Labor reflects on its disunity
Division and disunity were the central reasons for the Labor Government’s election loss, says party powerbroker Senator Don Farrell.
Farrell is facing the unexpected loss of his own seat in the Senate, despite being number two on the party’s ticket.
“Disunity is death; that’s the message from the last six years,” he told ABC Radio this morning.
“The internal divisions caused us to lose the election.
“We weren’t able to overcome the impressions of disunity.”
Farrell’s colleague Penny Wong – for whom he gave up the number one spot on Labor’s senate ticket – agreed the internal divisions were damaging.
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“Overall, we’ve spent a number of years talking about ourselves, had internal arguments in public and have been punished for that,” Wong said.
“All of our achievements were overshadowed by disunity.
“There has to be a line put under it now.
“We had too much lead in our saddlebags.”
While the ALP restricted its South Australian losses in the lower house to the seat of Hindmarsh, where incumbent Steve Georganas lost to Liberal Matt Williams, the party has been routed in the Senate.
Farrell said the popularity of independent Nick Xenophon along with a coordinated push by micro parties had left Labor with just one senator returned out of the six spots available.
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“The last couple of weeks it was pretty clear that Nick was doing well,” he said.
“He’s taken a quota from Labor and almost a quota from the Liberals.
“This system, where a group of politically popular issues and a group of people have decided to use the system to their advantage, it’s had an impact.”
Farrell said the election loss would most likely have been the same if former PM Julia Gillard had been at the helm.
“We ended up where we were going to end up with Julia Gillard.”
Farrell said the party’s divisions should be taken out of the public spotlight, and that meant reversing the rule change back by Rudd where the leader cannot be replaced without a combined vote of the parliamentary party and the rank and file membership.
In July the federal Labor caucus endorsed a plan where the Labor leader would be elected by 50 per cent of MPs and 50 per cent of rank and file members.
The new rules meant the support of 75 per cent of caucus would be required to force a ballot against a sitting prime minister, or 60 per cent for a Labor opposition leader.
The rule changes can be reversed by the caucus, a move Farrell said should be taken.
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