Labor should have had a ballot, not a coronation

Granted Albanese has a large public profile and is revered by the party membership but so too is Plibersek, and Bowen believed himself to have the support of caucus. Surely there was no harm in having a ballot and letting the best candidate win.

What's worse is that members of the Right faction are said to have pressured Chalmers not to stand with a top union official calling Chalmers a "blow-in" and a NSW Right faction MP saying that Chalmers overestimated the support that he had. Why members of the Right faction would be against a factional colleague standing is beyond me. My only guess is that Chalmers candidacy threatened to derail the deal they had sewn up with the Left in favour of Albanese.

I can understand the need sometimes for a united front and for an Opposition to get on with the job. The 2016 election, for instance, Labor came dangerously close to forming government. It made sense to retain the leadership team of Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek and be prepared to step up if the Turnbull government fell.

But this isn't one of those occasions. Labor failed to make any gains from 2016 and have lost seats. The time is now for soul-searching about what went wrong and debate about the Labor Party's future direction.

In football terms, Labor has experienced the equivalent of a new coach helping to grow a disorderly team from cellar dwellers to finalists and then to Premiership favourites, only to fall apart spectacularly at the eleventh hour. Back to the drawing board but, although Bill Shorten's leadership is over, Labor should have taken its time in determining their future direction and Shorten's replacement. Labor now needs a development coach, not a Premiership coach.

Labor needs to understand that having a leadership ballot and a debate about its future direction after an election loss is not 'divisive', it's what they should do.

The trend in New South Wales has long been that the factions anoint a new leader, rather than it going to a democratic ballot. In fact, until Michael Daley defeated Chris Minns for the leadership in 2018, the last leader to be elected by a ballot was Neville Wran in 1973. Unsworth, Carr, Iemma, Rees, Kenneally, Robertson and Foley were all anointed by cross-factional support.

Not only is it undesirable to have the leadership of a major party and alternative government decided by a couple of people in a room, it's also less stable. In fact, Labor's desire to not go to a ballot in order to avoid division often, paradoxically, creates division. Look at the circus that saw a revolving door of New South Wales Premiers after Bob Carr retired. A leader that had won a ballot comprising both their caucus colleagues and the rank and file against other candidates in a contest of ideas would surely have more legitimacy than one hen-pecked by factional heavies (who can withdraw their support at any moment).

The next three years are gonna be difficult as Labor settles in to almost a decade of being in in Opposition. There will be plenty of disappointment amongst senior MPs hoping to return to government and junior MPs elected in the last two terms who left their previous careers to rise the ranks of government. Some MPs in the backend of their careers would have thought they'd be back in government by now and may question their position. All of that is a lot harder if you're not sure if your leader is the right person to take you forward.

Maybe Anthony Albanese is the right man to lead Labor or maybe he isn't. Either way, he and his supporters shouldn't have been afraid to go to a ballot. After all, Albanese was one of the original advocates for changing the rules to give rank and file Labor Party members a vote in the election of their leader.