Katina Curtis: The unhealthy ‘yes man’ culture is a big risk for Labor

The conventional wisdom in politics after a bruising nearly two decades is that disunity is death. It was a mantra repeated by Labor and Liberals over the past three years. Neither side wanted to fall back into the sniping and undermining and leadership ructions that plagued successive governments and turned people off politics and politicians. Peter Dutton made unity his key performance indicator. Anthony Albanese boasted of having held his party room and frontbench together. But the question MPs now should be asking themselves is, at what cost? Disunity may be death, but unity above all else doesn’t necessarily foster thriving life either. Liberal backbenchers are realising now that they fell in behind the leadership and shadow ministers and accepted being cut out of policy development on promises that the work was being done and something really good was coming. It didn’t turn up. Dave Sharma, a former ambassador who has put in the yards on committees during his stints in the lower and upper houses, pointed out that backbenchers like him relied on the leadership team to give MPs something to tell voters about when the election came around. He now says there’s a strong argument to bring the party room back into the fold on policy development. Sussan Ley has made the same argument as part of her pitch to colleagues to make her their leader on Tuesday. Meanwhile on Labor’s side, the factional assassins got their knives out for two of the more outspoken members of Cabinet, dumping Ed Husic and Mark Dreyfus. Husic has made it clear he has no intention of holding his tongue. The principle of caucus solidarity got a wide airing last year in the wake of Fatima Payman’s defection from Labor. The primary gripe of the WA Senator’s former colleagues was that she hadn’t used any of the party’s internal processes to raise her concerns or argue for a change in position on the Middle East before using that as her reason for splitting. This was not the case for Husic. And even if it has proven a career-limiting move, he will continue to speak out on behalf of the communities he represents. “I would hate us to think we get to a situation like Trump Republicans who know something’s wrong and don’t speak. I’m not saying that’s the case here, but there is a role, a value, in questioning and speaking up,” he said. There is a big risk for Labor more broadly that Albanese’s record-breaking win combined with the factional blood-letting will reinforce both the Prime Minister’s authority and an unhealthy “yes man” culture. It was a rare caucus meeting over the previous term of Government where backbenchers asked any questions. While even first-termers insisted they weren’t intimidated by the gatherings, it wasn’t clear from the outside that caucus was being used to test things to the fullest extent. The PM told new members of caucus when they met on Friday that just because they knew the answers to things didn’t mean they had to say anything to inquisitive reporters. It was taken as a warning. Albanese is known throughout his decades in public life for being loyal to the point of fault and for nurturing grudges — just ask the Ferguson brothers, with whom he first clashed at university in the 1980s. But there’s a difference been speaking out of school to destabilise or undermine, and raising genuine points of difference on policy or approach. Robust debate shouldn’t be mistaken for disunity. Political leaders need to recognise this. So too should we in the media. It’s often acknowledged that Parliament’s committees are where some of its most productive work happens. In their best form, they provide a forum for the sharing of ideas and arguments across party lines and come up with genuinely thought-through solutions. Each party should follow this example internally and draw on the wide expertise from everyone among its ranks to test ideas, examine the counterfactuals, consider compromises and land the best framing to convince the public of their policies’ merits. A culture of speaking up and questioning will ultimately build stronger parties on both sides. That’s something that should unify MPs.

Katina Curtis: The unhealthy ‘yes man’ culture is a big risk for Labor

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