Premier Geoff Gallop isn’t the one calling the shots in State Labor’s current election campaign. Joe Poprzeczny considers the role of Labor’s real master strategist who, nearly a decade ago, underwent a Latham-style resignation.
Premier Geoff Gallop isn’t the one calling the shots in State Labor’s current election campaign. Joe Poprzeczny considers the role of Labor’s real master strategist who, nearly a decade ago, underwent a Latham-style resignation.
THERE’S a certain irony in the fact that, after a fortnight of pussy-footing around over former Labor leader Mark Latham’s controversial decision to go missing following the Indian Ocean tsunami, it was Western Australian Labor’s master strategist, Jim McGinty, who called for the Federal leader to resign.
True, other senior State Labor MPs, including Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, NSW’s Bob Carr, and Victoria’s Steve Bracks, also crucially let their feelings be known.
But none spoke up as unambiguously as Mr McGinty.
Was this a coincidence or is there perhaps an underlying reason?
Look back nearly a decade, to October 1996, and it’s worth recalling that WA Labor was then led by none other than Mr McGinty.
Early that month he unexpectedly called a press conference to announce that he was standing down as Labor, and therefore Opposition, leader.
Labor frontbencher Geoff Gallop promptly took over the party’s reins and the rest is history.
But why did Mr McGinty, who entered State Parliament in 1990, the same year as Mr Latham embarked on his ultimately luckless Federal parliamentary career, go so suddenly and without fuss and fanfare?
The answer’s simple.
The WA Labor Party had been systematically conducting statewide polls throughout 1996 in preparation for what was expected to be an early 1997 State election.
And the results of these polls were increasingly alarming because Mr McGinty had been unable to gain electoral acceptance.
Put bluntly, he was unpopular; what Labor and conservative boffins call electoral traction, eluded him.
Little wonder, then, that in September 1996 – six months out from when the State election was expected – some concluded that Mr McGinty was leading Labor to electoral demise and something drastic needed to be done, and quickly.
Moreover, Mr McGinty was not only unpopular with growing numbers of voters, but had also alienated a sizeable number of key union leaders.
This wasn’t altogether surprising since he, as former head of the powerful Miscellaneous Workers’ Union, had made enemies with many union chiefs over the decade or so before he entered State Parliament.
When members of Labor’s administrative committee and the party’s factional chiefs were shown the results of previous months’ polling they could see that not only many of Labor’s marginal, but also not-so-marginal seats, were set to fall to the Richard Court-led Coalition.
Or, as one Labor insider said at the time: “McGinty was going to get most of us wiped out”.
On top of that Mr McGinty had cost every State Labor MP several thousand dollars on a failed High Court bid to overturn the State’s electoral laws.
Just who tapped Mr McGinty on the shoulder was never disclosed.
But someone did and after the party’s dismal polling figures were shown to Mr McGinty he decided to fall on his sword, just like Mark Latham did last week.
Like Mr Latham, Mr McGinty promptly called a press conference.
True, unlike Mr Latham, Mr McGinty wasn’t publicly pushed but the outcome was quite inevitable once the polling results were laid out before him.
If for no other reason, then, it was apt that it was Mr McGinty, not Dr Gallop or even deputy Labor leader, Eric Ripper, who publicly told the ailing Mr Latham that his days as leader had reached that stage.
“It is time for change,” Mr McGinty publicly stated the day before Mr Latham’s double resignations.
“I think it would be very helpful for the Labor Party generally if he were to reconsider his position.
“Frankly, I think any change would be for the better. I think it has reached that stage.”
It’s quite clear that mobile and other phones between all Labor premiers had been working overtime during the week leading up to Mr McGinty’s Latham resignation call.
Mr Bracks had indicated as much when he spoke a few days before Mr McGinty’s resignation call was made.
“I, like other State leaders … call on the Federal party to act quickly to make sure they can work together to resolve these issues because this is having an impact more broadly,” he said.
“You can’t just assume that these things will work themselves out.
“You’ve got to make sure you put a full-stop to it and I’m urging them to do that as quickly as possible.”
The dual Latham resignations are therefore certainly something of a major plus for Mr McGinty since Mr Latham’s departure removes the possibility of Federal and State issues being confused by Western Australian voters.
It’s worth remembering that the Court-led Coalition, during the 2001 State election, was forced to carry a considerable amount of Canberra baggage, which cost it crucial votes.
The most significant of these issues was the Howard Government’s refusal before February 2001 to scrap automatic half-yearly petrol excise indexation, which meant petrol prices were boosted twice yearly at the pumps.
After Prime Minister Howard saw the Court Government fall he moved to abolish this increasingly unpopular impost, a move that significantly helped in his return at the November 2001 Federal election.
Both Mr McGinty and Dr Gallop benefited from Mr Howard’s obstinacy, so understandably didn’t wish to go into a State campaign carrying Latham baggage.
A major difference between Mr Latham’s and Mr McGinty’s departures is that the latter never resigned from parliament.
Instead he quietly moved back from the party’s frontline, from public gaze, to become spokesman for health, accountability, Aboriginal affairs and arts until late 1999, followed by a period as spokesman for Attorney-General, justice, prisons and fair trading until February 2001.
The man who for years had been the party’s leading eminence grise chose instead to use the four years of the second Court Government – 1997 to 2000 – to oversee a series of shadow portfolios that, with the exception of fair trading, he’d previously held.
In other words his opposition years after his demise as leader were tailored to give him plenty of time to continue acting as an eminence grise and to also become the party’s master strategist, two roles in which he was most comfortable even though he’d have preferred to become premier.
It’s worth remembering that Mr McGinty’s formative political career was fashioned as a student union activist and as a trade union operative.
Politics, especially in the latter realm, can be quite bitter since contenders for power have little to fall back on by way of alternative careers.
There are, for instances, no handsome superannuation schemes to cushion defeats, so the situation is markedly different to parliamentary party politics.
Clearly Gallop-led Labor has much to be grateful for in having Mr McGinty as its master strategist since 1996, even though it must be said that the three east coast Labor premiers – Messrs Bracks, Beattie and Carr – played determining roles in the Latham removal exercise.
Notwithstanding that, when it came to the crunch, Mr McGinty was the only Labor politician in Western Australia who was prepared to call a spade a spade, not a digging utensil.
For he, more than any State MP, knew through bitter experience when the end of the line had been reached.
