Why should we listen to the reflections of a 76-year-old former union leader?
Because Bill Kelty was one of the economic architects of Australia’s decades of prosperity, thanks to the key role he played in the 1980s building bridges between politicians, the business community and the trade union movement.
As secretary of the ACTU, Kelty drove an agenda during the Hawke and Keating governments that cemented the economic reforms that have made this country the wealthy society it is today.
We are one of the most prosperous nations in the world.
The only threat to this, according to Kelty, is the continued timidity of today’s politicians.
Since then, Australia has benefited from those reforms (along with some of those of the Howard government).
Led by politicians too timid to live up to the successes of their predecessors.
Despite being a Labour man through and through, Kelty did not mince his words when recently asked to assess the performance of the Albanese Labor government.
He described them as “mired in mediocrity.”
Labour movement wise man Bill Kelty (above with Bill Shorten) threw a three-word grenade at Anthony Albanese’s government
“People are not impressed when politicians tell them – or at least imply – that a tax cut has solved their problems paying their bills, especially a tax cut that leaves them paying more taxes than they did two years ago,” he said.
The former union leader is referring to inflation-driven GST hikes, coupled with gradual tax bracket increases (where workers earn more and move into higher tax brackets), which have played a key role in the country’s brief return to a budget surplus, meaning widespread deficits are projected for years to come.
Kelty says the government is not doing enough to help younger Australians, and that assistance requires a new round of major economic reforms that the political class appears unwilling to risk embracing.
Rather than address the ideas of one of Labour’s most successful policymakers, when the Prime Minister was asked about Kelty’s comments in a morning speech today, he dismissed the criticism:
“I don’t accept that premise,” Albo said, before unleashing a word salad of supposed government achievements that he says should lead voters to re-elect his Labour government for a second term.
An opinion poll yesterday indicated that Labor was trailing the Coalition by 48-52 per cent in the two-party vote, and that the Labor primary vote would fall to just 30 per cent. This suggested that a hung parliament was now the most likely election outcome.
An opinion poll on Monday delivered a gloomy message from voters to the prime minister.
The Prime Minister’s stated achievements, such as “making a difference to the transition to net zero emissions” and restoring “our international relationships”, fall into the category Kelty identified as falling far short of the kind of major reforms the nation really needs.
Kelty says the government “needs to tackle much more significant reform.”
“What we don’t need is a government that congratulates itself and tells people it has really cared about them and looked after them,” Kelty added, in a scathing assessment that Labour strategists should take note of.
The problem with the modern Labour Party is not limited to the Prime Minister’s timidity. The former trade union leader also criticised claims by Treasurer Jim Chalmers for major reforms to the operations of the Reserve Bank and pension systems.
“We don’t need the government to tell us that real reform is about changing the structures of the Reserve Bank,” Kelty said, adding that Labour’s proposed changes to tax unrealised profits were “political poison”.
Labor has been reluctant to reform since its former leader Bill Shorten lost the “can’t lose election” in 2019, pushing through a raft of major reforms on dividends and investment property, among others.
You could say the problem with that Labour agenda was that, while it was bold, it did not do what Labour did in the 1980s and 1990s: promote reforms that included a mix of changes, rather than simply hitting the rich with higher taxes in the name of more government spending.
In the turbulent days of the 1980s and 1990s, Labor also pushed for reform in government, rather than from opposition, before winning government under Bob Hawke at the 1983 election.
The Hawke and Keating governments became the longest-serving Labor administration since Australia’s oldest political party was founded more than 100 years ago.
It is perhaps telling that, while working as a Labor Party staffer for a leading member of a left faction in the Hawke and Keating era, Albo was a staunch ideological opponent of many of the microeconomic changes that Hawke and Keating introduced, arguing internally against their merits.
