Why Labor lost

The reasons that he outlines for this, however, are fallacious; he states, "there have been underlying changes in the values and policy outlook of the electorate that many left-of-centre parties have failed to respond to."

In actual fact the values and policy outlook of the electorate has remained broadly social democratic. Even in the United States, as pointed out by the political scientist, Thomas Ferguson, the public rejected the values and policies promoted by the Reagan Revolution. In Australia, research by the sociologist Michael Pusey makes similar findings.

It is for this reason that neoliberalism in the West, but not just here, has been accompanied by attacks on functioning parliamentary democracy. These attacks come in the form of investor rights agreements, misleadingly called trade agreements, that curtail parliamentary sovereignty; through moment-by-moment referenda by financial markets on government policies that are designed to compel governments to put in place policies favourable to "market confidence," a euphemism for whatever makes the rich happy; and through "elections" that are spectacles managed by the public relations industry where parties veil their neoliberal policy commitments behind a facade of imagery and symbols.

It is often said, especially by right wing revisionists within, or speaking for, the Labor Party that the Labour movement is structurally weaker because of the inevitable changes in technology, fragmentation of class structure, and outlook that have accompanied globalisation. Such views, as in Reece's case, are always followed by a call for further movement toward the Right.

The labour movement is structurally weaker because that is a core objective, not just a mere consequence, of neoliberalism.

The movement to restore corporate profitability from the mid-to-late 1970s was based on an attack on the organised working class through strike breaking, anti-union though not anti-corporate laws, labour market deregulation, massive anti-union propaganda campaigns, and the employment of third world workers as a reserve army of labour.

A weaker labour movement represents a critically important structural problem of labour and social democratic parties that have denied them their natural social base; far easier was it to resist corporate campaigns, red scares, and the like when the union movement was strong, mobilised, and based on robust class consciousness; a consciousness that was reflective of strong and active unions.

This all has been compounded by labour and social democratic parties shifting to the Right by actively supporting neoliberal restructuring. This could only be achieved by hollowing these parties out and by centralising control at the top; so it was that they become electoral machines with an eroding social base beholden to the corporate media to get the message out.

Labour and social democratic parties are now made or broken by the corporate media and the public relations industry. Throughout most of their history they could always retreat behind a sturdy union movement and mass party when facing a corporate offensive; when the ramparts are broken, Labor's erstwhile electoral Field Marshal Haigs have discovered that the enemy can easily strike and manoeuvre to effect.

The slow death of labour and social democratic parties is the most protracted act of suicide in history.

A good manifestation of these structural weaknesses is the erosion of Labor's primary vote during the neoliberal era. This first lit up the political radar in the 1987 election, when Labor led by Bob Hawke experienced noticeable swings in working class electorates and where the Coalition (46%) secured more primary votes than Labor (45.8%). Since then erosion of the primary vote has been a structural issue faced by Labor, with swings back at the 1993 Fightback!, 1998 GST and 2007 Work Choices elections. The large boost to the primary vote has occurred when the voters came back to Labor after overreaching neoliberal attacks.

The primary vote of the ALP is now at a post-war low. It won't sustainably get any higher by Labor getting ever more closer to the Liberals on policy and ideology.