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Albo’s listening tour … not coming to a theatre near you

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Spare a thought for the Labor Party. Or don’t. See if I care.

This week, while the realisation dawned on Australians that we live in a police state — the best darned police state in the world I hasten to add, Labor leader Anthony Albanese was busily entering into a period of monastic self-reflection, casting aside phonological utterances in the English language, or indeed any other, turning instead to his vast powers of audition.

This is where we are now for the electorally vanquished. Careers are no longer ended, abruptly terminated by the judgment of the people. Many go on. Some are even enhanced. These days the price of penance for political failure is the listening tour.

For people who prefer to live their lives in reality, it stands as a strange concept akin to the Rolling Stones taking the stage where Sir Mick shuns the microphone, Charlie flings the sticks away and Keef and Ronny’s guitars remain unamplified while they stand in silence and listen to the crowd.

Albanese set out on this voyage of edification with intent, defining the broad parameters of his listening tour. There are five ways of listening — discriminative, comprehensive, appreciative, critical and empathetic but Albanese narrowed these down to a breezy one.

There is talking and there is listening, Albo said, and he would do the latter just after he finished, erm, talking.

“I do not want to tell them what I want to hear, that is not listening, that is telling,” he told reporters in Sydney last Sunday. Which is a bit like telling rather than listening but let’s not get too technical here.

Anthony Albanese (left) speaks to the media while Labor candidate for Bass Ross Hart looks on during a press conference in Launceston, Tasmania, on Monday. Picture: Ethan James/AAP
Anthony Albanese (left) speaks to the media while Labor candidate for Bass Ross Hart looks on during a press conference in Launceston, Tasmania, on Monday. Picture: Ethan James/AAP

The following day Albanese took off to Tasmania, hit Brisbane on Tuesday for the first shadow cabinet meeting since the election then headed off to Mackay for more listening.

In total, it was a three-day listening tour with the only interruption a gathering of Albanese’s shiny new front bench where presumably he would have uttered the odd sentence. Let’s call it two days then, unless he managed the difficult feat of placing his breakfast order at his Brisbane hotel by non-verbal communication, possibly semaphore.

Job done, the punters listened to, Albanese resumed verbal communication.

“There’s no point looking at the scoreboard after the match and blaming the umpire or blaming the conditions on the ground,” he said.

“You have to actually accept the outcome and talk with people and ensure that we can do better.”

He’s right but should he have said so or waited for someone else to say it and taken copious notes?

“There’s no point looking at the scoreboard after the match and blaming the umpire or blaming the conditions on the ground,” Albanese, seen here with Queensland fans at the State of Origin in Brisbane, said this week. Picture: Annette Dew
“There’s no point looking at the scoreboard after the match and blaming the umpire or blaming the conditions on the ground,” Albanese, seen here with Queensland fans at the State of Origin in Brisbane, said this week. Picture: Annette Dew

My colleague, Troy Bramston, was in the telling business when he delved into Labor trivia last week and announced that Albanese is the first Labor leader to come from the left since Arthur Calwell and the first Labor leader to come from an inner suburban seat since Bert ‘Doc’ Evatt. These, I’d suggest, are not the most uplifting of auguries for Labor folk.

I suppose it does raise one important question. Does modern Labor suffer from a dearth of Berts and Arthurs? Mais, où sont les Berts ou les Arthurs de l’antan? Perhaps, that’s the problem, not enough Berts or Arthurs, or maybe one of each is one too many. It’s hard to know.

Evatt was not a man for his times. An extraordinary jurist and diplomat, he found Labor politics tougher than say, establishing the state of Israel, a feat for which he deserves considerable credit. But when it came to the fetid business of Labor and its factions which in those days extended all the way from the Spanish Inquisition to Lavrentiy Beria on stilts, Doc resorted to jumping on tables in the caucus room and taking down names of Catholic miscreants, he referred to as ‘Groupies”.

After the post-Labor schism of 1954-55, Evatt led Labor into the federal election in December 1955 and copped the mother of all hidings. He extended an olive branch to the DLP, offering to resign as leader if they came back to the fold. They declined and Doc remained at the helm for another Labor thrashing in 1958.

Both Evatt and Calwell were outspoken advocates for the White Australia policy and viewed people to our north with a deep distrust. Ironically Labor was more One Nation than One Nation is now in Calwell’s time. If someone had explained that many Asians are also Muslims, Calwell may well have spontaneously combusted right there in the House of Representatives.

By the time Albanese had cleared his throat after what must have seemed like decades of silence and taken counsel with his frontbench, Labor politicians like Ed Husic or Andrew Leigh — who is arguably the best economic mind if not in the entire parliament then certainly in the caucus room — were sent packing.

Albanese’s front bench includes more than a few oddities and excludes some of the more talented with actual qualifications.

Anthony Albanese watches Deputy Labor Senate Leader Kristina Keneally during a press conference in Brisbane on Tuesday. Dan Peled/AAP
Anthony Albanese watches Deputy Labor Senate Leader Kristina Keneally during a press conference in Brisbane on Tuesday. Dan Peled/AAP

In the Labor Party, qualifications, aptitude and expertise and all that other optional stuff take second, third and fourth place. There may be a quota established on gender grounds but alas, none for talent or ability. Thus, a lot of old faces have been given a second chance and in some cases a leg up into the shadow cabinet.

Since the election, Kristina Keneally has barely left the airwaves. Handed the Home Affairs shadow portfolio, she is now in constant campaign mode which is odd because the only campaigns she’s been involved in have ended very badly.

Bowen moves into Health. One wonders why he’s not pruning the roses in the backyard. I’m not sure what portfolio that would fall under, possibly Agriculture, but any notion that he would bear responsibility for losing the unlosable has been breezily dismissed.

Bill Shorten should be shuffling around shopping malls in his trackie daks and Ugg boots but he’s been handed the NDIS shadow portfolio as some sort of gold watch for tenure or possibly it is the Labor equivalent of the dreaded participation award.

It’s hard to see how voters will consider Albanese’s ‘new’ Labor but soon enough they’ll make their feelings known.

What was that sound? Don’t worry, Albo. It was probably nothing.

This column was first published in The Australian on June 7, 2019

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