Speech to the ALP Federal Caucus
Parliament House, Canberra, Australia
Tuesday 13th February 2007


It’s an honour and privilege to be asked to join you at your Caucas meeting. Our two great countries share common history and common values. So do our two parties both of which have done so much to shape the modern Australia and modern Britain of which we are each rightly proud. It’s great to be able to see at first hand what Labor is achieving at state level by being in power. You’ve swept the board there. We want to see you do the same at federal level.

And today I bring a message of optimism and confidence about the future. Politics is changing. At its most obvious the personnel of politics is changing. Blair, Burlosconi, Bush, Chirac, Koizumi, Persson, Schroder. They all share one thing in common. They are either going or they are gone. And I hope before too long we can add another name to that list – John Howard.

We are witnessing a political changing of the guards. Where one generation of leaders gives way to the next. Kevin Rudd captures that change. Kevin represents the future, Howard the past.

It is not just the personnel of politics that is changing. The paradigm of politics is changing too. Old challenges are giving way to new ones. That demands not just that personalities and policies change. It demands that our very approach to politics changes too. The challenge is to change both what we do and the way we do it.

World-wide, not just here in Australia, these last few years have been tough for the Left. The Right has been in the ascendancy buoyed by communism’s collapse and globalisation’s grip. The Left have been wrong-footed, uncertain how to apply our traditional values in this new world. As always we get into trouble when we confuse the ends we believe in and the means we deploy. The one remains fixed – our commitment to fairness and justice, our insight that we achieve more together than we ever can alone. But the other - our means - has to be flexible if we are to succeed in the modern world. It is this calibration between what is fixed and what should be flexible that the centre-left has found most difficult to get right. And I think explains why we have been losing more elections than we’ve been winning.

New Labour for a decade has proved an exception to that general rule. In Britain Tony Blair has dominated politics. Blair has done more than make Labour electable – no small feat given how parlous our position was just fifteen years ago. He has reshaped the political landscape and created a new orthodoxy in British politics. One that is liberal on economic and social policy, internationalist in foreign policy, marries rights with responsibilities and makes reform and investment in public services a modern route to social justice. And Britain is a better, stronger, fairer country as a result. Poverty is falling. Prosperity is rising. Services are improving.

And yet after a decade where Labour effectively had no serious opposition there is now a more competitive challenge from the Conservatives. While Labour is having to contemplate a life without Tony Blair, David Cameron is having to come to terms with Blair’s legacy. His problem is to persuade his Party to abandon its ideology if it is to accept this orthodoxy. Hence the lack of policy specifics. Cameron’s remains an empty vessel because his Party is caught between where its head tells it to be and where its heart really wants it to be. In modern politics, with all of its intense media and public scrutiny, heads and hearts have to be in the same place if you want to win an election.

But what David Cameron has done is read the New Labour handbook - and he is regurgitating it chapter by chapter. Cameron has seen how Blair transformed the Labour Party from being one of the least successful centre-left parties in Europe to being amongst the most successful. After Labour lost for the fourth time in 1992 many people thought they would never see a Labour Government again. What changed is that we did. Ten years on, the danger for us today is that Cameron learns the lesson from what made New Labour electable and that we forget it.

First, New Labour reached out beyond our traditional heartlands to forge a new coalition of support – in the South as well as the North, in middle class areas as well as working class ones. By becoming as comfortable with notions of individual aspiration as with traditional redistribution New Labour became a party of the many not the few. Where once we represented just one part of the nation we became a party of the whole nation, able to speak for hard working families, regardless of class. It is an approach Mr Howard tries to echo through his claim to champion the battlers in Australian society – the people who work hard, play by the rules and who want to know the Government is on their side. They are the middle ground – and the key to victory.

Second, New Labour took the centre ground. Doing this meant focusing outwards to the public rather than inwards to ourselves. Their concerns became our concerns. Their pragmatism - tough on crime and tough on its causes, tolerant on race and sexuality but intolerant on a failure to abide by society’s rules – helped guide Labour to the moderate, modern, mainstream of British politics. So that we were able to take what had long been regarded as Conservative territory – crime, welfare and public service reform – and in the process force our main political opponents to the extremes. That is where elections are lost not won.

Third, New Labour made a clear distinction between ends and means, our values and our policies. It took courage to distance Labour from its past but it had to be done before we could set out our stall for the future. Voters had to be given permission to return to the Labour fold. So public ownership was dropped and the private sector was embraced. Public spending played second fiddle to economic prudence. We resisted pressure to repeal labour laws and instead we lauded labour flexibility. And where social security had once been our means of lifting people out of poverty, our new means became providing the opportunity of employment and training. In other words, New Labour remains a party committed to social justice but one that now deploys modern means of achieving that goal.

Fourth, by understanding in a world of rapid change, in this era of globalisation, the centrality of economic stability and policies that equip people to adapt to changed circumstances. Rather than standing against change or telling people they had to deal with it on their own, we offer people a way through change. Central to our approach has been competence on the economy – the first foundation of political success. Equally, the priority we have given to public services, education especially, has been critical to establishing New Labour as a party committed to spreading opportunities in society so that people could realize their own aspirations to progress.

Fifth, and most crucially, by becoming a party that faces the future rather than being stuck in the past. Our insight has been that in this modern world change is not a one-off. It is a constant. It comes ever faster. By positioning ourselves as a modernizing reforming party, always looking ahead to the future challenge rather than back to the past achievement, New Labour tried to avoid the pitfalls of incumbency. In the end politics is about the future not the past.

Indeed I believe at the root of our current difficulties, after ten years in office, is the lack of a clear forward policy agenda. Of course Tony Blair’s government is doing a lot of radical reform as it has done throughout the last ten years. But right now it is hard to discern what our plan is to meet the challenge of the next ten years. We need to renew – intellectually, politically, organisationally. That cannot happen behind closed doors. It requires an open participatory debate about future direction.

These five factors found their expression in Tony Blair. When he goes, he will truly be a hard - maybe impossible - act to follow. Meanwhile David Cameron seeks to replicate for the Conservatives the factors that have brought New Labour such electoral success. Time will tell whether he can carry his party with him and whether it is ideology or practicality that wins out. Either way David Cameron is trapped in a delicious historical irony. Just as Cameron plays catch-up with Blair, politics is once again moving on. For a decade New Labour won by being trusted to marry economic vibrancy with social justice in order to deliver the twin benefits of a strong economy and improving public services. And economic stability and improvements in schools and hospitals remain important. Even the Tories now claim them as their priority. Establishing economic competence after all is the first stepping stone out of opposition. But on its own it is not enough. Bill Clinton’s famous campaign mantra “it’s the economy stupid” alone will no longer secure political victory. There is new political terrain. And the battle is on between Left and Right to seize it.

The new questions we have to answer, I think, look like this. How we respond to globalisation not by resorting to economic protectionism but through open markets, free trade and a new accent on skills and employability. How we deal with the huge challenge of global warming in a way that protects both the environment and our economies. How we build genuinely inclusive societies when there are huge pressures going in the opposite direction, most notably a widening gap between rich and poor. How we deal with both the causes and the consequences of global terrorism and get the trade offs right between the protection of wider society and the defence of civil liberties. How we avoid racial conflict in an era of global migration but at the same time respond to a new politics that is emerging of security and identity. Above all, how we fulfill the desire people have for greater control in their lives.

These were not the main challenges then. But they are now. And I believe they form the basis for a new orthodoxy.

On many of these new fronts – poverty, security, the environment - more not less co-operation between States is needed. Pollution, terror, avian flu all share one thing in common. They make a mockery of national boundaries. They make the best defence against both the tide of anti-Americanism and the wave of Euro-scepticism that are all too prevalent in my own country.

But meeting the future challenge requires something even more fundamental – a new partnership between states and citizens. On their own governments cannot meet the environmental crisis or the pensions crisis any more than alone they can bring about better health or lower crime. That requires actions by individuals not just governments. And it calls for reforms to the old paternalistic relationship between State and citizen. A grown up relationship is what is required in which as much power as possible is moved outwards and downwards from centralised states to individual citizens so that they take more power and assume more responsibility.

I believe this is the new progressive cause. So that if New Labour’s old agenda was driven by competence on the economy and change to the welfare state, the new agenda has at its heart reforming the State and empowering the citizen.

The world has changed – and so has the public. The tectonic plates have moved: with implications for every walk of life. Businesses, services, politics. The days when there were ‘jobs for life’ have disappeared for men, so too has a life defined by housework for women. Families are smaller. Communities are weaker. Opportunities feel bigger, but as any working mum will tell you, pressures are greater. Deference is lower, expectations higher. Technological change is shifting the economy from one based on the production of standardised goods and services to one where the emphasis is on customisation to individual needs. Greater global competition is making the consumer more powerful. So too is the power vested in users by the internet. People are more informed and inquiring. In the US one survey found that over half of Americans who use the world-wide-web to check for health information consulted the internet before visiting their doctors. Worryingly for the doctors 8 in 10 did the same after their visit.

What this speaks for is the very modern desire people have to exercise greater control in their lives. The purpose of politics today should be to help people do so. It is not that people have abandoned compassion. But they have discovered aspiration. And as progressives we should welcome that. Ours is after all an optimistic view of the enduring potential of the people – what George Orwell called “the extraordinary genius of the common man.” Our job is to make compassion and aspiration friends rather than enemies. As the Make Poverty History Campaign demonstrates people are not choosing between consumerism and citizenship – and neither should we. Make Poverty History gives the lie to those who say that a culture of contentment or a post-communist concensus have killed political participation.

The evidence points in a very different direction. It suggests the public is not so much turned off by politics, as the way politics is done. Or for that matter, the way public services are run. Too often we shut people out when we should be letting them in. Disengagement is a symptom of disempowerment. Doing things to people will no longer do. Doing things with them is the key - whether to improving health, fighting crime, regenerating neighbourhoods or protecting the environment.
There are good reasons why the modern progressive left should make this territory our own. Our values call for power to be evenly shared in society. And our values - by harnessing collective power in the service of individual aspiration - are best placed to enable and empower people, regardless of background or circumstance, to progress. This is why progressives should feel confident. In this new world progressive values are needed more than ever. You can see that in Kevin Rudd’s call for an education revolution. It is about facing up to the future, recognising that Australia’s best bet in a modern knowledge-based global economy is to become a world leader in education and skills. And it is about applying Labor values – our belief in a fair go - getting the best out of every individual so that we get the best for the whole country – that will create a future that is fair to all and so allow each and every Australian to fulfil their potential In this world of uncertainty and change people want to know you have a plan for the future.

People feel we are in a new world with new issues. As the future comes faster old certainties go out the window. People cling to what they know, hence the concerns over immigration, security and identity. Never ever under-estimate the scale of those issues. In the past people could close their doors to the world but now it is in their living rooms. So at one and the same time voters are more sceptical and less tribal; more insecure and less loyal; more assertive and less trusting. Meanwhile the media, once a spectator, is now an actor. All of this has changed the context for politics and campaigns – and made it harder for both.

Our response has to be not just new policies but a new politics – and a new style of political campaign. As insecurity grows deeper – whether about the future of the planet, global terror or national identity – so does the desire for people to exercise control. People will no longer act as passive recipients of a political message. They want to know that you get their lives. And they want the chance to have a say.

And here Labour’s experience of the British general election of 2005 perhaps holds some lessons. We had to work harder than ever to reconnect with the public, women with young families especially. Incumbency had begun to take its toll on Labour. The time for a change tune was beginning to sound. The Conservative Party was better organized and its ruthless populism – on issues like immigration – struck a chord both in sections of the media and the public. The Iraq war compounded and amplified all these problems. It seemed to emphasise the gap between where many voters stood and where Labour stood. The danger was that the 2005 election turned into a referendum on the Labour Party rather than a choice between parties.

We were determined to make it a choice election, not a referendum. So we took the battle to our opponents to make them the issue even though they were a party of opposition not government. The way to do so was by exposing their weakness on the economy. In the build up to the campaign our slogan was “Britain is working – don’t let the Tories wreck it again”. The economy focus gave us a strong dividing line of stability versus risk. It is a dividing line I see Mr Howard trying to replicate here.

We had to work particularly hard to see off Lynton Crosby’s dog whistle strategy which put immigration and asylum at the heart of the Tories campaign. We argued that the Tories were exploiting the issue while we were dealing with it. But that meant we really did have to deal with it, however difficult that was for sections of our supporters. So we produced tough measures on illegal immigration and unfounded asylum claims, including ID cards. They formed part of a series of governmental five year plans covering issues like crime, childcare and the environment so restaking our claim on the future. And to emphasise our claim to be the party of the future (and to paint the Tories as unchanged) we adopted “Forward not back” as our campaign slogan.

We needed to refocus on the domestic policy agenda because Iraq had seemed to show Labour’s priorities lay overseas rather than at home. In order to demonstrate our determination to reconnect with the public we embarked on what we called a “direct to the people” approach to campaigning. Described by some as a “masochism strategy” because it involved the Prime Minister debating with the public in TV and radio studios, this approach also engaged the Labour Party, for the first time, in mass direct marketing to voters through mail, telephone and internet - targeted at the key parliamentary seats we had to win. I think we will see a lot more of this new style of campaign in the future – one that is more personalised, localised and above all else more participatory.

The old style of campaign has had its day - one fought through the techniques of the war room, the instant rebuttal, the ferocious attack and the tight message. Elements of it will continue of course but a new style of campaigning is emerging as a reaction to spin, mistrust and the demand for more active involvement. You can see it the Bush campaign of 2004 with its millions of personalised emails and its spreading of political messages through networks of friends, volunteers and third party endorsers. You can see it too in Howard Dean’s pioneering use of the internet as a vehicle to identify and mobilise support or in Hilary Clinton’s decision to announce her presidential campaign not on someone else’s TV station but through her own internet site. This new style of campaigning reflects the new world of Myspace and Youtube.

In 2005 we got the best result we could. Of course we lost seats and ended up with a smaller parliamentary majority. But the Tories failed to break through and the Liberals did less well than expected. For the first time Labour won for a third time.

How much any of what I have said is applicable to your election campaign I can’t say. Only you can decide that. All I know is what loses elections and what wins them.

What loses elections are parties that are divided, that are more concerned about battling internally rather than battling for the people they serve.

What loses elections are parties that are out of touch – that are inward looking, debating amongst themselves, rather than looking outwards, listening to the public.

What loses elections are parties that get stuck on the extremes rather than parties that represent the moderate mainstream middle ground.

What loses elections are parties that retreat into the comfort zone of old certainties rather than being prepared to confront new challenges.

Above all else, what lose elections are parties that get trapped in the past rather than facing the future.

And parties that win elections are parties that stay united.

Parties that are connected.

Parties that engage with the public.

Parties that are modern and moderate.

Parties that offer the right vision and the right values.

Parties that have the courage to address their weaknesses in order to play to their strengths.

Parties that are prepared to disavow what has not worked in the past in order that they can own the future.

The future versus the past. This is the prism that delivers victory.

I know from every discussion I have had with everybody at every level within the ALP that this Party is hungry to win. But winning needs more than hunger. It requires courage. You know what the Liberals will throw at you. They will look for dividing lines that give them economic success v economic failure, experience v inexperience, security v risk. They will play the populist card and identify the wedge issues that depress the Labor vote and strengthen theirs. It is a tried and trusted formula. It will require you to make some hard choices and take some tough decisions about where you position your party. But you should feel confident in doing so. In the end Mr Howard’s approach just like Mr Howard himself - belongs to the past, not the future.

You are the future. In Kevin Rudd you have a symbol of a new future. And you have someone who can win. In the British Labour Party we want you to win. More importantly Australia needs you to win. There is a fork in the road. The choice is the future or the past. Let’s make it the future.