Kevin Rudd's departure leaves Labor with a whole heap of new problems
The poison of the Rudd-Gillard disaster may be in the past, but its legacy will hamper efforts to rebuild
Katharine Murphy, deputy political editor
Kevin Rudd took to the stage in Brisbane on Saturday night like a man who had won an election, not a man who had taken Labor backwards to only 50-plus seats in the House of Representatives, after only two terms in office.
The jubilation on election night reflected relief that the result was not worse. Rudd had saved face – always an important factor for the member for Griffith – he'd saved the furniture and protected the next generation. Well, some of them anyway.
The disconnect between Rudd beaming serenely on the television and the bracing message being delivered almost simultaneously by the remnants of the Gillard forces who had consented to be talking heads in the various election-night television commentary teams was acute. Not that anyone was spoiling for a fight. Everyone chose dignity in defeat. The recriminations, such as they were, were delivered at low volume.
Labor, exhausted by the marathon, by the perverse acceleration of time that had aged a still youthful government, fundamentally worn down by the rolling moral panics and the instant referendums of the social media age, was simply trying to move on past the debacles of the Rudd/Gillard civil war, including the debacle of an election campaign that began to make sense only in its closing week.
Until that final week, when Rudd discovered the resilience to push on, and the humility to listen to advice, the Labor leader had alternated between sludge and peevishness, bristling at slights real and imagined, talking to disconnected constituencies in random thought bubbles that failed to cohere or convince.
Rudd campaigned as though he believed the voters only needed what he had needed: "rightness" to be restored, the king restored to his castle. This was a projection. The voters of course needed the closure to be about them, not about him; they needed a reason to stick with Labor, to shun Tony Abbott. Rudd's personal catharthis in restoring his interrupted incumbency was of no concern. It was just another indulgence.
The party made a conspicuous effort to write Rudd out of history on election night. Victoria's Bill Shorten spoke of Rudd's contribution in the past tense, the former climate change minister Greg Combet suggested Rudd should move on to his next career, and he suggested the NSW left winger Anthony Albanese should be prepared to take the leadership reins.
Combet, Labor's best and brightest leadership hope, is now on the sidelines, looking for a job, speaking on the other side of history, exhausted by the frenetic pace of governing between 2007 and 2013.
That the poison and self indulgence of this era had to end was the general consensus, in public and in private. But Rudd used his farewell speech to argue very specifically and pointedly in favour of his reforms to "democratise" the Labor Party; to emphasise their importance, even though he was no longer the leader. Rudd's messages was that the Rudd legacy must outlive Rudd.
A significant internal fight is brewing on these reforms. Some elements of the party's right faction want the changes dead, seeing them as less a productive vehicle to open Labor's decision-making to the grassroots membership, and more of an avenue for the left faction to take control of the party.
(The big inner city party branches are dominated by the left. The unions, which currently balance the power of MPs in the party conference, skew right. It's a simple numbers game. The status quo favours the right. The Rudd reforms to the caucus rules boost the influence of the left.)
Some outside the right see the new caucus rules as unworkable. A caucus "super majority" required to depose a leader is viewed as ridiculous, when a simple majority would suffice. In their eyes this "reform" was all about Kevin and the perceived injustice imposed on him.
And these reforms have specific, practical implications. If several candidates want to put their hand up to be party leader in opposition, the ballot process is triggered. It could take a month for Labor to elect a new leader and appoint a new shadow ministry. What happens if Tony Abbott recalls parliament quickly? What happens if there is a military strike in Syria and Labor
has no leader or foreign minister?
The fight on party reform is just the start of the conversation Labor must now have with itself about the era from which it is unwinding. Labor almost managed to destroy itself over the past six years. The lack of political judgment, the rank self-indulgence, the leaking, the undermining, the ill-discipline, the corrosive culture of intrigue all dragged down a government that was otherwise well-intentioned, reform-oriented, at times very brave and true in its progressive public policy intentions.
Labor is now contemplating Tony Abbott and his culture warrior's determination to raze the Rudd/Gillard legacy, to rewrite history, to make this departing government entirely the sum of its worst self. And Labor have no one to blame for that but themselves. They broke their own heart, and they broke the hearts of the people who believed in them. Any other explanation is either spin or self delusion.
The internal argument on party reform is just the start. What to do about the carbon price will be a defining issue as Labor makes the difficult transition to opposition: defend the legacy, or let Tony Abbott have his way?
Victoria's Bill Shorten, regarded as the most likely person to take the leadership in this first period of opposition, used an interview on election night to nail his colours to the mast. He suggested Labor needed to defend the legitimacy of its electoral mandate on carbon pricing. He said it must avoid the mistakes of 1996, when the party severed itself too readily from the legacy of Paul Keating and Bob Hawke.
Shorten's utterance certainly reflects the disposition of an important union – the Australian Workers Union – and the views of many senior players who have survived this difficult election to help manage Labor's renewal project. But the "stand and fight" view is not universal. Some believe Labor's interests would be best served by allowing Tony Abbott to do what he wants on climate change. Any prospect of a double dissolution election would be avoided, and the party would draw a line through a policy that caused such political grief.
Another fundamental question before the party is how it steps back from the presidential style of leadership it has imposed upon itself. The celebrity culture of leadership has locked Labor into a pernicious cycle of personality conflict. Leadership has become disconnected from ideas and policy. It has to change. No one has a magic formula for changing it.
The party has managed to elect a bunch of talented candidates in 2013 to serve the imperative of renewal. But the road ahead for the ALP is hard, and uncertain.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/08/kevin-rudd-departure-labor-new-problems