Of recent times, it has become popular to lament the fact that the federal ALP has not 'owned' the Hawke-Keating economic reform legacy.
Different people interpret this legacy differently.
To some, including Crean and Ferguson, it seems to be all about consultation, consensus and some sort of corporatist fantasy of a well-managed democracy.
Dear old Simon even has some Accords (with federal and state governments) in his recently released, and quickly forgotten, national cultural policy.
Stripped down, the national cultural policy is an industry plan.
Give me that old-time religion.
For Mark Latham the legacy is a full-throated embrace of neo-liberalism, which he calls the Keating Settlement in the current Quarterly Essay.
Latham is more relevant.
He argues that the economic reforms of the Hawke and Keating Governments created a new middle class and a new approach to politics in this country.
This contains exaggeration, but it is not wrong.
Latham quotes Keating's remark that 'we changed the country but not the party", to illustrate the nub of the problem.
Personally, I think Hawke's decision to float to the currency in 1983 changed everything.
After that everything else follows.
A thirty year journey - that's not over yet.
Further deregulation of capital markets, product markets and, finally, labour markets.
The latter hits at the heart of the ALP's old structure, because it involves replacing collectivism, to a greater or lesser extent, with individualism.
The point of the Keating settlement is that competition in newly deregulated markets has driven growth in real household incomes - and the Australian middle class has benefited markedly, as have lower income earners.
You can rely too much on one set of statistics, on one measure, but Australians are better off today because we ditiched the old protectionism in favour of more open markets.
There wasn't really much choice.
Rudd got some valuable Victorian manufacturing union support for his leadership coup against Beazley in 2006, part of the deal was Rudd's commitment to prop up the car industry - a terrible waste of taxpayer money.
In his first press conference as Opposition leader, Rudd talked about wanting to be PM of a country that made things. Hollow rhetoric.
Rudd then went on to write an 8,000 word rant in the Monthly against neo-liberalism, months after selling himself to the electorate as an economic conservative.
Strange.
Then the Rudd Government in its first budget baulked at attacking Howard's outrageous expansion of middle class welfare.
That's when you knew this lot weren't going to run with the Hawke-Keating legacy.
Anyway, the ALP is today a timid neo-liberal party throwing crumbs of protectionism to its diminished union base.
Neither fish nor fowl.
The ALP can't fully embrace the Hawke-Keating neo-liberal legacy because the party structure holds it back, it is tethered to the past by union affiliation - and some misplaced sentimentality.
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