Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Keating lashes Shorten: Labor is too far from the centre

.. i'm posting this because i feel there could be a somewhat valid word of caution
for the DNC and for many of Bernie's people in Paul Keating's general political view ..


Former Labor prime minister Paul Keating in his Sydney office. Picture: James Croucher

The Australian
12:00AM November 12, 2016

Troy Bramston
Senior writer
Sydney

Paul Keating has delivered a damning assessment of Labor under Bill Shorten’s leadership, arguing it is veering too far from the political centre and will struggle to return to power.

The former prime minister fears Labor has not kept faith with his legacy and is playing to its dwindling base rather than making a compelling pitch for the winners of the new economy that the Hawke-Keating government created.

Mr Keating worries that the party lacks faith in the market to improve economic and social outcomes as it did a generation ago.

“The Labor Party today has not taken ownership and leadership of its own creation: that is the huge and wealthy middle-class economy which Labor exclusively created,” Mr Keating says.

“Labor has now, and has had, the core Labor program, and it’s now got the core Labor vote, which is about 35 per cent.

“Labor is now being attacked by the Greens in the capital cities, where votes are being sheared off. And it is being attacked by people like Pauline Hanson, who are pulling away blue-collar workers. But it is not getting concomitant support from the centre, which is locked up under the Coalition’s 42 per cent of the primary vote — and that is because it has lost the ability to speak aspirationally to people and to fashion policies to meet those aspirations.”

More: Keating looks back with pride, not anger
http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/link/017cf9d67db54f0990187fcc5dc9542e?domain=theaustralian.com.au

More: ‘I believe in battle and conflict’
http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/link/a9ecaff0830706cac4982569082bcf01?domain=theaustralian.com.au

More: ‘I would have massacred the lot’
http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/link/6ad6b7e90063ff26439e47d42e5f4968?domain=theaustralian.com.au

More: Keating tips seven years of pain
http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/link/3012485c9c36027c82e0340eabfe9f0e?domain=theaustralian.com.au

The comments are included in a new biography of Mr Keating, Paul Keating: The Big-Picture Leader. It draws on previously undisclosed archives, including ­interviews with more than 100 people, and 15 hours of new interviews with Mr Keating.

Mr Keating’s critique extends to the Coalition. He believes the long-term reform program has stalled and the country has been poorly served by recent political leaders. Mr Keating says neither Malcolm Turnbull nor Mr Shorten has the “vision”, “imagination” and “ambition” that the nation demands. “We have had a leadership deficit in as much as the leadership has not been able to frame a new economic and strategic agenda for Australia,” Mr Keating says.

“To change a country, you have to pull the responsibility for it down on to your own shoulders. It can’t be simply laid off to other people. You’ve got to do it. If you are the one that sees the vocation of it, or the mission of it, you have to take the responsibility.”

Mr Keating, a former treasurer (1983-91) and prime minister (1991-96), says a succession of governments has not been able to implement a coherent and effective program of economic reform or budget repair largely because they have lacked the “political auth­ority” to deliver it.

He argues that Labor, in government and opposition, has been unable to develop policies that appeal to the majority of ­voters who favour “an open, ­competitive, cosmopolitan” country with an enlarging vision for the future. At the last election, Labor received a dismal 34.7 per cent of the primary vote. After the defeat of the Keating government in 1996, Labor essentially walked away from the Hawke-Keating legacy, and Mr Keating personally.

Mr Keating believes the party has, for the most part, not returned to its centrist bearings. “It’s never been back there since we left,” he says.

Mr Keating believes the reversion in Labor thinking extends to the union movement, which exercises too much influence in the party and is no longer sufficiently focused on national economic interest as it was in the 1980s and 90s.

He argues Labor is under too much sway from factional bosses and party officials who have “an unerring sense of what they believe is right” and “lord it over the parliamentary party”. He suggests Labor lacks the broad, diverse membership it once had and its parliamentary ranks need to be refreshed with new talent.

In a series of extended interviews, Mr Keating argues voters got the 1996 election “badly wrong” and should not have dismissed his government. He respects John Howard and stressed their differences were about policy only.

“Of course I’ve gotten over the 1996 election,” Mr Keating says. “I was disappointed for the country. I don’t hate Howard.

“They went away from the government that would have given them a republic, continued the throw to Asia, and consolidated the economic reforms. They went to a prime minister who basically didn’t believe in the Asian construct, who committed Australia to war in Iraq, who decided not to eschew prejudice, and gave Pauline Hanson some space in the public debate and let racism out and run again. How could anyone say this was the right answer for Australia?”

Reflecting on his 27 years in parliament, Mr Keating does not want honours or praise, but does want acknowledgment. “The only thing I want is to observe the economic and social progress,” he says.

Troy Bramston is the author of Paul Keating: The Big-Picture Leader (Scribe) published on Monday

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/paul-keating-lashes-bill-shortens-labor-party/news-story/7a7477a23b04d0732ac346b15b210e39

.. am thinking of the number of Democrats who didn't vote for Hillary because she was too establishment and too centrist for so many (that's leaving the 30y
smear campaign aside for now) .. thinking also of the violence and destruction by a few (of whatever political persuasion) in the post-election demonstrations ..

.. these earlier words of Noel Pearson, a long time Australian aboriginal activist, i feel edge on a similar theme ..

Labor and the left seem to have abandoned Aboriginal people

By Noel Pearson
May 7 2002

Paul Keating was correct in his acknowledgement of the truth of Australia's colonial history. His Redfern Park speech of December, 1992, was and continues to be the seminal moment and expression of European Australian acknowledgement of grievous inhumanity to the indigenes of this land. The prime minister had spoken on behalf of all Australians and to the extent that he used the rhetorical "we" in that speech, he had of course not claimed the individual responsibility of Australians for the actions of the past, but rather a collective owning up to the truth of that past, and to its legacies in the present.

The prime minister had explicitly said it was not a question of guilt, but one of open hearts. How could this acknowledgement have been better put?

As much as I could never understand the reactions and campaigns on the part of the right in relation to Paul Keating's Redfern Park speech, I could never understand the subsequent incessant campaign on the part of the left seeking an apology from John Howard. The truths of the past in relation to the stealing of children and the destruction of families were already the subject of prime ministerial acknowledgement. And that acknowledgement came without prompting and could not have been more sincerely expressed.

As to the pointless campaign for an apology from John Howard, to the extent that it expresses the importance which people attach to reconciliation, I can understand it, but to the extent that it is touted as one of the most important questions in Aboriginal policy, it underlines the distinction between being progressive and progressivist. Paul Keating's Redfern Park speech was progressive. Seeking an apology from John Howard is progressivist and is not the main game in terms of what is important in Aboriginal policy.

Federal Labor is dominated by what I call the progressivist intellectual middle stratum. They have played a role in achieving recognition of Aboriginal property rights, but the prejudice, social theories and thinking habits of left-leaning, liberally minded people make them unable to do anything further for Aboriginal people by attacking our real disadvantage factors.

The only answer to the epidemics of substance abuse that devastate our communities is organised intolerance of abusive behaviour. The late Professor Nils Bejerot pointed out that historically, substance abuse epidemics have been successfully cured without much in the way of research and voluntary rehabilitation. What can still save our communities is that a policy based on absolute intolerance of abuse gains credibility. In this situation, the progressivists tend to support policies that can only waste more precious time: further research, rehabilitation, harm minimisation, improved service delivery and so on.

Let me give just one example of the strange thinking that has gained acceptance among the progressivist middle class. The Australian Council of Social Service and Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation organised a seminar called "Practical Reconciliation or Treaty Talks? Which Way Forward for Indigenous Social Justice". Two papers were presented. One was titled Indigenous Disadvantage: Australia's Human Rights Crisis, and even though it contained a section called Historical Causes of Indigenous Disadvantage, did not once mention substance abuse (but had a lot to say about the United Nations and international law). The other paper stated that grog was not the only reason why Aboriginal people live as itinerants in Darwin and Alice Springs - and that was all. Making such grave omissions while discussing justice for the women and children in Aboriginal communities and the historical causes of their disadvantage is absurd.

Age columnist Robert Manne wrote on this page last year that: "Pearson's contempt for the sentimentality of the pro-reconciliation liberal left has grown rapidly in recent times. In my view the indulgence of this irritation is a political mistake. Pearson is in danger of forgetting . . . that in their common struggle for the survival of the indigenous peoples against the indifference of the mainstream and the assimilationism of the right, the support of the good-hearted, bridge-walking middle-class liberal left remains an asset of inestimable worth."

Though I am a great admirer of Professor Manne - particularly his outstanding defence of the true history of the breaking up of Aboriginal families - I disagree with his political analysis. On the contrary, I would like to take my argument from last year one step further.

I contended that the two most important factors maintaining and worsening Aboriginal disadvantage are the substance abuse epidemics and passive welfare. But these two factors ultimately depend on one single factor: the thinking of the progressive, liberally minded intellectual middle class.

A radical shift here would be the single most beneficial change for Aboriginal people, because the people in the communities who want change cannot effect it if left alone; dysfunction and social disintegration have gone too far. They need support, but it is crucial that this support is based on a new understanding of the real situation.

In recent years there has been a great change in the discussion about Aboriginal affairs. Women have spoken out about what things are really like after several decades of progressivist policies. Federal Labor has been unable to handle this situation.

Labor is confined to passively scrutinising the government's policy. In recent weeks they have pointed to government bungling in Aboriginal education and the large amounts spent on litigation against indigenous interests that the Federal Government included in their "record spending" on "practical reconciliation". This is of course good, but I can't discern any tendency to an adequate response from Labor in the face of the real current crisis.

Because the present shift in the debate that reality imposes on us is in conflict with their prejudice and world outlook, federal Labor seems to have abandoned Aboriginal people and simply ceased trying to develop a credible policy. It is not the case that the government has a raft of innovative policies aimed at helping communities to move beyond passive welfare and to confront substance abuse directly - they do not.

The same energy and insight that Labor had in 1983 when it confronted a sclerotic economy - and the same courage to reform its thinking - is needed in this new century if Labor is going to have any solutions to the social predicaments in our nation, not the least the predicaments of those whose social misery is the most egregious.

Federal Labor has a very hard job ahead of them changing this sorry state of affairs. I suggest they look at Paul Keating's break with old thinking and renewal of Labor economic policy for inspiration.

This is an edited extract of Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson's address at the launch in Sydney
last night of Don Watson's Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/05/06/1019441475344.html

. i don't mean to appear at all presumptuous .. just a gut feeling thought that views as the above may not be altogether irrelevant here ..