One of the most common complaints about our political system in Australia over the past 30 years has been that the two parties are too close together.
Personally, I think this is dubious- there remain some significant differences between the two parties. Consider the financial crisis - The Labor government responded by growing spending, giving out tax bonuses, a bank deposit guarantee, building schools and by doing an insulation program. Notwithstanding the problems with the insulation scheme, these policies demonstrate a belief in the power of government to solve problems - a marked shift from the Howard era.
If the liberals had been in charge during the financial crisis, their policies would have been much different. I believe that they would have cut taxes, cut spending, and passed another round of workchoices to help "save jobs".
If anything, the difference between the parties is probably a bit bigger than it was 20 year ago, when both parties swallowed the neoliberal agenda as a whole. But despite this, it's probably a valid criticism to say that the divide between the parties on policy matters no longer resembles a grand canyon as it did 40 years ago. When people feel that they have less of a choice, or that there aren't big things at stake, they are less motivated to participate in democracy.
Look at the US election in 1996 - a voter turnout of 49%. Or the UK elections of 2001 (59%) and 2005 (61%), down from 71% in 1997 when Blair swept to power.
It's easy to measure the health of politics in other countries, because the level of engagement can be measured easily by the turnout at elections.
But that shouldn't be our only measure. Indeed in Australia, we can't measure it this way because voting is compulsory. We have to look elsewhere, to other things. Other countries are plagued by deeper structural problems, and Australia shares them.
Decline in participation can be measured a number of ways:
- the decline in trade union membership, community organisations and clubs
- an increase in the amount of voters who don't identify with one party, or say they are "uncommitted"
- a decline in participation in community events or religious institutions
And above all things in my opinion, a decline can be seen in the levels of membership of all our political parties. With the exception of the greens, membership of all major and most minor political parties over the past 20 years has been falling.
The common thread to all of this disenfranchisement is one thing: every single one of these political parties has all too regularly defied the popular will of their membership and support base - and has lost members and valuable funding in the process.
The Nationals have spent the better part of the last 25 years losing their rural base, firstly to the liberals, then to one nation, then to Independents and the liberals again. A party of agrarian socialism, they regularly refused to stand up to the liberals in government when free market tendencies or service cuts damaged rural constituencies.
One Nation gained its relevance when racist working class voters wanted to voice their disapproval of Labor's social progressiveness. One Nation lost its relevance when John Howard stole many of their policies, like temporary protection visas.
John Howard drove small L liberals out of the liberal party starting in the 1980's and the job became nearly complete after he scuttled the republic and exploited the Tampa crisis. Now the party has been taken over by extremists. A young Liberal MP, Alex Hawke, has stated that "nobody joins the liberal party if they believe in compulsory student unionism, legalising drug injecting rooms or lowering the age of consent for lowering the homosexual age of consent". Nor is it a place for people who believe in a market-based response to fight man-made Climate Change, as Malcolm Turnbull rudely found out. Many small l liberals could support some of those policies.
20 years ago, progressive individualists would have joined the Australian democrats - but now they no longer exist. The reason for that is the Australia democrats breached their trust with the public and their members, after they voted for the GST. Meg Lees defied the wishes of party members, and they duly responded - by leaving.
Which leaves us with the labor party. This is a party that has suffered plenty of setbacks for the ordinary party member. ALP members starting in the mid-1980's had to first deal with the party's adoption of neoliberalism and the corresponding decline of trade unions. They then had to deal with mistreatment at the hands of factions, branch stacking, and a decline in respect for the rights of the ordinary party member.
In most cases, labor governments these days produce policies that are often far to the right of the wishes of rank and file members. The parliamentary wing regularly adopts loose interpretations of the platform. Rank and file power over policy and preselections has also withered away. If this wasn't enough, the party had to then deal with the many wedge issues of John Howard - many people exited political involvement completely over the tampa issue - others ran off to the wide open arms of the greens.
The greens? They're growing, mainly through grassroots activism and standing on principle. And family first? Well that party gets propped up by Evangelical churches. Both of these parties grow because they share one thing - they are rare in that they have not yet seriously defied the policy wishes of their members.
Yes, the state of our political parties is a sad place indeed. Is it any wonder that people don't want to get involved in politics?
Usually, if something is drastically wrong, people will join political parties. But that hasn't been happening - despite the financial crisis, despite big issues like Iraq and Global Warming, people stay switched off. The push factors are there for people to want to join political parties, but he pull factors aren't. Where are we going wrong?
I am convinced that the problem lies with our political parties themselves. They are undemocratic and their internal structures are mostly an embarrassment. Most of them would be in debt. Some barely have enough members to run a campaign - in one sad example, the liberals actually pay people to man booths on election day.
When people don't join political parties, it robs them of two things - money, and people. Usually every strong organisation needs both of these. But eventually, some clever political party staffers worked out that:
a) less people meant it was easier to run an undemocratic organisation exactly how you wanted
b) if you needed money for campaign contributions, the private sector would gladly open its wallet, but only a price.
So what was the point of having pesky rank and filers? Why put up with them when you could operate instead what Carmen Lawrence once called a "Political Corporation"?
The problem with this is that big donors expect big favors. Look at the influence of property developers in NSW - they give big bucks to both parties, but particularly Labor. Why? Because Bob Carr had a philosophy that Sydney was already full, so any land that did get released was very valuable. So the big developers lobbied the government for more land release, or they bought land that they then lobbied to have rezoned.
These developers made a killing - they then built and sold big houses on big blocks and made even more cash. Bob Carr ironically helped create the mcmansion and with them came the stubborn voters whose fear of interest rates kept John Howard in office.
Corporations have sought to buy interest for a long time, especially in NSW. The answer to this has been the call for public funding of elections. Certainly preferable to government by donation. But hang on a second - taxpayers then pay tax so a party can run an election. Why should parties get access to the public purse when they could be raising that money through higher membership? Look at Obama's campaign - he was the more left wing candidate, and yet he was able to refuse public funding because the average individual donors gave money and support.
Political parties are an institution of democracy, and thus a public good. Parliamentary democracy as we know it can't function without them. So therefore it's totally legitimate to ask what we have to do to fix them. Parties simply MUST make themselves a more attractive product otherwise they won't survive. People these days won't join a party just so they can rock up to a branch and talk about things. Any old amateur with internet access can discuss politics online. What people do care about is power - the power to influence events, policies and the selection of candidates. When our political parties don't give that to them, they zone out, or they join some sort of fringe lobby group with no structural power, leaving people further frustrated. .
The ordinary citizen must have rights when they join any political party. Rules must be democratic and should encourage debate and criticism. And the right to exercise your vote on policy and candidacy matters should be paramount.
Since this a blog of social democracy, and I'm a labor supporter, Labor must also rediscover it's mass-based past. The Liberal Party will always have the backing of wealthy individuals and business. What the Labor party needs is a strong membership that is organised en masse and participates wholeheartedly.
The Labor party was not founded as a political corporation. In fact, it was formed because it believed the opposite about itself and about society. It believed that collectively, we are stronger. It believed in engagement, participation, and above all things, it believed in mass-collective organisation. Because the working class protected itself when it stuck together. And the working class had power when it stuck together. The strength of the early Labor parties and trade unions was not in their money, but in their mass membership.
This is how politics should be - not a one way conversation from the TV speakers into your ears. It's a discussion. It's about participation and involvement. It's about ordinary people shaping the movement, the policies, and ordinary people choosing their candidates, and ordinary people running the campaign. We have lost sight of our collective consciousness - through parties and trade unions. Plenty of working class people have never joined unions, and have in turn never understood that their living standards are best advanced through collective action. As a result, many turn to the opposite vision offered by the liberals, which says to poor workers that an individual can get ahead simply if they work hard, and that liberals would help you do so by preventing immigrants from stealing your job and by keeping the economy strong. We must break that chain and focus attention where it should be - greedy banks, polluters, monopolies and corporations.
And for goodness sake, lets end the madness of the nation's major social democratic party not even being internally democratic.
wow, a great piece, well done.
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