Editor's Insight: Labour needs more than leadership change

If the Labour Party is to have a hope of again influencing the country’s future it must do more than indulge in navel-gazing and choosing a new leader from the average bunch on display.

The rejection of David Cunliffe – which is providing most of the media sport – is part of the public’s fascination with politics. So enjoy while it lasts.

It is instructive that all of the coverage of the leadership issue so far avoids what was also missing during the campaign: the poor choices Labour made on the policy front.

It doesn’t augur well that, over the weekend, Labour supporters on TV said the policies were okay and the only problem was the inability to get them across.

I suggest it was the reverse and if Grant Robertson takes over from Mr Cunliffe the problem will be exacerbated. If anything, Mr Cunliffe is not getting credit for running a good personal campaign as he hammered the policies at every turn.

The turnoff was that these policies would have taken the country in the wrong direction and most voters, even die-hard Labour ones, knew it.

In his debates, Mr Robertson’s defence of Labour policies against Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce showed how far the Labour Party had deviated from its past support of pro-growth economics and efficient government.

The Australian scene shows how political parties recover quickly once they learn this message.

Of course, the public loves a good stoush and the Australian Labor Party has delivered in spades with the Rudd-Gillard battle.

Ms Gillard released her book, My Story, last week and the Australian media have eagerly returned to dig out the dirt all over again.

But the post-Rudd-Gillard leadership of Labor already shows enthusiasm for new direction, with finance spokesman Chris Bowen talking up the need for lower taxes and Senate leader Penny Wong advocating a bigger push for free trade.

Admittedly, Labor in Australia has historically been a pro-growth political force, as it has run more than its share of state governments.

These depend for their popularity for how they deliver on infrastructure, health and other forms of public spending.

But lately, in line with other Labour-style parties internationally, they have been captured by groups more interested in pushing sectional interests and entitlements.

For example, the decline of union power in the private sector has meant Labour is now the defender of public sector unionism and job-costly agendas such as high minimum wages, gender equality and restrictive labour practices.

But in an era of globalisation, calls for economic reform have come mainly from the right with the need for more competitive tax systems, encouragement of innovation through opening the economy to investment and trade, and flexibility in work arrangements to ensure the labour market can respond to changing circumstances.

This is most seen in the urgent need to arrest population decline in the regions, to train highly adaptive workforces and boost private capital.

In the election campaign, Labour’s finance spokesman, David Parker, was among the few to appreciate this but he was swamped by calls to renationalise industries, hand out more subsidies and tax writeoffs, resist pro-development changes to the Resource Management Act, oppose the building of motorways and the broadband network, and discourage mining and oil exploration projects.

Instead of Labour reclaiming the reform agenda, it has been status-quo National that has embraced global competitiveness, foreign investment, immigration and boosting high technology industries, including agriculture.

National’s 10-point business agenda is a modest summing up of the country’s needs; yet only a few years ago Labour had a much more ambitious agenda for change.

National has also moved to the centre and grabbed most of Labour’s health, education and welfare policies, leaving it in the unenviable position of defending high and wasteful spending on public sector jobs and entitlements

What Labour needs is its own version of a growth summit that offers aspirational goals for the broadest range of New Zealanders, businesses and families. But that, I suspect, would soon be captured by left’s activists, who prefer New Zealand to be a remote economic backwater.

That would leave National as the permanent party of the centre in Parliament where Labour is just one of three opposition parties that have a far different vision for New Zealand’s future than a majority of voters are prepared to tolerate.