Attacks on magnates a bit rich for some

While demonising the rich might have worked for Labor in the 1970s, today's Newspoll is a timely reminder that the audience has changed.

The pre-leadership ballot bounce Labor enjoyed was in part ascribed to the belief among some voters that Kevin Rudd would soon return to the leadership and, when that belief proved mistaken, the bounce was wiped out. But Swan's essay in The Monthly attacking mining company owners such as Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer for using their money to pursue their own interests has dominated politics in the past week.

It is part of a Labor attempt to regain blue-collar support lost to Tony Abbott over the past year.

While Labor is right to consider how to shore up its base, it is doubtful that attacking the rich is the right strategy. Decades of reform by Labor and Coalition governments have transformed Australia, creating a new class of voter: people who work hard, expect rewards, are not union members and do not disdain wealth. Former Labor leaders such as Bob Hawke and Paul Keating helped create this new Australia, but their successors seem unable to pitch their political messages at the beneficiaries of their work.

With Labor having strived to give people greater access to education and the social mobility it brings, it needs to understand how to speak to the mobile.

John Howard understood this when, in 1996, he transformed Labor's blue-collar base into the Howard Battlers.

Kevin Rudd understood the demographic too when, in 2007, he presented himself as a social and economic conservative who wanted to continue the national reform project, not punish its beneficiaries.

Rudd argued that Labor was a safe bet for non-unionists who had turned to Howard - tradesmen and their employees too busy riding the development boom in the outer suburbs to have time for class envy. While Swan and Julia Gillard understand these changes, they need to do more work to frame a political message sophisticated enough to appeal to 21st century Australia.