Labor's best chance to beat Howard is to re-invent national politics

Specifically, Labor needs to go for big, straightforward solutions to the core domestic issues of health, education, social welfare and industrial relations. Like free, inclusive tertiary education, universal Medicare, helping, not punishing, the unemployed and other benefit receivers, and industrial relations that mixes job security with flexibility and retraining.

And Labor should raise taxes to do these things. Yep, raise taxes and boast about it, and end this childish pretence that low taxes are a good thing. Everyone knows you pay for what you get.

And it also has to propose a serious program for dealing with our longer term problems - like the environmental crisis, national security and globalisation - that will both work for us and strengthen international collective decision-making.

Labor has to get militant because it must give electors a reason to change their vote. A wishy washy, slightly-kinder-than-Howard approach (as seems likely at the moment) does not provide enough incentive for the voter to re-engage with the political process, take a risk and vote Labor. If the differences are minimal, why take the risk? Better the devil you know ...

Labor must be able to offer definite, unqualified benefits. Like, your child will go to university, your mother will get first class healthcare, your niece will be treated fairly at Centrelink, and you will be treated with proper consideration in your workplace. Not maybe, if there is enough money. Definitely. These things are now secure, and you can get on with your life.

It is hard to see Simon Crean leading a new militant and unashamedly assertive Labor. In fact, it is hard to see the party now dominated by the beneficiaries of the fat years of national government getting tough at all. But the ALP is going precisely nowhere right now, and sooner or later big changes will have to be made.