Renewing a sense of moral purpose

The Labor Party says it is looking for ways to reconnect with voters. No, this is not New Zealand, but Australia, Michelle Grattan writes.

Oppostition frontbencher Jenny Macklin says the Australian Labor Party should frame its policies around delivering ''inclusive growth'' and needs a new narrative to explain its agenda to the Australian people.

In a major speech for the Future of Welfare conference, Ms Macklin, who is spokeswoman for families, says Labor's great reformers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating recognised that social policy was a key driver of economic growth.

Australia faces a choice between the economics of austerity, embraced by the current Government, or a new agenda of inclusive growth based on social investment in human capital, she says.

The foundations of this agenda must be health and education, but it has to include other policies to deal with the social and economic transformations under way in Australia.

Labor's task is to respond to the challenges of these transformations with new social policies for ''supporting more people into work, reducing poverty and inequality, sharing the risks that come with a dynamic, open economy and ensuring people can effectively manage work and care''.

Ms Macklin says the pursuit of inclusive growth also requires a new set of economic policies that recognise the importance of human capital and drive growth by strategically investing in that capital, as well as generating the revenue to pay for it in a way that is good for the economy and society.

But having good policies is not enough, she says - people must be brought along with a new narrative.

''I don't mean just a three-word campaign slogan. I mean a story that all Australians can relate to and from it recognise that it's in all of our interests to have an Australia with inclusive growth at its core.''

In government, Labor did this well in some areas and not so well in others, she says.

The national disability insurance scheme is ''good policy coupled with a strong social and economic narrative''.

Education has always been at the core of Labor's social policy priorities.

''We have always recognised that education is the key to opportunity,'' Ms Macklin says.

''Our challenge is to make sure that education is the very core of Labor's economic narrative, because it is education that will be the driver of our economic growth.

''Without it we will not succeed in this changing world.''

But the narrative about growth must be changed, Macklin argues.

So long as the growth narrative is narrowly based, investments of the kind Labor envisages ''will never be a central part of our economic narrative''.

As Labor steps up its policy work ahead of next year's ALP national conference, leader Bill Shorten has told a policy forum looking at the party's platform its task goes beyond updating and reviewing documents.

''It is a moral task, renewing our ideas and our sense of moral purpose. It is a call that every generation of Labor has answered.''

In his speech, Mr Shorten called on the party to develop a vision for the Australia of 2020 and 2030 - the product of community ideas and the broadest range of voices.

''We need to step outside the echo chamber of modern politics - to take the task of government to the community. We want to work with the best experts, we want to hear from the people who know.

''We are committed to an authentic national conversation, a genuine exchange of ideas. It's a reflection of our faith in the genius and generosity of the Australian people.''

The party's job is to construct a platform that is as modern, confident, generous and outward-looking as the people and the nation, he says.

- The Conversation

Michelle Grattan is a professorial fellow at the University of Canberra.

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