Failed Labor governments

The sad truth is that Labor has run only one efficient government at the federal level since the Second World War. The Chifley Labor government failed spectaculary, attempting to nationalise private trading banks with restrictive socialist leglisation; the High Court of Australia ruled such leglisation invalid. Arrogantly refusing to repeal the law; the incumbent Chiefley governmment took the issue to the 1949 election losing to Menzies.

Secondly, the Cheifley government attempted to retain wartime controls including price and import controls including rationing of what they determined scarce commodities. Even the communist controled Miner's Federation undertook strike action in protest; seven years of national emergency controls was accepted during the war, however, as socialism swept Europe, the lives lost fighting for freedom were not going to be meekly handed over now that the threat of national socialism had been defeated.

The ALP did not return to office until late1972; after 23 years in the political wilderness, incoming Prime Minister Gough Whitlam rode a wave of popularity and was swept into office with the promise of change. However, his administration was beset by incompetence from the very beginning, dismissed by Governor General Sir John Kerr in 1975, it was a short and tumultuous period ending in economic disaster for Australia.

The Whitlam failure motivated future Labor leaders of the period to demonstrate Labor could run a modern economy competently and professionally. The economic rationalism drive was commenced by Bill Hayden in opposition contrasting the Malcolm Fraser do nothing approach. The reformist legacy was not only continued by Bob Hawke succeeding Hayden just before the1983 election, the program was accelerated under his guidance. 

The Labor government headed by Hawke was highly successful in their early years implementing the Campbell report recommendations including floating the currency, reducing tarriffs, the prices and incomes accord between the unions, compulsory superannuation and Medicare. The later years saw a deep recession in 1990 and 1991 take some of the gloss off the Labor government, public sector debt was an issue, never addressed seeing the Howard Liberal government return to office in 1996. The Hawke government proved equal to the task, this was the only successful Labor government.

Unlike Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard were unabashed admirers of Whitlam and his government's doubtful legacy. Rudd inherited one of the best-performing economies in the world, making adjustments to the global financial crisis somewhat easier than would otherwise have been the case. Low government debt coupled with strong taxation receipts from the mining sector, an insatiable thirst by China to consume Australian coal and iron ore, agricultural products and a gold price fueled by uncertainty. It was hard to actually bugger it up, but bugger it up they did.

Australia remained one of the strongest performing economies in the Western world. The problem with the Rudd and Gillard governments has turned on the implementation and/or mishandling of a range of policies. Including the carbon pollution reduction scheme, which became the carbon tax, along with the bungled imposition of a mining tax. Then there was the abandonment followed by the restitution of an asylum seeker policy aimed at controlling Australia's borders.

The focus on the Labor party leadership essentially overlooked Labor's policy problems; the inability to withstand Coalition critique led by then opposition leader Tony Abbott in late 2009. Julia Gillard's assasination of Kevin Rudd, still in his first term as Prime Minister did not endure to the majority of voters stating the government had lost its way, the very government she was deputy Prime Minister from the outset. However, her leadership failed to resolve a number of high profile policy failures associated with the mining tax, luring more than 1000 asylum seekers to their deaths; continual government deficits despite announcing budget surpluses were top priority. 

The decision to introduce the carbon tax, essentially the Greens party policy was viewed as the cost to stay in government at all costs making a mockery of the Australian voter. We all knew we had been played in a feeble attempt to run a minority government, the personal attacks on the opposition leader were a distraction, the misgomy claims were a desperate attempt to fool the politically illiterate. 

Tony Abbott himself is having a difficult time selling his government's policy, despite his lack of personal popularity and the ALP and Greens controlled Senate are opposing his every move; leadership unity and bitter infighting will not bring this government down.