It’s time for Labor to embrace its villain era

Whenever I see Tanya Plibersek interviewed or profiled, I think, “Does she believe she’s one of the goodies?” Yes, asking whether the environment minister sees herself as a “goodie” is innately stupid, but I am an innately stupid person, shaped by a lifetime of innately stupid politicians and politics. 

The media, Labor and its supporters have long framed Plibersek as “the good cop” in a party framed similarly. Since Kevin ‘07, modern Labor’s point of pride hasn’t been its policy achievements, but rather its ability to differentiate itself from the Coalition and its fringe associates (like the Nationals) — a differentiation it leaned heavily upon while in opposition.  

But when in government, it’s much harder to spin yourself as the underdog white hat in a shootout with black hats. Plibersek has the unfortunate role of being the face of a party that enjoys the idea of “climate-friendly” policymaking while being wholly at the beck and call of the mining industry.

It’s an unenviable position, especially for someone who likes to come across as a climate progressive, yet is fated to rattle off gibberish talking points to bolster the loopy logic of “nature credits”, “green corridors” and environmentally conscious fracking. Just last week she tweeted a picture of herself sorrowfully gazing out the window of a private jet at the devastated Murray-Darling Basin, like a war widow with stocks in land mines and mustard gas.

Her response to any criticism — valid or otherwise — is, naturally, defensiveness, as the truth of her situation would open up an undeniably existential line of self-doubt that would cannibalise her public image just as surely as it would cannibalise the party’s. 

What has emerged in Labor is “the radical centre”: a viscerally reflexive and rabid moronitude wielded by the party and its rusted-ons, a force field to shield it from the psychic shock of a simpler truth, that its members are no longer the goodies, and perhaps never had been. With the “L” in ALP having drifted away from “Labor” to something closer to “Landlord”, the party has positioned itself as little more than the opposition to its cartoonishly corrupt and culture war-pilled counterpart, taking on a two-faced stagnancy, disregarding the banal evils of its past and present to settle into a shrugging, contemptuous beatitude, insisting on its essential goodness while enacting policies that say otherwise. 

Needless to say, this goes beyond environmental policies. Labor’s recent housing scheme is a bureaucratic birdbox kept together by duct tape, expired nicotine patches and compromise. Likewise, its approach to Centrelink and pension payments hinges on distancing itself from the murderous intent and criminality of robodebt, while skirting around the obvious yet politically dicey fix (see: giving a columnist at the Oz an aneurism) that is raising the rate.

So many of Labor’s policies are developed to address a problem by circling it as if caught in a dying star’s gravitational pull — orbiting action, without ever committing to it, hoping no one minds or notices when you finally drift off into nothingness. Perhaps it is the stark, doomstruck reality of environmental collapse that makes the optics of the radical centre seem laughable. 

When Bernard Keane talks about Plibersek and the government following the “law” regarding a new mine, it’s hard not to let one’s mind drift into fantasies of going “Bickle-mode” as we’re politely asked to ignore the now thumping ticking of mother nature’s doomsday clock. The problem with “pragmatic” and “sensible” plodding policy responses to the equivalent of a rapidly incoming apocalyptic meteor strike is that they can’t help but come off as a bit silly, or worse, cruel.

The idea of a government rendered powerless by the law — coerced into making decisions that will hasten devastating ecological collapse — is farcical when you think about the countless barbarous policies it employs in spite of the law. Labor’s refugee policy is one egregious example, presenting itself as the humane alternative to the Gulag archipelago private prison death march that was the Coalition’s modus operandi, while being all but identical (if a tad more shamefully hush-hush) and just as illegal. When this point is raised, we’re offered a gaggle of media-savvy circular babbling, dribbled out by people who can’t reconcile which side of history they’re on with their paranoid mewling about being a “Good German”. 

We have a party gagging on an identity crisis as though it were a particularly troublesome post-nasal drip. The ongoing response to Labor’s inability to merge its lore (Albanese is the son of a single mum who grew up in public housing) with its reality (pension support below the poverty line in the worst housing crisis in the nation’s history) is a hissy-fit of arm-folding, self-imposed stasis — a self-perpetuating tantrum that demands obsequiousness from the beholder and titty-time from a base that itself is becoming ossified, wandering around the empty halls of its hallowed past like Miss Havisham in an oversized, tattered It’s Time shirt. 

The only way to discontinue the daily whiplash is for the government, the ALP and its zealots to stoop down, dust off and finally don the black hat. The main source of Labor’s discomfort seems to be its unwillingness to look in the mirror. It’s painful and tedious to watch. Say what you want about Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton, but they’ve long known who and what they are and always act accordingly. The government’s confusion about who and what they are only serves to make them look daft.

It’s time for Plibersek, Albo and Labor to embrace their villain era. After all, they’ve been in it for some time. 

Is it time for Labor to come to terms with its true nature? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.