Where to now for the ALP?

A choice of future direction must be made by the ALP leadership in the next few weeks.

It is not just a simple matter of changing the leader. It has been widely remarked that Australia has had four Prime Ministers in a bit over two years. But the ALP has had ten leaders in the last twenty years, starting with Paul Keating and counting Beazley and Rudd twice.

This merry-go-round has largely been a cop-out on confronting the need for real change. It's time they got serious.

If the Party is to do well the leadership should take PM Turnbull's advice.

The three question time sessions with Turnbull as PM have been very instructive. Ministerial answers have a new structure, and that will set the pattern of politics for the foreseeable future.

Under Abbott, Ministers would be asked by their own side, "What is the Government's policy on x and what other policies have been proposed?"

In response they would briefly outline the Government position and then spend most of their time attacking the ALP. Questions from the Opposition were treated in similar style.

Now they spend much more time explaining Government, and their own, actions and treating the ALP as a sad afterthought. This approach is great for Ministers, is much more impressive for the audience, and makes the Opposition fade away.

Abbott's obsession with fighting his opponents rather than actually governing helped keep the Opposition in the game. Now they will have to get noticed for their own efforts.

The PM helpfully told Bill Shorten over the dispatch boxes that he needed to lift his game. Turnbull explained to Shorten how he needed to phrase questions and that he should focus on policy rather than on silly game-playing in a pathetic attempt to score a few political points.

Shorten should take note, but he does have other options.

He could follow the lead of the British Labour Party and retreat to the comfy ground of the 1950s. That would play well with the party membership and unions and guarantee a survival of sorts even though it would make electoral failure inevitable.

Or Shorten can continue to play the cynical political games so loved by the spivs and half-smart careerists who regard policy as just a source of ways to wedge the opponent, to generate electoral bribes for voters, or of tokenistic 'announcements' to play in the media.

Apparently the polling shows the electorate is heartily sick of this sort of thing, and Turnbull has wisely abandoned Abbott's total dedication to this path. But it's the only game most of the ALP players really understand so they will be very reluctant to learn the art of serious policy formulation and advocacy.

If the ALP decides to get serious there is a lot to work on. Shadow Ministers could outline specific policies to defend public health, broadcasting and education, rather than just trying to appease everyone. They could more seriously advocate the reintroduction of fairness into retiree tax arrangements, start a real debate on Defence policy, and argue for a much reduced immigration policy.

They could also list many wasteful expenditures they would abolish. These could include ethanol subsidies, the chaplaincy program and many of the small handout programs both sides of politics have initiated over the last two decades.

They could also advocate popular policies such as euthanasia, (which is much more popular with, and important to, millions of ordinary Australians than gay marriage), and the republic. Then there is the very difficult area of real drug law reform, where again millions of people have a direct interest.

They could even champion higher wages, given that wages growth has been stagnant for some years, except among CEOs. The two arguments used against wage rises are that they create inflation and reduce global competitiveness. The first is not a problem and indeed would be welcome up to a point. The second is valid but wages are not a huge factor in the exporting industries and under existing flexible arrangements can be controlled to an extent.

Then there is the option of real transition policies for the environment and energy.

None of this is easy. Such an active policy program would involve internal wars with key union officials and some members. Then it would lead to heavy conflict with powerful community interests. But it would also bring in support and make the party relevant to the national future.

As a political strategy it would force PM Turnbull into territory he would rather avoid, with conservative social forces expecting him to lead the opposition to change when he wanted to stick to his own program.

Such an active agenda is the only way the ALP will get attention as the Turnbull train rolls on. The Party has tried the easy path for nearly twenty years and the only success came from beating Howard when he had run out of puff and Abbott who should never have been there in the first place. Even electoral victory did not provide unity and did not stop the electoral base from continuing to fade away. If the ALP continues down that path against a serious government it will guarantee disaster. Leadership change should be considered in this broader context.