The Coalition has walked away from evidence. Labor still listens – but only up to the point where action becomes politically uncomfortable. That may prove just as dangerous.

Michael Keating’s examination of the Liberal Party’s abandonment of evidence-based policymaking is quietly devastating. It dismantles the claims that underpin the Liberals’ new energy and migration postures and exposes a party that no longer troubles itself with reality.

But Keating’s piece also invites a broader reflection: if the Liberals have drifted into open hostility to evidence, what is the position of evidence within the political party that now governs the country?

Labor, unlike the Coalition, does not reject evidence. It consults modelling, listens to departments, speaks with experts, and frames itself as a party of competence. But evidence in modern Labor politics is not sovereign. It is a participant, not a driver. A source of guidance, but rarely the final word. Evidence counsels; politics decides.

The party’s ideological journey helps explain this tension. From Whitlam’s state-building ambition, to Hawke and Keating’s technocratic economic rationalism, to the managerial centrism of the Rudd and Gillard years, Labor has repeatedly balanced evidence........

© Pearls and Irritations