An extract from the Quarterly Essay's ‘Not Dead Yet: What Future for Labor’.

It wasn’t Labor’s core principles that saw us defeated in 2013, but fragmented constituencies and an internal culture tainted by the politics of polls and personality. The fact we were thrashed by a Liberal Party bereft of positive plans and unable to cost or properly explain its policies necessitates serious soul-searching.

Originally published in the Quarterly Essay.

Election night on 7 September 2013 brought devastation for the federal parliamentary Labor Party and its supporters. It saw some very talented representatives defeated by a big national swing that put a full stop on the Rudd-Gillard era.

Originally published by the Chifley Research Centre

Two things will happen this Sunday in Australia. A new leader of the federal parliamentary Labor Party will be elected. And approximately eight hundred and fifty children will be born into families of all shapes, sizes and backgrounds.