Economy
After Shorten’s shabby Milne send-off, can Labor’s Greens resentment end?
Bill Shorten’s response to Christine Milne’s resignation was pretty shabby, but it was also revelatory. After all this time, the ALP – and particularly its right wing – is still unable to process the reality of Australia’s political fragmentation.
Shorten’s send-off for Milne was, to borrow a phrase, “weird and graceless”. After a couple of lines of perfunctory, clearly insincere congratulations to Richard Di Natale, he vented the issues he shares with large sections of the ALP’s leadership:
Labor’s priority is to protect living standards, jobs and a secure economic future. The Greens have other priorities. I’m proud to lead the only political party that gives members a say in choosing their leader.
Why draw attention to an election where members voted overwhelmingly for his opponent, and where his own supporters’ conduct has been under scrutiny? Because none of this comes from a rational place.
Why choose this moment to indulge in bromides about jobs and the economy? Because of a compulsion to repeat the only real rhetorical response that Labor have ever really managed to generate to the smaller party. The fact that it has no discernible effect does not seem to have led anyone to think that it should be abandoned.
The stimulus in this case was a successful, drama-free leadership transition from Milne to Di Natale. Remember that a large part of the reason that Labor is now in opposition is Shorten’s own role in the undermining Rudd, and then, eventually, Gillard. The contrasting spectacle of a party negotiating this process with goodwill and a modicum of maturity may have been too much to bear.
It’s one of a long series of desperate helicopter punches that the ALP have thrown at every hint of Green success. Just over a month ago they added two lower house seats in NSW and maintained a strong upper house contingent. Labor sources were reported as saying they were the kind of people who “go to restaurants and are more worried about how the chicken was treated than whether the waiter is earning the minimum wage”.
Time and again, we see the ALP desire to lash out at the Greens triumphing over good sense. It’s all ultimately self-defeating because …