Fraternal links between UK Labour and Australian Labor may be long and deep but both are walking a fine political line, writes Geoff Kitney.

No-one is quite sure why the great fraternal parties of the workers in the United Kingdom and Australia have different spellings for their party names – the UK’s Labour Party and Australia’s Labor Party.

The actual reason Australia chose the American spelling of “labor” has apparently been lost in the mists of time since the choice was made in the late 19^th century and there are no records to show how or when the decision was taken.

It may simply have been intended as a declaration by party members at the time (who were Australia’s first republicans and wanted a name which distinguished their party from the Labour Party of the Mother Country). Or it may have been, as former Australian Labor deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan says, designed to symbolise that the Labor Party was a political party which was different from and broader than the labour trade union movement.

Whatever the difference in the names, the fraternal links are long and deep.

When the current Australian Labor Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, called newly elected British Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to congratulate him on his landslide election victory he was enacting a ritual practised between the two countries going back a long way.

The relationship is credited with playing a significant part in the rise and ultimate political success of Tony Blair’s New Labour and his Third Way re-invention of the British Labour Party.

Due to long standing friendships with Australian Labor figures Geoff Gallop (a former West Australian premier) and Kim Beazley (a former deputy prime minister), Blair spent some time in Australia in the years before he became leader of the Labour Party in July 1994. He says his thinking about how to govern was significantly influenced by his connections with and observations of Australian Labor, which served for a record five straight terms in government from 1983 to 1996.

In those years, Australian Labor moved away from its leftist history and took a stronghold on the political middle ground. It embraced market-based economic policy, undertaking sweeping reforms which previous conservative governments had long advocated but did little to implement.

Three decades later, Labour/Labor are in power again in both the UK and Australia.

Australian Labor has a two year start on UK Labour. And, in the spirit of the fraternal connections of the past, there is a new opportunity for more cross fertilisation.

Integrity issues have already led to reputational damage, as Starmer quickly discovered to his cost over corporate “freebies”.

But rather than being about good lessons that the British party should take from the Australian party’s experiences in government, this time salutary lessons are more appropriate. This is because the Labor government of Anthony Albanese is, after only a short time in office, struggling to consolidate its grip on power. In fact, on present indications it will struggle to win the next general election, due by next May at the latest. It seems quite likely that it will fall back into minority government, dependent on progressive independents for a parliamentary majority. There is even a chance it will lose government after just one term.

However, there is a fundamental difference between Australian Labor’s position compared to UK Labour at the start of their respective terms in office.

Australian Labor was elected with a wafer-thin (two seats) majority. British Labour came to power in a landslide, winning 411 seats, giving it a 158 seat majority. As of October 28, this stands at 402 seats following the suspension of seven Labour MPs for voting in favour of a Scottish National Party amendment tabled during the debate on the King’s Speech, which called for the government to abolish the two-child benefit limit; the resignation of Rosie Duffield from the Labour Party, citing a number of disagreements with the party’s leadership including the prime minister’s acceptance of gifts and the suspension of Mike Amesbury after an incident captured on CCTV.

Prime Minister Albanese therefore had a limited stock of political capital to govern with whereas Keir Starmer has troves of it.

Because Australia has three-year terms of government compared to the UK’s five, Albanese had to be more prudent about how robustly he chose to use his political capital. Starmer, on the other hand, has lots of capital and years to go before facing the voters’ judgement about how he has spent it.

There is also a fundamental constitutional difference between the UK and Australia. Australia’s Upper House, the Senate, has the power to amend or defeat government legislation, and Labor does not have a Senate majority. The government must persuade a gaggle of independent Senators to vote with it to get laws passed, requiring it to negotiate and, frequently, to compromise.

The Senate is more powerful than the House of Lords, even able to block supply (as it did in 1975) to oust a prime minister and force a general election.

The then opposition-controlled Senate blocked Gough Whitlam’s Labor budget, creating a crisis which was resolved only when the then Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, dissolved Parliament and demanded a new election which resulted in a landslide victory for the conservative Opposition.

Despite these differences, there are good reasons for British Labour to take some lessons from what has happened to Australian Labor in their respective first terms in government.

Perhaps Starmer and Albanese had a chance to swap notes about their experiences on the sidelines of October’s Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Samoa. It was their first face-to-face meeting since both came to power.

With the next election looming, the Albanese government has a thin portfolio of significant achievements. Critics have branded it a “Labor-lite” government, with Prime Minister Albanese accused of being too timid and risk averse. Critics complain that Albanese has erred too far on the side of caution, with opinion polls consistently suggesting that voters are not sure what he and his government really stand for. Some say rather than “Labor-lite” Albanese has been “coalition-lite” (meaning his government is little different to the conservative coalition it replaced).

Insiders, disappointed with the government’s performance, say Albanese chose to try to preserve his political capital rather than risk using too much of it too quickly, resulting in the preservation of policies of the former government which should have been ditched by a Labor government.

There are two obvious examples.

Labor adopted, without any serious consideration of alternatives, the Australia, United Kingdom and United States (AUKUS) nuclear submarine deal announced out of the blue by the previous conservative government near the end of its term in office.

The eye-wateringly expensive deal (estimated at A$368 billion or £190 billion) unceremoniously dumped a contract already negotiated with France for the supply of Australia’s next generation of conventional submarines (for an estimated $90 billion or £46 billion). The conservative government justified the change on security grounds, as part of the United States’ strategy for countering Chinese influence in the Asia-Pacific. But for many in the Labor Party, which traditionally has been sceptical of the conservative case for an ever-closer US alliance, the hasty decision to embrace the AUKUS deal was dismaying to say the least.

At the same time the government resisted intense pressure from Labor ranks to quickly ditch huge tax cuts announced by the previous government – and heavily favouring higher earners – to use for cost-of-living relief for lower income earners. Albanese refused to budge on a pre-election commitment to deliver the previous government’s tax cuts in full – despite the fact that high interest rates and high inflation were hurting Labor’s voter base.

Both decisions dismayed many who had voted for change after a decade of mediocre conservative rule.

There have been other subsequent disappointments on issues such as climate change (not moving fast enough from fossil fuels to renewables), education funding (maintaining high funding for wealthy private schools), an Australian republic (with no move to promote the cause of becoming a republic until at least the next term of government) and action on high-level misbehaviour and corruption (Labor watered down the powers of a proposed national crime authority to win conservative party support for its establishment).

There are good reasons for British Labour to take some lessons from what has happened to Australian Labor in their respective first terms in government.

The Albanese government’s reluctance to take risks has been influenced by its concern that it would immediately expose itself to savage attack from the right-wing conservative media – in particular the Murdoch press which dominates the Australian political media market. This fear is not misplaced. Murdoch’s media outlets have historically been hostile to Labor and the wider labour movement.

Another important factor was that incoming ministers were shocked to discover that the quality of advice from federal bureaucrats had declined since Labor was last in power. Years of politicisation at senior levels and extremely stretched resources following demands by the previous government for bureaucrats to meet efficiency targets had taken a toll.

These have been major factors in the Labor government’s failure to take action against those in the previous government’s civil service responsible for the so-called Robodebt scandal in which thousands of low-income earners were prosecuted for welfare fraud for which they were not responsible.

In the UK the consequences of a civil service no longer fit for purpose appear to have already tripped up the Starmer government.

Also, in the age of social media and its ability to quickly raise public anger, small infringements by government ministers can quickly blow up into damaging political storms. Australian Labor has been punished for such minor matters as Albanese making frequent overseas trips (labelling him Airbus Albo). Integrity issues have already led to reputational damage, as Starmer quickly discovered to his cost over corporate “freebies”.

But in a sign that patience with the Australian government among its supporters is running out, a widely respected elder statesman of the labour movement, Bill Kelty (former secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions), recently launched a strong attack, describing it as a government “mired in mediocrity”.

A trade union leader in the 80s and 90s Kelty worked with the then Labor government to implement a bold economic reform agenda, largely credited with setting the Australian economy on a decades-long productivity and growth boosting path. But Kelty says it is time for another burst of bold economic reform which the government seems too timid to embark upon.

Voters change governments because they want change. They want to see the new people they have entrusted with power do new things to change their circumstances.

Frustrated Labor insiders agree that the Albanese government has been disappointingly reluctant to take more risks.

The biggest risk Albanese has taken was on a promise he made before the last election to give constitutional recognition to indigenous Australians as the original people of Australia and to give them a “voice to parliament”, offering a direct say in the policy making process. The referendum was overwhelmingly defeated just over a year ago, leaving the government – and particularly Albanese – shell shocked and with its political capital severely depleted.

The issue also gave the new leader of the conservative opposition, Peter Dutton – who strongly opposed the referendum and advocated a “No” vote – an early opportunity to promote himself and the Opposition.

Voters – especially Labor voters – saw the referendum as a mistaken priority. Polling showed that by far the biggest issue in Australia was cost of living pressures, especially for lower and middle-income families.

Labor insiders say now that the Albanese government did too little to make its supporters feel that the government understood they were going through hard times and that it was prepared to act boldly to change the course of government after the mistakes and failings of the previous conservative government.

 “We needed to make voters feel that the change of government was worth making,” said a senior Labor MP, who asked not to be named. “I think that is the lesson for all new governments, even in the UK where Labour has a huge parliamentary majority. Voters change governments because they want change. They want to see the new people they have entrusted with power do new things to change their circumstances. As a result, we now have limited time left to get right what we got wrong.” 

The US presidential election result and the global rise of right-wing political parties and “strong-man” leaders pose big challenges to centre-left, progressive parties. UK Labour and Australian Labor need to work even more closely together.

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