Why Labor lost

What might we say, firstly, about the proximate contingent causes for Labor's election loss?

Putting aside the flood of qualitative, interpretative, analyses for the moment a good empirical place to start would be with exit polls, which in part tell us not only how but why people voted the way they did. According to the Climate Institute both climate change and the carbon tax were not very significant electoral drivers (5% and 3% respectively singled these out). The main issues were the economy and jobs (31%), cost of living (15%) and healthcare (13%). Asylum seekers was but the fifth most important issue (7%).

Among Coalition voters specifically 40% nominated the "stronger five pillar economy" policy of the Coalition, 24% the "end of waste and debt", and 18% "stopping the boats."

Very little can be found here regarding the leadership ructions within Labor; it is not even a category. It is important, nonetheless, because Labor, to a significant though not total degree, was seen as a having a highly dysfunctional party. The instability at the top fed the notion that Labor were incompetent economic stewards in globally fragile economic times.

Objectively, there are no reasons why Labor should be seen as woeful economic managers compared to the Coalition. Labor was more prepared to stimulate a fragile economy, was more prepared to move beyond the resource based two speed economy, and was more prepared to create an economic framework anticipating the future transformation of energy generation. To all this we might add that the Liberal Party hardly had any policies for voters to warm to; the five pillar policy was nothing but a melange of empty slogans that would have done Tony Blair and George W Bush proud.

On economic management perception, not reality, was critical.

The great tragedy of this, naturally, is that there was no crisis in the Labor Party following June 2010 over the leadership. Julia Gillard overwhelmingly enjoyed the confidence of her comrades in caucus. A massive campaign waged by the corporate press, especially the Murdoch press, in association with Kevin Rudd continually destabilised her leadership.

The corporate media, with the conniving participation of Rudd, successfully created the perception that Labor was a dysfunctional party facing perennial crisis over its leadership, and it was this corporate agitprop, again with Rudd in tow, that had most voters perceiving that Labor were poor economic managers.

Though debt and deficit were important for Coalition voters in reality the differences between the two sides was slight; both were committed to returning the budget to surplus as soon as possible in accordance with the dominant neoliberal consensus. Labor was so committed to this that only until the very end of its term in office did it put, temporarily, the objective aside, but only after agreeing with the neoliberals for years that this was a crucially important policy objective, certainly more important than redistributing wealth in an increasingly unequal Australia.

The policy back flip, at best, was too little, too late and, at worst, fed the perception of poor economic management.

Structurally, one of the most significant issues is that labour movements pretty much everywhere are weaker and corporations, and the parties that represent their interests, are stronger. This is a structural condition throughout most, if not all, of the Western world.

Nicholas Reece, a Public Policy Fellow at the University of Melbourne, correctly observed that "in most advanced democracies, left of centre parties have lost their electoral mojo."