Labor has lost the art of opposition: be smart, be tough and have a plan

NSW Labor Party elder Michael Knight – best known for his role as the minister for the Sydney Olympics – gave a sobering speech in March about the fortunes of opposition leaders. Knight began: “Leading a main opposition political party in any parliament in Australia is a temporary job, not a career. It either ends in becoming leader of a government, or it ends in tears.”

Speaking at the conservative-aligned think tank The Sydney Institute, Knight – who served for two decades in NSW Parliament – could not have known what was facing his party just two months later. However, Knight’s speech, titled Rock Stars or Dogged Competitors? How to pick an Opposition Leader, could not have been more prescient.

NSW Labor is facing its latest existential crisis sparked by a byelection loss in a seat it was never likely to win. Despite plenty in the party talking up its chances of being able to snare the coal-rich electorate of Upper Hunter, the Nationals retained the seat it has held for the best part of a century.

The loss itself was not Labor’s problem. Rather, its plummeting primary vote – which saw just one in five people put the party no.1 on the ballot paper – has unearthed deep-seated disunity and dysfunction in the 10-year-old opposition.

Labor leader Jodi McKay finally lost the grip on her job on Friday, resigning with a message to those who undermined her. “It is clear that although I was elected leader in a democratic ballot, there are those within our party who have never accepted the outcome of that process,” an emotional McKay said.

Chris Minns, who has twice contested the leadership, will be a contender to replace McKay, but MPs close to Michael Daley also insist he will run.

Daley, a former finance and police minister, lost the 2019 election after some late campaign bungles, including referring to “Asians with PhDs taking our kids’ jobs.”

The latest crisis in the parliamentary wing of NSW Labor would be infuriating Knight, who used his Sydney Institute address to outline the three simple rules for opposition leaders. He spread his criticism across Labor oppositions, although there is little doubt he had McKay in his sights.

Knight says popularity isn’t everything (he pointed out John Howard and Bob Carr were not popular in opposition) but there are three non-negotiable attributes for an opposition leader: “high intelligence, resilience and political judgment”. And constant negativity towards the government gets you nowhere.

“Above all, I want someone who thinks how to win the next election, how to progress that plan and how to implement a defined agenda and government,” Knight said. “I’m always wary of the leadership aspirant who believes that voters will choose them over the incumbent prime minister, chief minister or premier simply because they are a better person, or more attractive or more deserving.”

McKay was elected as leader in mid-2019 after a drawn-out rank-and-file ballot process that saw her prevail convincingly over Minns. Speaking after the byelection loss earlier this week, McKay stressed she was the democratically elected leader, a warning aimed squarely at her detractors. But she also took “responsibility” for the loss.

“I have conviction in what this Labor Party can do and my role in rebuilding it,” she said. “The task ahead of me is significant but there are people in this state that need a Labor Party.”

Long-term Labor strategist Bruce Hawker, who worked as chief-of-staff to Mr Carr including during his seven years as opposition leader, fears the key problem facing NSW Labor is that it has an “inability to understand the nature of opposition”.

“The tragedy of the Labor Party in this day and age is that we can all remember the shearers’ strike of 1890 but we don’t have any idea of how we won the last election,” Hawker says. For NSW Labor, the last time they won government from opposition was in 1995, when Carr defeated John Fahey. “That’s a real problem. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You just need the right people to do the forensic work and you need to have a focused plan. None of this is rocket science.”

Hawker, who has also worked for Kevin Rudd and was drafted to help former leader Daley in the 2019 state election, says “the more things change, the more they stay the same”.

“We had all the same issues then as we have now. Tolls were a big issue in the 1980s and 90s, privatisation was really a centre of great concern for the public. Corruption was a major issue and in opposition, we were taking a lead role on all of this,” Hawker says.

“You need to have your opposition staff operating like a really focused investigative unit. You go after the government on issues that you know are in the public interest and you offer an alternative view rather than just become reactive.”

Despite the significant issues plaguing the Berejiklian government, NSW Labor is locked in a leadership stalemate and has spent the last week talking about itself. After months of bemoaning a lack of airtime on the back of the government-led response to the pandemic, Labor is in the spotlight but for all the wrong reasons.

And this is at the heart of Labor’s problems, according to Hawker.

Ultimately, he says, there is a very simple question NSW Labor needs to answer. “Do they want to form a government, or remain impotent in opposition”