How you define the experience necessary to hold the office of prime minister will influence your judgment on whether Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten have the necessary qualifications.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
One measure of experience is the years each has spent in Parliament; 12 in the case of Turnbull and nine in the case of Shorten. They entered Parliament in 2004 and 2007 respectively. That experience sounds reasonable. But author and political commentator George Megalogenis disagrees. In the current issue of The Monthly magazine he declares that for the third election running, both candidates "are bound by limited leadership experience and modest prior ministerial achievement". He concludes that: "By any objective standard each man is a decade short of the necessary grounding to run the country."
That is a big call. He invokes the so-called 20-year rule advocated by John Howard, who assumed the position of prime minister in 1996, 22 years after entering Parliament in 1974. According to Megalogenis this rule contained the essential truth that aspiring prime ministers "need at least two decades to get to know the people and the system before they are ready to serve".
He backs up his assertion by pointing out that the 20-year rule applied from John Curtin to Howard, until it was broken by Kevin Rudd, who became PM in 2007 after nine years in Parliament. Julia Gillard had almost 12 years parliamentary experience when she took the job. Tony Abbott had 19 years of experience before 2013.
But look at that history. Bob Hawke didn't qualify under the 20-year rule as he became Prime Minister after just three years in Parliament, though he had previously been President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions for a decade. He is widely regarded as a most successful prime minister. On the other hand, John Gorton and Bill McMahon, less successful prime ministers, had decades of prior parliamentary experience.
Parliamentary experience is undoubtedly a most helpful qualification. Notably, the recently unsuccessful Queensland Premier, Campbell Newman, had none at all. But such experience is a rough and ready measure, and a much too narrow one, of qualification for the job. Just how much parliamentary experience you need is also arguable.
Compared to other current prime ministers in comparable parliamentary systems Turnbull and Shorten are not at all underdone. John Key in New Zealand, widely regarded as very successful, became prime minister in 2008 after six years' parliamentary experience. David Cameron in the UK, who has been quite successful, had nine years prior parliamentary experience before becoming prime minister in 2010. Justin Trudeau in Canada became prime minister last year after seven years in Parliament.
There are two ways to refine this measure of necessary experience. One is to consider the years in which a person has ministerial experience as time in parliament rarely translates fully into time in government. Ministerial experience helps in getting to know the system and our system can keep prospective prime ministers on the opposition benches for far too long. Gough Whitlam had two decades in opposition but no experience as a minister when he became prime minister. He would have benefited from such prior experience.
A few years as a minister is better experience than a longer time in opposition. Turnbull and Shorten both had ministerial experience under Howard and Abbott and Rudd and Gillard respectively. In an ideal world each would have benefited from more senior ministerial roles but they were senior enough (Shorten had Education and Workplace Relations while Turnbull had Environment and Communications). Key, Cameron and Trudeau had none at all.
The other way to measure experience is to take into account age, hence life experience, and prior community and professional experience. Turnbull is now 61 while Shorten is 49. Trudeau, Cameron and Key were each younger when they became prime minister.
Turnbull and Shorten each has plentiful community and professional experience. Turnbull, a Rhodes scholar to Oxford, has been an investment banker, lawyer, Australian Republican Movement leader, and journalist. Shorten, with an MBA from Melbourne University, has been a lawyer and a trade union leader, culminating in six years as national secretary of a big trade union, the Australian Workers' Union.
This combination of parliamentary, ministerial, community and professional experience is plenty. Furthermore lengthy experience is not everything. The 20-year rule suffers from two further problems.
Lengthy parliamentary and ministerial experience has a downside. It may harden you up for the job and teach you many necessary tricks of the trade, but it also grinds you down. Ideally political leaders take up the job when they are fresh and at their peak.
Whitlam got to the job at least three years too late. He would have been a better PM if he had won in 1969 rather than 1972. Paul Keating was exhausted after almost a decade as Treasurer when he became PM in 1992. Another prospective PM, Peter Costello, had also had a tough decade as Treasurer when he opted out of taking the Opposition leadership in 2007 after Howard's defeat.
Furthermore, too long in parliament runs the risk of becoming ensconced in the insider parliamentary culture and cut off from really understanding the aspirations of the world outside parliament. Requiring more than about eight to 10 years in parliament for prospective prime ministers may also rule out someone having a substantial prior professional career. That would be a bad thing. A nine-year rule (three terms) is better than 20 years.
Not everything about modern Australian politics is faulty. Turnbull and Shorten, whatever their personal merits, are well and truly qualified for the job.
John Warhurst is an emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University.
