2016-06-09
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — I think it would be a good thing for democracy if Labor got over its current existential crisis. It is not my job to help its members run their party better. It is still one of the major parties in Australia, and for the sake of democracy we need them to be in fighting form. In 1890 the party was formed, and by 1907 it controlled both houses of federal Parliament, but it is pretty unlikely that it will control an Australian parliament ever again — except maybe Queensland, which only has one house, and I am not entirely sure Labor actually controls that one at the moment — because it regularly poles around the 33 per cent mark. When Gough Whitlam lost in 1975 it was with 42.8 per cent of the vote, but when Julia Gillard won it was with 37.99 per cent, which was only one-third of a per cent better than Mark Latham had done, so she was actually very good and actually probably the best campaigner in that respect in terms of winning government on such a small vote.
Labor needs to develop a reason for existence, a new historical mission and a plan to achieve it. It will not be the environment, because the Greens are the think tank and the driving force on that, but maybe some of the MPs on the Labor side could actually, I recommend, take a junket to the multiparty democracies of the Nordic area that they once admired so much.
To access full speeches and debates please visit http://hansard.parliament.vic.gov.au/isysadvsearch.html where you can search Victorian Hansard publications from 1991 onwards.