Is Labor Constrained by its Small-Target Strategy?
New Possibilities, New Priorities I
With the dust having settled on the 2022 federal election, it is worth reflecting on Labor’s successful strategy for re-election, and what it means for how reformist the Albanese government will be.
For much of the campaign, the media and many progressives were highly critical of the Labor opposition’s unambitious policy agenda. Clearly, their policy agenda was deliberately ‘small target’, so as to avoid a repeat of the 2019 election scare campaign the Morrison government ran on Labor’s tax and spending program. I would argue that the small target strategy ultimately was the right approach to take, with one crucial caveat: it would be a disastrous mistake if the Albanese government thought it was now bound not to pursue ambitious tax and spending reform in this term of Parliament.
There are, I think, two parts of the critique of Labor’s small target strategy, though this is not often spelt out. The first part of the critique decries Labor’s failure to elevate the standard of political discourse, by not offering anything substantial to discuss. In an ideal political campaign, political parties present new policies to address the nation’s problems. Labor talked about the challenge of inequality, stagnant wages and the cost of living, but did not offer a plan to address any of these things. The second part of the critique is that a small target approach was a poor re-election strategy. Many progressive voters would flock to the Greens and Teal independents, while swing voters would have been uninspired by the Albanese opposition and stuck with the devil they knew (the Coalition).
In the 2022 election… Labor was facing a government with no substantial policy reform agenda of its own.
Clearly, the small target strategy was deliberate and somewhat cynical. It would not be the right call for every election. For example, in 2014 the Coalition reduced their future spending commitments in health and education. Labor criticised this and promised increased health and education spending, which was to be funded by unpopular measures such as abolishing negative gearing and superannuation tax concessions. The platform made political sense: reducing tax concessions is politically bold and might lose votes, but the move allowed Labor to campaign hard on school and hospital funding, which were both important issues with voters. Moreover, the Turnbull government was not prepared to run a scare campaign, and had its own contentious tax reforms, such as company tax cuts and reductions in super tax concessions. The latter policy especially undercut any criticism the Coalition made of Labor’s own reform to tax concessions.
But in the 2022 election, the small target strategy was the right call. As in 2019, Labor was facing a government with no substantial policy reform agenda of its own. An election can only be a genuine contest of ideas if both major parties have a policy agenda. Otherwise, the party with policies is vulnerable to a scare campaign from their opponents — hardly an elevation of national debate.
The problem with the second half of the critique, is that it fails to recognise that fear is a stronger motivating emotion for uninformed swing voters than inspiration, as we learnt in 2019. Historically, opposition parties that have won elections have been effective at reassuring the electorate that they are a ‘safe’ option, a more important factor in electoral success than whether a party has a vision.
Many policy decisions that governments make are not first proposed at elections.
Ultimately, Labor had to weigh up two different kinds of critique it could receive in an election campaign: the first option was criticism that they weren’t offering any policies to address the country’s problems, and the second that their policy agenda was radical, and therefore risky, and would leave a lot of voters worse off than they were before. Labor suffered the second critique during the 2019 election campaign and lost; they chose to weather the first critique in 2022 and won. This is not to say their extensive policy agenda in 2019 was the sole reason they lost that election, or that a small target strategy will guarantee an opposition will win. But Australian electoral history at federal and state level clearly shows that oppositions that work on trying not to appear risky or radical win elections.*
While I have argued here that the small-target policy approach made sense, the argument that Labor is now bound to be a cautious government because it was a cautious opposition is seriously flawed for many reasons. Firstly, the idea that most of a government’s future policy agenda is known and debated during an election campaign is largely not borne out by Australian political history.
Many policy decisions that governments make are not first proposed at elections. This should be remembered by progressives who assume Labor’s small target approach in opposition guarantees they will be a do-nothing government, and by conservatives who might argue that Labor is somehow morally bound to eschew any ambitious tax and spending changes.
The principal reason governments often embark on unexpected reforms is because they are routinely responding to changing social and economic circumstances. No one during the 2019 federal election would have imagined that in a year’s time the Morrison government would implement the most significant fiscal stimulus of any Commonwealth government. And yet, the devastating Covid-19 induced recession demanded such a response. Ultimately, the real challenge for the Albanese government will be to explain to voters why changing economic circumstances require progressive reform to tax and spending that were not discussed before the election. If they can accomplish this, then their small-target campaign need not be a restriction to reform.
*Howard (1996), Rudd (2007) and Abbott (2013) at the Federal level and Bracks (2009), Carr (1995) and Beattie (1998) at State level are all classic examples of ‘safe’ or small-target opposition victories.
Connor Harvey is a semi-regular contributor to Statecraft, and a member of the Australian Labor Party. This article is the first in a three-part series by Connor on the possibilities and priorities for the new Albanese Government. You can read the next in the series here, and the third and final installment here.
Thanks to Samuel Chamberlain and Tom Watson for editing this piece.
