stoush.net

“If they’re shooting at you, you must be doing something right”

…Or so it would seem anyway for Labor at the moment. As any two-bit analyst would tell you, the last two weeks have been tough for Labor. And as they were all saying until the trio of the Morgan, Galaxy and Newspoll results came through – it must really be the end of the honeymoon this time.

Not so it seems. As Peter Hartcher observed in his brand-spanking new blog:

The true surprise in today’s poll is another angle entirely. It’s that Kevin Rudd has not been hurt in any apparent way by his new industrial relations policy. If anything, Rudd Labor has only benefited from the policy.

John Howard has railed against it for weeks, business lobby groups have been slamming it at every opportunity, yet Labor’s share of the vote has actually improved. And Rudd’s approval has strengthened.

This suggests that the voting public is so concerned about Howard’s Work Choices that it will reward Rudd for standing up to it, rather than punish him for upsetting business.

This view appears to be confirmed by the Newspoll that shows that despite being satisfied with the Budget, people are still declaring an intent to vote for Labor. IR is trumping the broader economic debate. This is surely due in large part to the ALP reducing points of difference on basic economic management while highlighting the gulf between it and the Coalition on IR.

To emphasise the gulf, it doesn’t hurt to see business seeking to belt Rudd and Gillard about the head and body with ever more desperate attacks, like the so-called “Rudd risk”. It’s rubbish of course, and Heather Ridout told us so, as reported by the West:

Australian Industry Group chief executive office Heather Ridout, normally an ardent supporter of government workplace policy, said it was not even clear if the Rudd levy was actually reality.
“I don’t think that’s happening,” Ms Ridout told reporters.
She warned anyone who increased prices on the possibility of a Labor government would be dealt with by the free market.

“The market will bear what the market will bear,” she said.
“In manufacturing you can’t go around jacking up prices, you lose market share so I don’t know about these jacking up prices activities. In a competitive market in which most of our members operate, (there are) very small margins.”

And so we come to the ALP ‘leaking’ internal polling that suggests that voters really really don’t like Workchoices:

The nationwide survey of 500 voters by Labor’s pollster, UMR Research, done early last week before the budget on Tuesday night, also showed a cool response to the Government’s Work Choices law. Asked to assess the impact of Work Choices on working families, the poll found that 16 per cent said it was good, 8 per cent said it made no difference and 57 per cent said it was bad.
Asked whether Work Choices was good, bad or made no difference to the personal situation of respondents, 10 per cent replied that it was good, 60 per cent said it made no difference, and 27 per cent said it was bad, according to informed Labor sources.

Bryan Palmer at OzPolitics is right when he notes:

So why has Labor leaked this poll? The SMH speculated three reasons. First to tell business that Labor is sticking with with its current IR policy prescription. Second, to solidify the message that Labor is on a winner with IR rollback. Third, to reinforce in the minds of voters that WorkChoices is bad because most people believe it is bad.
I agree with the SMH on its assessment of the likely motivations. I also suspect the leak was designed to firm up waverers within the Labor Party (and the mining unions) who may have wanted to give some concessions to the business push for a continuation of AWAs.

So maybe the watering down of the ALP’s policy might not happen. It shouldn’t – the ALP should hold the line, not just because it’s good for the labour movement, not just because it appears to be good politics, but also because it’s good economics. Via OzPolitics I also read Peter Martin’s interesting post where he puts it that Workchoices is actually bad for productivity. He writes:

The government’s own figures suggest that Keating-style enterprise agreements paid Australia huge productivity dividends. They suggest that moving away from them has set our productivity performance back.

And yet, Labor’s leader Kevin Rudd and its deputy leader and industrial relations spokesman Julia Gillard have been reluctant to make that case. They have been reluctant to mount the very plausible argument that Keating-style agreements enhance productivity growth whereas Howard-style agreements hold it back.

It is an argument waiting to be made, by someone other than Keating himself.

So what more could the ALP want? Good polls, good policy and being shot at by the right people. Maybe it’s time to quit worrying about watering down the IR policy, and instead don the kevlar and get stuck into it.