Alannah's exit interview

One of the more noteworthy aspects of Saturday's incredible Federal election was the bringing down of the curtain on the career of Alannah MacTiernan.

A tenacious and polarising politician, Ms MacTiernan began as a City of Perth councillor and WA Upper House MP before going on to sit in the Lower House seat of Armadale and serving as Planning and Infrastructure Minister in the Gallop and Carpenter governments.

A loser to Don Randall in Canning on Saturday, she was nonetheless Labor's best performing candidate. On Saturday night in the minutes after she conceded defeat, the warhorse Mr Randall, who has won and lost his own share of marginal battles, said it was the toughest campaign he had ever fought. In the end she was the only Labor candidate to win a positive swing and her fanatical following in Armadale nearly got her over the line.

On Sunday, she spoke with reporters for twenty minutes and delivered a passionate plea to her Labor colleagues for reform. The following is an edited transcript:

Alannah MacTiernan: Can I just ask you at the very beginning, can we not have the standard political cliches: "a bitter Alannah MacTiernan lashes out"? I'm not disillusioned. When you've been involved in a political party for 35 years you know a thing or two. I'm disappointed, certainly not primarily for myself - I think my primary aim was always to ensure that there was a Labor government and if I could help in that process that was important. But I think the very great disappointment is we now face the prospect that we will not have a Labor government.

This was a re-run of the disastrous 2008 State election, it felt exactly like it. We have got to change the culture within the Labor Party, where the decisions are made by a group of people in central command who sit up there in a little office and they've got their focus groups and their little bits of paper and they make decisions - they make policy decisions about how we're going to go out and sell our message without any reference to the people out there on the street.

Question: So the faceless men, it's true.

Alannah MacTiernan: It's not that it's run by faceless men, we put in place great policies but then we just decide we're not going to tell people about them. We did the courageous and very right thing of introducing a mining tax. I support the mining tax, the reconfigured mining tax was absolutely the right thing for Western Australia and for Australia. But having introduced it, we then thought ‘Oh, we're not going to talk about it'. It didn't stop the Liberals talking about it, it didn't stop the Rolex revolutionaries talking about it, we just vacated the field. How could we be surprised that we see such a strong vote against us in those areas where people had not had the benefit of hearing the other side of the story? It almost defies belief.

In terms of running the campaign, decisions are made by a small group of people who quite frankly just operated on political cliches. So the same political cliches that stopped us as a (State) Labor Government in 2008, that said, no we can't talk about any of the good things we've done, when the Liberals ask ‘Name three things the Government did' we weren't allowed to mention the desalination plant, we weren't allowed to mention the railway line, we weren't allowed to mention all the things we did in education ...

People that join the Labor Party, they don't join the Labor Party to have our positions in campaigns determined by a couple of swinging voters in marginal seats. We've got to go out and lead the debate.

So much of what we did in education that has transformed schools ... you never hear about it and we don't talk about it. I mean, broadband. Where were the banners on polling day talking about our fantastic broadband policy, which is truly transformative? I mean you want to write a letter to the under-35s about how fantastic the broadband policy is. ‘Oh no, you can't do that'. You've got to write and tell them Tony Abbott is not a nice person. I mean, when we come to campaigns we allow ourselves to be captured by a group of people, the West Wing brigade, who speak in political cliches and all of the good and sound policy work that we do is just overborne by this set of political cliches.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the Labor Party itself, but when we come to campaigns we underperform because we don't give enough content to the actual policies. We are overly negative. I mean anyone who went on polling booths around Australia would have seen exactly the same thing - massive disillusionment because parties on both sides overwhelmingly ran negative campaigns. Of course, in an adversarial system there is always going to be an element of critique, but there's also got to be the other side. And particularly coming from the Labor side, we've got to inspire people - we can't just scare them. We've got to go out and lead the debate. We've got to go out and have a vision and tell them about that vision.

Q: So the "real" Julia Gillard...

Alannah MacTiernan: I think that the overall way in which we run the campaign - I mean, when I look at the things Julia Gillard actually did, they were fantastic. Some of the things that have been achieved in education, things that the public probably don't even know about. The rollout of the Australian early development index, the national partnerships money that went in behind it, truly transformative stuff. Truly transformative stuff.

So I think that we've got really capable people but we allow ourselves - I've seen it on several occasions, we went through it in 2008 disastrously, and we all knew - Robert Ray came in and did a report that said it was shocking, you shouldn't operate like this. But I have to say that's exactly what happened at the national level. Until we have a change in that whole culture about how we run the campaigns, until we transcend the reliance on a set of political cliches that come from the West Wing brigade going over to America and doing their courses and coming back all wise about politics and laying these cliches out as our fundamental operating principles, we're not gonna get anywhere.

And I think it's such a disappointment because I think the Labor Party - this Labor Government has so much to offer. But we've got to have some courage. Take the mining tax. That is absolutely the right policy. I'm not angry about the mining tax, I support the mining tax, and I was very keen to get the mining tax resolved so I could go out and sell it. When it was resolved I was so excited because now we can go out and sell this story - oh no. Wrote beautiful pamphlets up on it - oh no, you can't put that on there. This is good! It's good! Selling the mining tax! Oh no, you can't talk about it.

I mean can you believe you would do all that work and then vacate the field? So you let all of the story that was told to the public about the mining tax was from the other side. Who can blame people? Who can blame people? They're only getting one side of the argument, I think it's expecting a bit much of people to take a balanced view on it.

Q: You've fought this battle for reform before. Are they going to listen to you this time?

Alannah MacTiernan: Well I don't know. I mean, I am not going to be an active player. But I think there a lot of smart people in the Labor Party. A lot of smart people in the Labor Party. And you hope that one day we learn this lesson. We cannot just operate off a set of political cliches. We can't just do the negative stuff. And we've got to be prepared to speak in different voices sometimes. You can't expect every letter that goes out just to be full of the same set of political cliches. We've got to find a better way, and a more genuine way, of telling our story.

Q: Does the Federal presidency of the ALP appeal to you?

Alannah MacTiernan: No, I'm not in the race for that. But I really, really just want to say this. I mean, I'll find a very nice life for myself outside of politics, I've been in this game for a long time, this is in fact the eighth election for public office that I've gone for and I've won the first seven, so I'm quite ready to step away from this public role. But I care deeply about the Labor Party as the party that is capable of making Australia a more creative, more inclusive society. I believe it absolutely and I want to keep making a contribution but by and large I'll be making that contribution through other people and behind the scenes and not in a public way. But I am going to take this opportunity to say again we see an absolute manifestation of a failure of the party machine - not of the party policy and not of our members - but the way in which we run campaigns... Quite clearly it hasn't worked. It hasn't worked. It didn't work in the 2008 State election and you can't just put up a bad picture of someone and say, look, you've got to be scared of that person.

Q: Can I ask you to reflect personally, a lot of people think you should have been premier of the State, a lot of people think you should be in Canberra representing WA's interests. Neither of those things has come to pass. You've been dealt an extraordinarily unlucky hand, wouldn't you say?

Alannah MacTiernan: No, I don't say that. I've stood for office eight times and seven of those I've won. I've had the opportunity to be a State minister in a very creative and exciting time for almost eight years, I've had the opportunity to make, I think, a great contribution to this State. I don't consider myself to be unlucky. As I say, the Labor Party has given me great opportunities and there is nothing in me that is at all bitter about this. I'm saying this because I care deeply about the party and I care deeply about its capacity to sell its message and to be a creative force within Australia.

Q: But realistically if you had run in any other of the marginal seats in WA you would probably be a (Federal) MP now and it would be a net gain for Labor.

Alannah MacTiernan: No. I always said I would never leave the people of Armadale, and I'm pleased to say the people of Armadale didn't desert me. We got incredible swings in all of the booths in Armadale, we were getting swings of 5 per cent right up to 9 per cent in those Labor heartland booths, which was quite distinct to what happened in Labor areas elsewhere. So I want to thank the people of Armadale for the fabulous support they have given me at this election and there was never any prospect I would stand for a Federal seat that did not include Armadale.

Q: Don Randall was quite complimentary about you last night, he still says you could be a chance.

Alannah MacTiernan: It would defy all odds, and I'm sure Don as a betting man would know that. You would have to get such extraordinary factors in the postal voting that on any analysis I don't think that could happen.

Q: Alannah what are the implications for Eric Ripper, if any, from this Federal result?

Alannah MacTiernan: Well I don't think there's any particular implications from this result. I think there is a view out there that there is an opportunity for renewal and that's obviously going to have to be considered by the State party.

Q: When?

Alannah MacTiernan: Well I think you better go and ask people that are in the State parliamentary Labor Party, not me ... I don't think it's appropriate for me on this day to say that but I am very confident that, and I mean this sincerely, that I actually think Labor could win the next State election. But it is required that we have a dynamic leadership, and it does require that we have a totally different party machine. If we have a party machine that is of the calibre described by Robert Ray, we're certainly not going to get there.

Q: The inference being Eric is not dynamic enough?

Alannah MacTiernan: No, you draw that conclusion. I think we can win but we've got to have a team that is able to go out there and inspire people, a team that is going to really show incredible leadership. And I think we've got that capacity within the Labor Party. Anyway folks...

Q: One last question, what's next for you?

Alannah MacTiernan: Well, probably for the next couple of months I'm going to clean my house. I've got about 20 years of cleaning that needs to be done. (Laughs) Babysitting! And you know, I want to sort of get a bit tech-literate, there's just untold things I can do.

Q: Are you going to go back into the law?

Alannah MacTiernan: Oh, god no. No. Please. Timesheets? Hardly. No, no honestly I haven't had a decent holiday for about 12 years, if not longer, so I'm just going to have a bit of time - just the mere archiving and cleaning out all the old offices, that's going to take a couple of months.

Q: Are you ruling out running for office again?

Alannah MacTiernan: Yes I am ruling out running for office again.

Q: So the political career is over?

 Alannah MacTiernan: The political career is over. I'm in politics because I believe everyone in a democracy has to take an interest and that you can't say ‘why don't they do something'. We are the they. So I will always remain in political issues and social issues, but I will not be standing for public office again. Thank you.