CAMERON MILNER: Labor has abandoned working class, pushing party’s former voting base toward One Nation

Labor is in all sorts of trouble as One Nation cuts through its voter base.

The latest group to concern Labor strategists is the working class.

It’s a voyage of rediscovery for so many in Anthony Albanese’s Labor — the party of public servants and the care economy — that this cohort of voters even exists.

Still, national ALP president Wayne Swan said last week Labor needs to find its working class voice again to combat the rise of One Nation. It was a none too subtle sledge of the Prime Minister — the only houso kid left in the Cabinet.

In the end it’s just more middle class paternalism from Swan who fails to understand the anger of those who work hard, pay tax, don’t like excessive immigration and can’t stand Labor’s waste on its woke agendas.

Labor lost a chunk of working class voters to Howard’s Battlers 25 years ago and is looking like they’ve lost a bunch more to One Nation.

It comes because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the ambition and aspirations of working people by those such as Swan and the Albanistas.

Labor great Neville Wran — a genuine working class hero from Balmain — summed it up best when he said: “Everyone aspires to do a little better. That’s what being working class is all about: how to get out of it”.

Wran was a true Labor leader who understood Labor had to be the party of aspiration, of getting ahead and being given a fair go.

Another living Labor legend Bill Kelty was all about the betterment of working people’s lives. His grand compact, the Wages Accord, was about working people having access to superannuation savings to have self determination in retirement.

Any remaining working class sympathy was then squashed in the recent Budget of lies and deceit as Albanese declared a war on aspiration in Australia.

By crushing the ability of working people to profit from shares to save for a deposit or perhaps have a negatively geared investment property to get ahead, Albanese’s Labor has decided to tax working families back into being poorer for longer.

The Albanese Budget doesn’t want people to get ahead. It wants to tax them into submission.

Swan and the Albanistas are deeply offended that workers would see in Pauline Hanson someone who shares their values and speaks to their concerns. After all, these tertiary educated hacks running the ALP can’t understand just how ungrateful working people are for what Labor no longer does for them.

All the while, under Albanese the public service bloats and ever more people are eligible for a care package from government.

Albanese loves a mendicant voter who fears Liberal cuts as much as he loves the army of them/theys wearing rainbow lanyards in some nondescript public service job who the Liberals might also make redundant.

Labor has built a whole new voting bloc of people totally reliant on government subsidy and therefore fearful of a change of government that might turn off the tap to easy money.

Labor thinks that working people don’t see their taxes being wasted. Labor hopes that working class people are just too flat out busy to see the great swindle that Albanese presides over.

Gone completely is the notion of means testing. Under Albanese Labor, everyone gets a freebie.

Labor’s disconnect isn’t helped by the trade union leadership who are more likely to have come from a workshop on gender dysphoria than the shop floor.

Trade unions in Australia now have a measly 13 per cent coverage of all employees and only 8 per cent in the private sector workforce.

The United Workers Union now has half its members being childcare workers. The ACTU is overwhelmed by public sector unions.

Public sector workers are definitely not working class and it goes to the heart of mythology that Labor is any longer the party of the working class.

Is it any wonder that Hanson’s straight talking is more attractive than Albanese’s talking out both sides of his mouth style?

Working Australians are struggling to recognise the lucky country any longer.

The working class see Bondi massacre — the worst act of terrorism on our soil — and a Federal Government more concerned about Islamophobia than the 15 dead.

They see ISIS brides being given the red carpet while their own kids are outbid at auction by non-citizens.

They see a Labor Party more interested in gaining favourable headlines from the chattering classes than standing up for the dignity of work and the rewards that should come with that.

As Swan steps down as ALP president and his reign of error comes to a close, it’s ironic that it was his protege, Jim Chalmers, who did more to hurt the working class in his Budget than even Joe Hockey did in 2014.

Working people want a hand up, not another hand out. They want a fair go and a tax system that rewards hard work rather than crushing aspiration.

Labor may well want to reconnect with the working class, but the more important question is whether the working class wants anything to do with the current Labor Party.

Cameron Milner is a former Queensland Labor State secretary