thursday before polling day - the day after TV advertisements could no longer be aired.
Labor instead chose to run on Brumby's record, effectively making the election a referendum on itself rather than on the Liberals. Constant TV ads on climate change and wind farms pandered to inner-city leftists who were never going to vote Labor anyway, while alienating the ''working families'' in outer suburbs: the very voters that research suggests decide elections. In essence, Labor wasn't batting for them. When Baillieu locked out the Greens, he simultaneously locked in the election. Big Ted was now on the side of those working families, batting for them.
The blame game for Labor's loss must be short lived and constructive. But in order to achieve this, the party must own its mistakes and not think for one moment that it can spin its way out of this debacle.
Those whose shortcomings cost Labor this election must accept and take responsibility for their actions. If Labor is to win in 2014, it must calmly and maturely learn from its errors and not repeat them.
For years Labor underestimated the survival skills of John Howard. It must not underestimate those same skills in Ted Baillieu.
Labor's personnel victims will number in the hundreds. Any organisation's most valuable commodity is its people and Labor is no different. The party's immediate task is to hold onto and develop the next generation now waiting on its backbenches. They will be the ones who will do the grunt work to bring Labor back.
George Droutsas was Victorian Labor's senior campaign officer from 2006 to 2009.