Carmen Lawrence sports too many scars and has too much history, not least the undying enmity of Brian Burke’s old mates, ever to contemplate a future leadership role in the Labor Party. But she has certainly set the cat among the pigeons (in the process initiating the endgame for Simon Crean) and has also probably guaranteed her place in the party pantheon. Indeed, those in the party who are bagging her hardest admit that a majority of party branch members support her views on refugees, and her frustrations with the leadership’s incapacity to strike a moral note. That incapacity has become almost a
political virtue—proof that the leadership is now so hard-headed and focused that it ignores its members and responds instead to what the electorate ‘feels’.
‘We need to tell Australians a story about the sort of country we want this to be, what we hope for them and how we think their lives can be improved,’ she said as she marched off the front bench.
‘Certainly we have to be aware of the community’s needs and interests. But we can’t keep responding to what is the short-term view of the most audible section of the community. To develop good policy, Labor has to start with set values and ideals to which we aspire as political activists. Otherwise, why bother? Values and ideals shouldn’t be for decoration; they are not just a preamble to the policy statements. They should be embedded in it in terms of the decisions and the language. And they shouldn’t be abandoned at the faintest whiff of grapeshot.
‘As long as Labor tries to argue the case on Howard’s territory, then he’s the one dictating terms about the political contest and how it’s played out. After all, Labor played along with the moral panic surrounding the boat people instead of getting out there and persuading Australians to a different point of view.’
Throw in a few words about timid leaders promoting policies designed with one eye on the polls and the other on media impact, about forelock tuggers and a lack of a compelling leader, and it was pretty mutinous stuff. Pretty disloyal, too, coming from a person who was a political liability for all of her period as a Keating minister, who was hardly a stunning example of adherence to core values as West Australian minister and premier, and who had made little impression as either a Beazley