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Memo to Julia

By Ken McKay - posted Wednesday, 1 September 2010


How to ensure you have a functioning and long term government?

To ensure you have a successful and long term Labor government you need to abandon the Hawker Britton model.

Do not employ the twenty-somethings to be policy advisers on peanuts and load your Ministerial staff with media advisers.

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Development of coherent policy is the heart of a good Labor government. To achieve this you need to employ quality people with life experience. Not an army of spin doctors who start the week sitting around a table determining how to manipulate the media to ensure the government has the headline each day and that so much government spin gets out that it stops the opposition getting any coverage.

If you do not achieve this they will have you making comment on the new colours for the next AFL side, or who makes the best pumpkin scones on Masterchef or some other nonsense.

The Hawker Britton model has seen Labor Governments in New South Wales and Queensland destroy the brand name of Labor so badly it may take a generation or two to fix.

The model relies on using a popular leader to sell good news, with line Ministers facing the music in crisis or stuff ups. Line Ministers never get the chance to promote the policies or decisions that they have worked on, hence they are perceived by the public to be duds.

The success of the Hawke/Keating government was not only building consensus in the community but within government. Ministers were able to develop policy and promote it. The leader did not suffer from paranoia about creating rivals, so did not attempt to hijack all the good news.

Creating a good functioning government is critical; and second, allowing full and frank debate is critical. This can only be achieved if Cabinet is selected by the caucus. Consequently removing the leader’s power to hire and fire is critical: restoring the sovereignty of caucus isn’t just good Labor politics, it is vital to create the right balance between the executive and parliament.

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Turning to policy, Labor has to have its Trade, Foreign Affairs and Agricultural Ministers working together to recreate the Cairns group. The largest impediment to the world’s economy is corrupt trading practices in agriculture. It deprives the developing world of export markets, but more importantly it is single handedly stopping the elimination of poverty around the world.

In developing countries such as China and India the rural poor face a bleak future; fair trading practices would see a transfer of wealth from the richest societies to the poorest. This is a mission worth fighting for. This is the greatest moral challenge of this century, the elimination of poverty.

We are involved in a challenge to civil society, in the spread of terrorism. We have engaged in spending billions of dollars and sacrificing our soldiers in a battle without trying to win the war. The war involves removing the gulf between the richest societies and the poorest societies; and those societies with freedom of information and those that are indoctrinated by their power elites.

This leads to the next issue, refugees. Don’t compete with the Tories in dehumanising the refugee issue. Educate our community and take them with you. Turning our backs on refugees is not in our national interest.

The world turned its back on refugees after the Israeli/Palestinian partition and we have paid for that inaction with the blood of the innocent.

We are engaged in a war in Afghanistan against the Taliban, we are not winning this war. Those Afghanis who are fighting the Taliban are doing so with great courage. But there are times when courage does not lead to a material victory. We must not turn our backs on those who are fighting our enemies, we must not let tawdry domestic politics provide a propaganda victory to the Taliban.

By turning our backs on the refugees we give the Afghanis no option but to join our enemies. We cannot afford to allow refugee camps on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border to become the breeding ground for the next generation of terrorists. It is not in our national interest.

We in the west must provide a sanctuary to those escaping the Taliban. We are sending our young to die in this foreign land we must not dishonour their memory by allowing the victims of the enemy to be turned into a political football. Our diggers deserve better.

The next big item is the issue of a Big Australia or a Small Australia. Do not fall for the trap of embracing small Australia in the vain belief this will lead to a more sustainable society. A small Australia means higher taxes or longer working lives to support an ageing society.

Sustainable population policy is not about providing more physical resources for infrastructure for our capital cities. We must transform our working lives. We must recognise that the highways of the 21st century are not made of bitumen, but fibre optics. Building the National Broadband Network is critical, but ensuring it is used effectively is more so.

As our economy moves away from agricultural, mineral and manufacturing to a services base we have two options: a move to high value services such as engineering design, or low value services.

We must take positive steps to encourage telecommuting: we need to divert significant proportion of our economy and our society off the bitumen highway and onto the fibre optics highway. This would enable people to live outside the Sydney/Canberra/Melbourne triangle and would allow our regional cities to be locations of opportunity. It would give our young the option to remain in their rural communities and would return vibrancy to the soul of our Nation, the bush.

We need to provide tax incentives to encourage telecommuting for both workers and employers and also provides the infrastructure to enable this to occur. There will not be a one size fits all solution. For example, it may be that generic offices in regional and rural settings need to be built and made available for hire to companies wishing to allow their workers to work from these centres, or it may be a case of supporting workers in their homes to enable them to telecommute.

Governments both Federal and State need to take a leadership role with their own workforces.

A minority government provides an opportunity to build a new coalition within our society for the 21st century.

Julia, do not squander this once in a lifetime opportunity.

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About the Author

Ken McKay is a former Queensland Ministerial Policy Adviser now working in the Queensland Union movement. The views expressed in this article are his views and do not represent the views of past or current employers.

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