Labor's political strategy revealed: to win from second place

Coming up to eight months into his leadership, it’s now clear what state Labor Leader Josh Willie’s electoral strategy is: to win government from second place.

Defying the conventional wisdom of his predecessors Rebecca White and Dean Winter, Mr Willie is not pursuing a “majority of bust” approach. In fact, he’s not even pursuing an “I’m aiming for majority” approach.

Rather, it is very clear that Mr Willie is pursuing an approach where instead of seeking the 18 seats needed to form majority government, he is aiming simply to lift the Labor position to 12 or 13 seats (they currently have 10), and then form government with the support of the Greens and left-leaning independents.

Consistent with that approach, you won’t be seeing Mr Willie ruling out doing a deal with the Greens ahead of the next state election campaign, that’s for sure. And, you can expect to see the Labor hostility towards the Greens that peaked under former Leader Dean Winter, continue to be toned down.

In part, this new approach reflects a level of new-found Labor pragmatism that is to be admired: after 12 years in opposition, the Labor vote is lower than it’s ever been (just 23 per cent according to EMRS’ latest poll), and with the surge of One Nation combined with the increased independent vote, the possibility of Labor getting the close to 50 percent of the vote needed to give them 18 seats looks like a pipe dream.

This new Labor strategy also reflects the ideological approach of Mr Willie who has now very clearly established himself as creature of the Labor left; his new Chief of Staff who has spent the bulk of his career in the social sector; as well as the majority of the Labor caucus.

The strategy can be observed in just some of the recent actions and decisions of the Party, which are all about resecuring their union base.

For example, Labor have strongly backed in the teacher’s union in their recent strike action for higher pay. In fact, they’ve strongly backed the wage claims of all the public sector unions, notwithstanding the budget crisis which Labor likes to tell us about in the very next breath.

In the same vein, we’ve seen Labor opposed to the reshaping of the Department of State Growth and the consequent loss of some 250 jobs. Even non-frontline public sector jobs are sacrosanct to the Labor Party under Mr Willie.

In support of these tactics, Labor has dedicated entire question times to the topics, even parsing the words that various Government Ministers have said about the union movement to play to their union base, ahead of other potentially more attractive political opportunities.

Tax increases too, are now firmly back on the table, and will likely be wielded as a shield by Mr Willie when defending his opposition to any sort of reduction in the size of the public service.

And unlike under Mr Winter, the new Labor Party is definitely no friend of business, proposing for example to seek to legislate a new Easter Sunday public holiday from Opposition, and in an echo of COVID, offering not a word of opposition to the Government ramming new laws through the Parliament last week to enable extraordinary powers, including petrol price capping.

Labor’s previous rock-solid for the salmon industry also appears to have softened in recent months.

Perhaps most notably, in the wake of the Bondi terrorist attack Labor took the decision to oppose the Government’s decision not to cap the number of guns a person can own, and instead proposed to legislate a cap of their own from opposition. With EMRS polling showing overwhelming public support for gun control, no doubt this will be a superficially popular move. However, in doing so Labor are choosing to burn their support with the large sections of rural and regional community they need to win extra seats in Lyons and Braddon. Historically Tasmanian state elections are won in the north, so this is certainly a bold (Yes, Minister-courageous?) play.

The biggest risk with this new Labor strategy is it belies electoral history. The last time Labor comprehensively won an election in in Tasmania was 2006 (that’s 20 years ago, folks) under Labor leader Paul Lennon. Before that, it was under Jim Bacon who despite his union background was an essentially business-friendly Labor right leader.

And of course, Labor’s best recent results in the polls (at least before he blew himself up) was under Mr Winter, who had Labor leading the Liberals for the first time in 20 years with his pro-business approach.

No doubt after 12 years in opposition Labor had to do something different. 

Unfortunately, it seems to me that the Tasmanian Labor have drunk the reverse kool-aid that some in the Liberal Party have – but instead of moving further right, every time they lose they think the solution is to move further left.

The political landscape might have shifted significantly in recent times, but its foundations have not. Elections are still won in the centre, and by moving further to the left Mr Willie is ceding even more centre ground to the Liberals underJeremy Rockliff.

• BRAD STANSIFELD was Chief of Staff to Premier Will Hodgman from 2010-18. He is the owner of research firm Enterprise Marketing and Research Services, and a part-owner of this newspaper.