Labor is founded on adversarialism. It begins with the Marxist assumption that there is a fixed amount of money in the economy, and that its energy should be focussed on attempts to redistribute this to its own favoured groups. Membership of these changes from time to time, but generally they can be seen as whoever has less. Should a miracle happen whereby pensioners and retirees become richer than company directors, it would not faze Labor one bit; they would just reverse their redistribution channels and go on happily from there. It doesn't care how wealthy people get their wealth or what they do with it; the crucial issue for Labor is how to take it away from them.

The Liberal Party has at least a glimmering of understanding that the money supply is not fixed, and can be increased -- or diminished -- via government policy. They show a rudimentary understanding of the fact that some people work harder than others, and some contribute more value to our society than others -- not necessarily the same thing. Their approach is to try and enlarge the pie rather than attempting to make sure that everybody gets exactly the same-sized slice. In short, they understand 20th-Century economics, and have at least one foot in the real world.

Australia regularly shows its collective wisdom in electing Labor governments when unfairness and injustice becomes a major problem, and kicking them out again as soon as the problem is alleviated. Unless and until Labor returns to the real world, this cycle will continue indefinitely.

An interesting article that covers the electoral loss by Labor with perspective.
Further to the points raised by Marko Beljac - there are some causal factors that are not widely acknowledged.
2007 presented hope of reform with the rejection of Workchoices. Yet the campaign against individual contracts, removal of penalty rates, sick leave, annual leave, collective bargaining and other worker rights has been lost and Workchoices introduced by stealth. This can be attributed to the growing number of short term or fixed (individual) contracts offered by employment agencies and labour hire firms. Casual and insecure employment has grown to 50%.
For a worker, moving from short term contract to contract, union membership is pointless as unions have little influence over employment terms or contractual situations and it is financially not a sound proposition when/if unemployed between contracts.
Labor failed to factor in that 50% of the workforce is in insecure employment and under employed.
Understanding that "economy and jobs" were electoral drivers: the use of broad terminology to describe voter concerns without giving credence to causal factors was a significant catalyst for voter mistrust and lack of confidence that Labor had an appreciation of a very large number of people's circumstance or any inclination to make tangible changes or workplace reforms.
Meanwhile unions are losing members and are unable to reverse the damaging effects of individual contracts, ever increasing casualization of the workforce and rise of insecure employment.

'The primary vote of the ALP is now at a post-war low. It won't sustainably get any higher...' and today it fell even further.

Which just goes to show less people today, than at the election, care about the internal machinations of this bunch of dysfunctional wacko wastrels.

And that trend, under 'Power' Bill Shorten will accelerate rather than reverse.

...One "LIKE" for imajulianutter. Exactly correct!

SES

Certainly, the ALP and the unions woefully fail to recognise the dangers of rapidly deteriorating workforce security in Australia and most Western countries. However, that doesn’t explain why the electorate voted for a party that is blatantly committed to destroying permanent employment, worker rights and what is left of the welfare safety net.

The real problem is the media. The electorate is being kept deliberately ignorant of how toxic the neoliberal agenda is and what it is doing to their own and their children’s future employment and financial security. Perhaps when the last permanent job has gone, workhouses and debtors’ prisons have made a return (a development now being seriously looked at by the Greek government) and octogenarians working to support themselves has become a common sight, the electorate might finally wake up to how much the neoliberal media has snowed them.

The article looks at many past and present ideologies which is way off the mark.

There no such scales of political balance about left wing socialism or other, the majority of voters want competence and good policy. Deceitful policy and incompetence is what the ALP delivered with the result they got.

If you want to deliver a healthy social programme you need to be able to pay for it ..... politics are not a field of dreams practice.

The ALP was creating many strawman phoney class wars as their strategy which might work in the UK but they don't work here.

Unlike this piece, may I suggest what will help policy makers from both sides make sure that Australia both prospers and shares the spoils in a fair way?

Well, research of course that highlights the strengths and weaknesses of policy trends, with truths from good research hardly likely to be ignored in the face of adequate public scrutiny. I, for one, still have faith n Aust's media; just look at the way they jumped over travel expenses of coalition.

This crap about media, false perceptions about Labor's economic performance, and Labor and trade unions being the good guys we should all turn to is, well, simply bs.

My humble opinion, complex issues have strengths and weaknesses from the point of view from all sides of the political spectrum.

Lets have the real debates, rather than bs blaming neoliberalism, and lets see which party is left standing in terms of who delivers and who does not.

Hi Marko,

I still have some difficulty accepting the premise that there is both an ALP and Trade Unions.

Much analysis has been based upon the assumption that there are two entities. Further, the focus upon Trade Unions has been directed at reform related to the behavior of Trade Union officials. Whilst the issues of ALP reform have been directed at policy development, alignment with their support base, internal structure, their ability to self manage and thus better able to implement policy.

Cultural and Corporate change management disciplines paint a quite different picture.

Enterprise Mapping, Entity Relationship Analysis and Business Engineering Processes paint a clear picture that there are indeed two entities however, they are not what we are expected to accept.

The two entities are the unions fee paying membership and the Party. The Party comprises the trade union leaders, officials and staffers of every description from the ALP, the Unions and caucus, they are the Party and they are now inseparable.

They provide the power base, the financial base, the electoral base, the decision making base, the management base, the career path base, the political/ideological base and a permanent source of internal conflict.

This forms an entity of self interest, it is internally focused, permanently in conflict with itself, incapable of seeing any externalization and totally dependent upon factional dispensation of favors.

As a direct consequence this political mélange is not capable of even seeing a need for regeneration let along achieving it.

Today’s “ALP/Union Leadership” hybrid contains the seeds of its own destruction. We look for logic and common sense, search for signs that it will connect with its roots, we ask what it stands for and we ask if it understands why it lost the last election yet continues firmly stuck in reverse gear.

When examined as a corporate/political/cultural entity the first thing you see is there is nothing to see, no structure, no glue, no directional mechanism and no control over itself.

It simply does not exist, it is a figment of its own imagination and doomed.

Killarney
I couldn't have expanded better.

As a formerly active Labor supporter, I simply could not vote for the ALP in 2013. After the best part of 10 years enduring the impacts of insecure employment while raising a family. My attitude was extremely hopeful in 2007, I actively campaigned for Your Rights @ Work and Labor. By 2010, I was dubious that insecure employment was being taken seriously and disappointed by the "You can't unscramble an egg" approach to Howard's IR changes but still hopeful that they would re-invent the egg or produce a new egg that reversed the growing trend of short term and casual employment. By 2013 the agenda had obviously not improved and the problem is almost mainstream at 50% of the workforce, Labor had no chance of securing my vote.

When the Ford factory in Geelong announced that it was having difficulties and would likely close in 2016 - it seemed perverse to me that Julia Gillard could describe the hurt and pain in affected workers eyes. At the same time my family had a guaranteed 6 weeks of income- my husband was in another short term job - Oh to be a Ford worker with the luxury 3 years future job security.

The neo-liberal agenda is being largely ignored by media - few journalists had the balls to report or seek explanation for the Workfare scandal in Britain which involved Kevin Rudd's wife and could not be further away from Labor values and principle. Labor lost by failing to deliver sound IR policy and secure jobs. Trusting someone as wormy as Rudd who is seemingly proud or oblivious that his family fortune came off the back of the woes of the world's unemployed was a step too far. I could not propagate or