Labor’s narrative is solid, but there’s much work ahead

A contrast between Labor’s election campaign this year and the one it presented Australians in 2019 has been the party’s decision not to swamp voters with a grab-bag of policies. Instead, Labor is offering a relatively small, but safe, spread of promises in its bid to win government. That was apparent on Sunday at the party’s campaign launch in Perth, where the message to voters was to envisage a future of hope and optimism.

While the launch was heavy on Labor’s traditional strengths – universal healthcare, jobs and skilling, social inclusion, climate change initiatives, Indigenous recognition, and so on – the package of policies could be whittled down to a handful of headlines. They might be summarised as: energy investment, and climate change initiatives; infrastructure investment; manufacturing; jobs and training; and improving the “care” sector, which encompasses childcare, aged care, access to general practitioners and the price of medicines.

For the first time in this election campaign, Labor gathered the strands of disparate policies and wove them into a more cohesive narrative. “No one held back, and no one left behind” was a theme suggestive of a government that would encourage advancement while supporting those who need a leg-up.

Labor leader and prime ministerial aspirant Anthony Albanese, only just back in public after a bout of COVID-19, was confident, persuasive and forceful, which would surely have been a relief to the Labor campaign team. There was energy, at last, and no apparent slip-ups.

Albanese promised more support for local manufacturing to keep jobs and skills in Australia and to embolden innovation. That includes a $1 billion investment to encourage the local manufacture of batteries using highly sought, Australian-mined nickel and lithium, which are mostly exported to make batteries overseas.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese with former prime minister Paul Keating at the Labor Party campaign launch in Perth on Sunday.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

He also promised better regional roads and highways, improved rail networks and a commitment to bring in a network of charging stations to support the influx of electric vehicles, including in regional and remote areas.

And, as part of a commitment to eradicate the “persistent structural barriers” that affect women in the workforce, Albanese vowed to make gender pay equity an explicit goal of the Fair Work Act. That move underscores Labor’s earlier indication of support for better pay and conditions for women in the aged care and childcare sectors.

All this is aimed at improving productivity and increasing workforce participation, which, in theory, would generate stronger and sustainable economic growth. The overarching message was for voters to consider how the future might look. If the Coalition’s campaign message is about who you can trust and who you must fear – a deliberately divisive pitch – Labor has embraced the warm and fuzzies: it talks about reuniting the nation and bringing people together.

It imagines states and federal governments alike, people from all walks of life, pulling in the same direction so Australia can achieve better economic and social outcomes than those that resulted from nine years of Coalition government.

There has been an unfortunate tendency in this campaign to treat the election as a presidential campaign, a one-on-one tournament to see who comes out as prime minister. The Australian parliamentary system, though, hinges on teamwork, on having a skilled frontbench of ministers to support the leader. Albanese pointedly referenced his team yesterday, and he highlighted the expected co-operation of the states, which for now are mostly led by Labor.

But big questions remain about whether Albanese is the person who can best pitch Labor’s message to voters in marginal seats, and particularly in electorates in Melbourne’s outer suburbs, where state Labor is on the nose.

His performance was upbeat. Labor’s narrative was coherent, unified, and solid. But Albanese still has much work to do to sell this emerging story, and to make Labor the choice of those voters who are still undecided.

Gay Alcorn sends an exclusive newsletter to subscribers each week. Sign up to receive her Note from the Editor.

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