tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/party-reform-1472/articlesParty reform – The Conversation2023-06-01T04:13:48Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2068562023-06-01T04:13:48Z2023-06-01T04:13:48ZPolitics with Michelle Grattan: Liberal MP Bridget Archer urges other moderates to speak up as she presses for party change<p>The Coalition’s decision to oppose the Voice to Parliament has put its moderate members in a jam. Some moderates are active yes advocates, while others are trying to keep low profiles.</p>
<p>Bridget Archer, the outspoken Liberal MP for Bass, is a vocal yes campaigner. More generally, she is also taking a lead in urging the Liberal party to undertake root-and-branch reform. </p>
<p>Archer is pushing for extensive change in a party that is electorally on the ropes, out of office everywhere except her home state of Tasmania. </p>
<p>Since entering parliament in 2019, Archer has crossed the floor on 27 occasion to vote against her party. She admits there are those colleagues who avoid her, but says her decisions are always based on what is in the best interest of her community, and argues the strength of the Liberal Party historically has been for members to be able to sometimes disagree and to do so respectfully. </p>
<p>Her independent stance on a range of issues has brought varied feedback from her local community. “It’s mixed, but generally positive. If I get negative feedback, it is sometimes from Liberal Party members or conservative voters that say ‘I think that you should toe the line’ – there’s this idea that if you have a divergent view, that you’re not a team player.”</p>
<p>But Archer believes “it is possible to be part of a team and to have differences of opinion (sometimes), and that it’s my job to represent to the best of my ability everybody in the electorate, even the people who don’t or didn’t vote for you, I guess.”</p>
<p>In a recent Good Weekend profile Archer called for a “revolution” in the Liberal Party, claiming it is currently “unelectable”. She tells the podcast: “I think this was again borne out in the 2022 election with the rise of community independents […] where people, particularly in some of those metropolitan seats, are not feeling that the party is representing their views anymore […] In regional areas that is not necessarily the case. And we’ve seen with the Coalition, of course, the Nationals holding the seats that they had.</p>
<p>"The great challenge for us is to get back to what I think was the strength of the Liberal Party at one stage, which is the ability to speak across the country, to talk to middle Australia.</p>
<p>"And I think that we’ve lost our way in that.”</p>
<p>Archer also argues Liberal Party values need to shift with the times, particularly its ideology on “the family and home ownership”.</p>
<p>“We have historically talked a lot about home ownership, but we don’t focus so much on rental affordability. […] It’s front of mind for many people in those metropolitan areas and for younger people as well, who have also deserted us in droves.”</p>
<p>The moderates in the party were decimated at the 2022 election. It has left the moderate faction in tatters, and Archer often finds herself isolated when she speaks out against the party line. </p>
<p>“I think it’s a bit frustrating for me sometimes that I feel that I know that there are other people who share my views on some things, but they don’t speak up, which I think sometimes does leave me sort of hanging there as this rogue person when I know that that’s not necessarily the case.”</p>
<p>“I also think it really goes to the heart of some of the reasons why those colleagues did lose their seats at the last election and why we have seen a rise of the teals. In those seats, in many cases people were wanting to vote for Liberals, and they were looking around [to] have a reason to vote for Liberals and they were coming up empty handed.”</p>
<p>Asked if she thought the party was “walking off a cliff,” she doesn’t hesitate. </p>
<p>“Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206856/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Archer is pushing for extensive reform in a party that is electorally on the ropes and out of office everywhere except her home state of Tasmania.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1407262020-06-15T03:22:55Z2020-06-15T03:22:55ZExplainer: what is branch stacking, and why has neither major party been able to stamp it out?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341726/original/file-20200615-153849-jn36eg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C30%2C4023%2C2638&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Daniel Andrews speaks about the allegations against Somyurek.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Scott Barbour</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Less than 24 hours after <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/secret-tapes-carpark-cash-drops-ministers-threatened-inside-victoria-s-stackathon-20200614-p552gs.html">The Age’s investigation</a> into branch stacking in the Victorian branch of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) aired on 60 minutes, Adem Somyurek was <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/adem-somyurek-resigns-from-cabinet-20200615-p552lp.html">sacked from Daniel Andrew’s cabinet</a>. The allegations have been referred to police, and Somyurek now faces expulsion from the party. </p>
<h2>What is branch stacking?</h2>
<p>Somyurek is alleged to have engaged in the practice of “branch stacking”. This is where people who have no interest in joining a party are enrolled as members by having their memberships paid for by those seeking to influence the party. Some may know they’ve been signed up but not care or understand what has happened; others may not realise at all. </p>
<p>Through building up a base of members who otherwise have no commitment to the party, the practice allows the branch-stacker to manipulate important intra-party decisions that are taken at the local (branch) level. </p>
<p>One of the most important decisions branch members make is who to pre-select to run as the party’s candidate for public office. This is where we see the majority of branch-stacking activities occur – to channel those members’ votes towards a particular candidate.</p>
<p>Influence can then permeate further and further into the party as pre-selection is traded for political favours. It is often aligned with factional battles. It commonly involves the recruitment of people from non-English-speaking backgrounds, distributing money to pay for memberships and even the falsification of signatures of branch meeting attendance rolls where attendance at a minimum number of meetings is a requirement to vote. </p>
<h2>How widespread is it?</h2>
<p>Branch stacking has been a problem in both the major parties for decades, though it is more prominent in the ALP, intertwined with that party’s factional dynamics. </p>
<p>As pre-selection is such a high-stakes activity and a decision that is largely taken at the local level, it is no surprise it’s targeted for manipulation. It has persisted for so long because of the relatively small number of people who actually join political parties in Australia.</p>
<p>This means enrolling even a few members can have a disproportionate outcome on a pre-selection decision, given that so few people are involved in the process. </p>
<p>Pervasive branch-stacking in Queensland led to the establishment in 2000 of an inquiry by the Criminal Justice Commission (<a href="https://www.ccc.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-01/The-Shepherdson-inquiry-Report-2001.pdf">the Shepherdson Inquiry</a>) into electoral fraud concerning several candidate selection contests conducted by the ALP during the 1980s and 1990s. The commission’s report resulted in the passing of legislation that party pre-selection contests be conducted according to the principles of free and democratic elections. </p>
<p>Oversight of this regime is entrusted to the Queensland Electoral Commission, which may enquire into and undertake audits of party preselection processes. Parties that breach these provisions are liable to deregistration and consequently lose public funding. </p>
<p>In 2019, the NSW Liberal Party was at the centre of a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/catholic-college-stacking-scheme-angers-nsw-mps-20191003-p52xbk.html">branch-stacking allegation</a> involving pupils from Campion College, who were allegedly offered parliamentary jobs in return for recruiting members to the party.</p>
<p>In 2007, the outcome of the Liberal pre-selection for the federal seat of Cook was overturned following <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/lib-hopeful-accused-of-branch-stacking-in-cook-20070719-gdqnh9.html">allegations of branch stacking</a>. One of the unsuccessful candidates, David Coleman, now a minister in the Morrison government, even took the matter to the <a href="http://www7.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/nsw/supreme_ct/2007/736.html">Supreme Court</a>. This litigation, and others that have preceded it (notably the matter initiated by former South Australian Deputy Labor Leader Ralph Clarke), highlight just how serious and high-stakes a problem is it. </p>
<h2>What are parties doing about it?</h2>
<p>Branch stacking is not a condoned practice. Both the ALP and Liberal Party rules contain provisions that prohibit bulk memberships and paying the membership dues of others. The alleged activities of Somyurek clearly contravene these provisions, but the problem is one of party culture, detection and enforcement. </p>
<p>If political parties lack the necessary resources or incentive to enforce anti-branch stacking provisions, a system of electoral commission oversight – as was implemented in Queensland – may be one option.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nsw-liberals-factional-battles-stand-in-way-of-reform-but-changes-in-participation-demand-it-63710">NSW Liberals' factional battles stand in way of reform, but changes in participation demand it</a>
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<p>This was recommended in NSW by two separate reports in 2014 by the <a href="https://www.icac.nsw.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/2014-media-releases/icac-recommends-more-power-for-nsw-electoral-commission-to-strengthen-election-funding-accountability">Independent Commission Against Corruption </a>(ICAC) and the <a href="https://www.dpc.nsw.gov.au/updates/2014/05/27/panel-of-experts-political-donations/">Expert Panel commissioned by the NSW government</a> to inquire into political finance reform. Both recommended that internal good governance and compliance be explicitly linked with public funding. Despite in principle commitment for this reform, there is has been no legislative movement in this area. </p>
<p>Another reform option might be to introduce American-style primary contests for candidate selection, which would arguably make branch stacking more difficult by widening the pool of participants.</p>
<p>However, as the controversy surrounding the election of Jeremy Corbyn as UK Labour leader aided by thousands of “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/26/jeremy-corbyn-genuine-labour-supporters-leadership-election">registered supporters</a>” in 2015 showed, even these more inclusive methods can face similar criticisms. In other words, one person’s mobilisation of potential voters can be another’s manipulation of electoral outcomes. </p>
<p>Changing the culture of political party pre-selections by opening them up to greater public view and scrutiny may be a further way of removing some of the conditions conducive to branch stacking. Pre-selections, and intra-party decisions more generally, remain largely secretive in Australian politics, despite the significant public importance of these events.</p>
<p>In the lead-up to the <a href="https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/morrisons-miracle">2019 Australian federal election</a>, for example, less than 10% of pre-selections conducted received media coverage as competitive events. </p>
<p>Understanding the importance of party decisions, publicly scrutinising these activities and bringing intra-party politics out from behind closed doors will improve transparency, participation and make it more difficult for branch stacking to continue in Australia’s political parties. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/revealed-how-australian-politicians-would-bridge-the-trust-divide-125217">Revealed: how Australian politicians would bridge the trust divide</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140726/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anika Gauja receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Branch stacking has been a problem for a long time in Australia, and changing it will take a genuine will to make party processes more open and accountable.Anika Gauja, Associate Professor, Department of Government and International Relations, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/807472017-07-10T06:27:12Z2017-07-10T06:27:12ZDisagreement within the Greens shows the price of doing politics differently<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177466/original/file-20170710-6227-48vkc5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lee Rhiannon and every other federal Greens MP have the right to dissent on matters of policy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the weekend, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/09/nsw-greens-demand-lee-rhiannon-be-fully-reinstated-to-party-room">Greens New South Wales</a> declared that the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/nsw-greens-set-for-lee-rhiannon-lovein-following-suspension-20170707-gx6l3s.html">partial suspension</a> of senator Lee Rhiannon from certain federal partyroom discussions was “unconstitutional”. The state party requested Rhiannon be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/09/nsw-greens-demand-lee-rhiannon-be-fully-reinstated-to-party-room">“fully reinstated without restriction”</a>.</p>
<p>Federal Greens MPs were ultimately discomforted by their decision to exclude Rhiannon, and were at pains to point out that the action was designed to tackle <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/lee-rhiannon-suspended-from-greens-party-room-pending-reform-in-nsw-20170628-gx05zq">“a structural issue”</a> and ensure the partyroom had <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/lee-rhiannon-suspended-from-greens-party-room-pending-reform-in-nsw-20170628-gx05zq">“faith and trust”</a> in party processes. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://greens.org.au/news/national/statement-party-room">other resolution</a> passed by the partyroom in that same session implored the National Council – the party’s highest decision-making body – to work with Greens NSW to end the practice of binding its MPs, even if its vote was against that of the federal partyroom.</p>
<p>Rhiannon expressed her disappointment with the outcome, and went further <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-party-room-greens-have-a-bigger-agenda-im-just-road-kill-20170702-gx2zx0.html">to suggest</a> that the partyroom’s decision masked a more insidious agenda, which was to:</p>
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<p>… reduce the democratic power of members in the Greens NSW. </p>
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<p>For all concerned, this matter turns on a fundamental disagreement over process and principle.</p>
<h2>Debates over decision-making</h2>
<p>For the Greens’ federal parliamentary leader, Richard Di Natale, the NSW practice of binding its MPs restricts the work of the national party room. <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-29/temporary-party-room-meetings-ban-unconstitutional-rhiannon/8662968">He said</a>:</p>
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<p>If each state binds their senator we won’t have an Australian Greens party room, we’d have a collection of independent states arriving at independent decisions.</p>
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<p>In contrast, the NSW party rejects the idea that <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/totally-unaccountable-leaked-greens-emails-shine-light-on-faceless-powerbrokers-20170701-gx2jm4.html">“all wisdom lies with MPs”</a>. Its view is that policies adopted by members following a process of consensus decision-making should dictate the voting behaviour of the party’s elected MPs in parliament.</p>
<p>Putting aside the matter of personalities and the ethics surrounding the conduct of those involved, to what extent does this incident reflect deep-seated ideological difference over the practice of binding MPs?</p>
<p>The practice of binding elected officials under the <a href="https://nsw.greens.org.au/structure-constitution">Greens NSW Constitution</a> can be located in three main sections:</p>
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<p>Section 12.1: The actions, activities and public statements of all members of The Greens NSW who are elected to public office shall be consistent with the charter, constitutions, policies and decisions of the party.</p>
<p>Section 12.6: Elected representatives shall consult with the delegates council regarding positions to be taken in their legislative activity. </p>
<p>Section 13.6: … elected representatives … shall express public opinions and vote in public fora in accordance with the charter of the Australian Greens and ratified policies of the Australian Greens and The Greens NSW, where a party policy exists. </p>
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<p>The Greens NSW Constitution does not appear to include a reference to MPs having the right to exercise a conscience vote.</p>
<p>By contrast, other members of the Greens’ national partyroom are not bound by similar requirements under their state party constitutions. MPs are permitted to exercise a conscience vote. Otherwise, the partyroom operates according to the principles of consensus decision-making. </p>
<p>This process requires participants to reach common agreement on matters. If such agreement cannot be reached, a vote may be taken to determine the outcome. </p>
<h2>Intra-party difference</h2>
<p>Consensus decision-making is fundamental to the decision-making practices of the Greens, including the NSW branch and the federal partyroom. In this regard, the two bodies are identical. However, the difference over process turns on three matters:</p>
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<li><p>To whom or what are MPs ultimately accountable: the federal partyroom or their state organisation?</p></li>
<li><p>Which level of decision-making should be allocated priority over matters of policy: the partyroom or the state organisation?</p></li>
<li><p>Is party unity more important than the persistence of diversity in state organisational decision-making practices?</p></li>
</ul>
<p>These are not inconsequential points of difference – and they should not be dismissed lightly. But would disagreement over schools funding – the policy issue that ostensibly ignited this affair – have been avoided if Greens NSW did not bind Rhiannon? The answer is probably no. </p>
<p>The federal partyroom rules allow MPs to exercise a conscience vote. Rhiannon – and every other member of the partyroom, for that matter – have the right to dissent on matters of policy. </p>
<p>To what extent would Rhiannon’s position have been viewed differently had she exercised a conscience vote, instead of invoking a constitutionally mandated obligation to dissent?</p>
<p>The current situation owes as much to politics as it does any deep unworkable ideological schism within the Greens. While binding might well complicate the partyroom’s efforts to present a united front in relation to legislative negotiations some of the time, the NSW practice seems to do so rarely. </p>
<p>And when it does, this might just be the price of doing politics differently.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80747/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Narelle Miragliotta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For all concerned, the imbroglio surrounding Lee Rhiannon and her Greens colleagues turns on a fundamental disagreement over process and principle.Narelle Miragliotta, Senior Lecturer in Australian Politics, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/804232017-07-03T11:57:26Z2017-07-03T11:57:26ZLiberal Party reform becomes the next proxy battle in Abbott versus Turnbull<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176605/original/file-20170703-4180-rjvkev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The end game of Tony Abbott's policy pitches is unknown, but in the interim they seem to be destabilising the party.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brendan Esposito/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For his own good, Malcolm Turnbull can’t get out of the country quickly enough. He’s off on Wednesday to the G20 in Germany and, if he has any sense, while he’s abroad he’ll try to avoid being drawn on local Liberal shenanigans.</p>
<p>As it is, one year from his narrow election win, he’s been talking his way into trouble.</p>
<p>There was the interview with the Sunday News Corp papers in which he said “when I cease to be prime minister, I will cease to be a member of parliament”. While he might have had his mind on how Tony Abbott should behave, inevitably this came to be interpreted as Turnbull threatening a by-election if he were rolled.</p>
<p>Then on Monday he told reporters: “Look, I intend to be prime minister for a very long time. I know you may think that at 62 I am too old – I can assure you I’m going to be prime minister for a very long time. I will be running at the 2019 election and will win.”</p>
<p>This wasn’t as provocative as when Bob Hawke, riled by Paul Keating’s “Placido Domingo” speech, told journalists he would be prime minister for the following five years (only to be deposed a year later). But it was bad on two grounds.</p>
<p>“A very long time” manages to sound simultaneously presumptuous and defensive. And why would a leader who feels totally secure choose to assert, rather than have it taken for granted, that he would be running at the next election?</p>
<p>Abbott’s ultimate objective is to see Turnbull leave the leadership. It’s unclear what will be the outcome of that story. But if he has an intermediate goal – of distraction and destabilisation – he is achieving that. Turnbull is talking about himself – unhelpfully – while his ministers are having to defend him and comment on Abbott, and the message to voters is of a party divided.</p>
<p>The rather plaintive if obvious statement from Industry Minister Arthur Sinodinos – “I can’t control Tony Abbott” – goes for them all. Abbott has disproportionate negative power, in the sense that his public contributions, whether speeches or radio interviews, routinely gain maximum attention and become reference points for the media.</p>
<p>Abbott is operating on two fronts. One is a populist pitch to the voters on the right. The other is an appeal to disgruntled members of the Liberal Party, both broadly but especially in his home state of New South Wales.</p>
<p>He is picking up on issues of concern to ordinary people and throwing out prescriptions – for example proposing a freeze on subsidies for wind farms to help ease pressure on power prices, and urging a cut in immigration to assist with housing pressures.</p>
<p>For the conservatives among the party faithful, he has become the voice of tradition. For the NSW rank and file, he is the vanguard in the fight for internal democracy.</p>
<p>While his policy pitches, to voters generally and those within the party, are simplistic, unconvincing and often at odds with what he did while prime minister, his stand on party reform in his home state highlights serious flaws in the NSW party organisation.</p>
<p>Party reform – more often something that has bugged federal Labor leaders than Liberal ones – is also emerging as a serious front on which Turnbull will have to manage the “Abbott factor”.</p>
<p>In 2014, in a report commissioned by Abbott, John Howard outlined the NSW Liberal division’s problems, including its entrenched factionalism, and recommended changes, one of which was a system of preselection plebiscites for lower house seats, in which branch members of two years’ standing would be able to vote.</p>
<p>Howard has acknowledged that reform in the NSW division will only come if the party’s federal and state leaders get behind it.</p>
<p>Last year, as Abbott promoted the issue, Turnbull and then-premier Mike Baird backed a broad motion on reform but kicked the issue down the road to a party convention, which will be held on July 22-23.</p>
<p>Abbott is pushing a radical plan, with rank-and file-votes for preselections for all seats and for all organisational positions including for the party president. He told Alan Jones on Monday: “The best way to liberate our party from factional control, the best way to liberate our party from the lobbyists is to give every single member a vote because it’s much harder to control 500 members than it is to control 50.”</p>
<p>Once again, Turnbull and the state leader, Premier Gladys Berejiklian, will have to take a stand.</p>
<p>To say it’s difficult for Turnbull is an understatement. His moderate faction (together with a “soft right” subsection of the right) controls the NSW division, including its preselections, tightly and with an iron fist.</p>
<p>The power of lobbyists over what happens and who is selected is notorious. Abbott’s attempt when prime minister to break their clout did not succeed.</p>
<p>Genuine reform would weaken the present factional control, although to what degree and over what time frame is not clear. The whole power structure could be transformed.</p>
<p>This is the last thing the moderates want. Moderates express doubts about going too far because of the dangers of branch stacking, which is what they say has happened in Victoria. Their opponents call this “branch building”.</p>
<p>There are counter proposals that include a longer qualifying time to vote in preselection plebiscites, and a test that would reward people for their activities in the party.</p>
<p>The outcome of the convention is not binding on the party hierarchy but would be hard to defy.</p>
<p>Turnbull is caught between his nemesis, who has wrapped himself tightly and conspicuously in the flag of party reform, and his faction, which doesn’t want to give away more than absolutely necessary.</p>
<p>The expectation is that Turnbull will back changes but they will be hedged and qualified. One would think the party would support the Turnbull position, given the stakes.</p>
<p>The wider point is that Turnbull, with all his other problems, does not need a battle over Liberal “internals” as another distraction.</p>
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For his own good, Malcolm Turnbull can’t get out of the country quickly enough. He’s off on Wednesday to the G20 in Germany and, if he has any sense, while he’s abroad he’ll try to avoid being drawn on…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/637102016-08-14T20:15:31Z2016-08-14T20:15:31ZNSW Liberals’ factional battles stand in way of reform, but changes in participation demand it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133877/original/image-20160812-18023-1uy4x69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tony Abbott has called for reform to the way the NSW branch of the Liberal Party preselects election candidates.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A recent ABC <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2016/08/08/4513599.htm">Four Corners</a> program once again put the spotlight on the “cold war” in the New South Wales branch of the Liberal Party over internal party democracy.</p>
<p>The conflict is not just a dispute over internal party processes. It is also driven by the NSW branch’s <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=GT6UG9TKZTMC&lr=&redir_esc=y&hl=en">decades-long factional conflict</a>. The dispute’s origins can be traced back to the late 1960s and, without too much effort, back to the party’s formulation out of the ashes of the United Australia Party in the 1940s.</p>
<h2>What’s holding back reform?</h2>
<p>The NSW branch has three factions: the moderates, the right and the hard right. </p>
<p>In the late 1960s, groups of religious conservatives and advocates of “captive nations” (countries behind the Iron Curtain) organised into a faction known as “The Uglies”. Their aim was to gain more influence within the Liberal Party by creating new branches in Sydney’s west. </p>
<p>The right (then just one faction) were pushing a radical brand of conservative politics compared to the social liberalism dominating the party at the time.</p>
<p>By the late 1970s, the right faction had established enough power to start becoming a force within the party. Disputes over claims of branch-stacking and intimidation became ever more frequent – so much so that by the mid-1980s the moderates responded by <a href="http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p323151/pdf/introduction.pdf">forming a faction</a> known as “The Group”. </p>
<p>The Group saw the rise of the right as a danger to the party’s integrity. Its organisation was focused on controlling the state executive and preselections, rather than on ideological issues. This way, there would be less chance for them to disagree.</p>
<p>The Group was highly successful <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2006/s1688866.htm">until the mid-2000s</a>, when the right finally broke its hegemony. Yet, soon after, the right faction split into two groups (the right and the hard right). The more centrist of the two was more inclined to do deals with the moderate faction to lock out the hard right. See, for example, the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/liberal-party-factions-at-war-over-tony-abbotts-alleged-role-in-the-garrotting-of-bronwyn-bishop-20160417-go88zx.html">deal to deny Bronwyn Bishop preselection</a> in 2016.</p>
<p>It is in this context that <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-19/liberals-suspended-for-talking-preselection-to-abc-730/7185652">calls</a> for <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2013/s3861931.htm">democratic</a> <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2007/s1963657.htm">reform</a> are resisted within the NSW branch. Liberal Party membership is now very small compared to the time the party’s institutions were designed, which makes the party vulnerable to branch-stacking and other attempts to gain control of the political organisation. </p>
<p>More recently, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-concierge-faction-is-choking-the-nsw-liberal-party-and-threatening-malcolm-turnbulls-authority-20160124-gmcyps.html">debate</a> over perceptions of conflict of interest of state council members who are also lobbyists has emerged.</p>
<p>There are long-standing problems with democratic participation within the NSW branch. Allowing greater democracy in the party, through changes to preselections and broader membership categories as recommended by <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/downloads/liberal/11-07-18_review-of-2010-election-campaign_reith.pdf">previous reviews</a>, would empower the membership. </p>
<p>The membership is locked out by the factions’ dominance of decision-making bodies. But giving members a greater say would upset the current power balance within the party because the membership base is more conservatively inclined than many of the party’s elites. </p>
<p>This disjuncture is an important driver of resistance to reforms. But given the conflict’s factional nature, it is likely that were the roles reversed, the situation would be the same.</p>
<h2>Preselection models</h2>
<p>The major parties’ preselection models for choosing candidates for election come out of the days of “mass party” memberships. In the Australian context, most parties have advocated a move to primaries as a way to reinvigorate their flagging membership bases.</p>
<p>Labor has trialled community preselection in <a href="http://democraticaudit.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/miragliotta.pdf">Victoria</a> and, more recently, in <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-17/verity-firth-to-fight-for-labor-pre-selection-in-balmain/5263718">NSW</a> <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-30/nsw-mp-penny-sharpe-wins-alp-community-preselection/5354582">with</a> <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/labor-abandons-community-preselection-process-for-sydney-mayor-20160715-gq6ima.html">mixed results</a>. On the basis of these trials, federal Labor leader <a href="http://www.alp.org.au/rebuild_labor">Bill Shorten</a> has called on the party to extend this method to seats it doesn’t already hold. However, Labor’s state branches rejected similar calls by <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2012/05/14/labor-state-bosses-stare-down-pm-on-primaries/">Julia Gillard</a> in the lead-up to the 2013 election.</p>
<p>Several Liberal Party reviews have also recommended the use of primaries. The <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/2011/07/18/reith-2010-campaign-review.html">Reith report in 2010</a> recommended primaries as a way of helping to deal with the problems of branch-stacking and promoting organisational renewal through increased and more meaningful participation by members.</p>
<p><a href="http://democraticaudit.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/miragliotta.pdf">The Nationals</a> have experimented with primaries in regional seats. Again, the rationale was based on reviving membership numbers and inclusivity.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10361146.2012.731490">Research</a> points to the importance of party elites in driving these pushes for reform instead of grassroots action. For party elites, primaries are a way to help reinvigorate parties, dilute the power of destructive factions and increase <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00344893.2015.1108359?needAccess=true">candidate diversity</a>. </p>
<p>However, <a href="http://democraticaudit.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/miragliotta.pdf">other research</a> suggests different considerations are at play. Trialling primaries are good public-relations exercises for parties and – in the case of the Nationals – a way to challenge and ward off independent candidates. Primaries can also be rebranding exercises after scandals.</p>
<p>This is not just a phenomenon unique to Australia. Political parties in other Westminster countries are experimenting with primaries for similar reasons. But preselection is not the only way to encourage people to be involved in politics. Globally, other parties are experimenting with supporters’ networks.</p>
<p>As the changing nature of political participation presents increasing challenges for parties, we are likely to see more experimentation with new forms of participation, not less.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63710/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marija Taflaga does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the changing nature of political participation presents increasing challenges for parties, we are likely to see more experimentation with new forms of participation, not less.Marija Taflaga, PhD Candidate, School of Political Science and International Relations, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/452332015-07-30T20:14:31Z2015-07-30T20:14:31ZReviewing an anachronism? Labor to debate future of socialist objective<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90220/original/image-20150730-10344-10nkvmj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">NSW Labor leader Luke Foley moved a motion for Labor to review its 'socialist objective', which dates back to 1921.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tracey Nearmy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 2015 ALP national conference <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/alp-conference-2015-1921-socialist-objective-under-review/story-e6frgd0x-1227457897644">agreed</a> that there will be a review of the <a href="http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/australianlaborparty/pages/121/attachments/original/1365135867/Labor_National_Platform.pdf?1365135867">Labor platform’s</a> so-called “socialist objective”. The review follows calls from the likes of NSW Labor leader <a href="http://www.lukefoley.com.au/wran_lecture">Luke Foley</a> to revise the party’s objective, given that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… no-one in the party today argues that state ownership is Labor’s central, defining purpose.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>How the socialist objective has evolved</h2>
<p>The socialist objective dates from a more radical time in the ALP’s history. When it was written in 1921, the Labor Party was responding to a <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/A_Little_History_of_the_Australian_Labor.html?id=rsIcQ4M1yMkC">period</a> of industrial unrest and economic uncertainty following the first world war. </p>
<p>However, even then the party’s original 1921 commitment to “the nationalisation of banking and all principal industries” was quickly watered down to suggest that collective ownership was necessary only where such industries were being operated in an <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/A_Little_History_of_the_Australian_Labor.html?id=rsIcQ4M1yMkC">exploitative and socially harmful way</a>. </p>
<p>That important proviso remains in the party platform’s current socialist objective, which reads:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Australian Labor Party is a democratic socialist party and has the objective of the democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange, to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features in these fields.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These words already leave a convenient loophole for those modern Labor Party politicians who argue that a healthy private sector is essential for economic growth and employment; that capitalism is not inherently exploitative; and that some basic government regulation, good industrial relations legislation and active unions – rather than nationalisation – is all that is needed to prevent problems of exploitation.</p>
<p>It is well over half a century since a Labor government attempted to nationalise an industry. In 1947, the Chifley government <a href="http://www.chifley.org.au/ben-chifley-bank-nationalisation/">unsuccessfully attempted</a> to nationalise the banks – a move which was found to be unconstitutional. However, Ben Chifley only resorted to nationalisation after Labor’s previous attempts to bring in increased government powers over private banking had failed. </p>
<p>Far from being part of a radical socialist agenda, Chifley’s attempts to have more government control over banking arose from his belief that the private banks were resisting Keynesian-style financial stimulation policies and were not adequately funding the development of Australian manufacturing industry. </p>
<p>With the exception of the banks, Chifley was generally very <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8497.1986.tb00339.x/abstract">supportive</a> of private industry, particularly manufacturing. </p>
<p>So, while <a href="http://www.pm.gov.au/media/2014-08-20/interview-steve-austin-612-abc-brisbane">Tony Abbott</a> and <a href="http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/freedom-of-speech-media-diversity-and-the-nbn-address-in-reply-speech">Malcolm Turnbull</a> may occasionally accuse the Labor Party of being fundamentally socialist, it is many years since Labor governments attempted any form of nationalisation. </p>
<h2>Why the calls for reform?</h2>
<p>The national conference decision is not the first attempt to remove or substantially water down Labor’s socialist objective. There was also a concerted attempt in the early 1980s, in which Gareth Evans played a leading role. He published key <a href="http://www.gevans.org/pubs.html">arguments</a> critiquing the objective. Some of the 23 <a href="http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/australianlaborparty/pages/121/attachments/original/1365135867/Labor_National_Platform.pdf?1365135867">sub-paragraphs</a> that modify and explain Labor’s current objective date from that time.</p>
<p>Consequently, the ALP’s socialist objective now has much less political significance than British Labour’s equivalent, <a href="http://www.labourcounts.com/oldclausefour.htm">Clause IV</a>. Tony Blair <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/New_Britain.html?id=KgCij_4NSqYC&redir_esc=y">argued</a> that the:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… ideological refoundation of the party took place through the revision of Clause 1V. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Blair saw it as a central part of the modernisation process that separated <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/uk/labour/941004blair-new-labour-speech.shtml">“New Labour”</a> from its socialist and, in his view, overly trade union past.</p>
<p>Years before Blair revised Clause IV and trumpeted New Labour’s arrival, the ALP under prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating had been moving in a <a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/pap/2002/00000030/00000001/art00002">similar direction</a>. The ALP began placing an increased emphasis on the positive role of markets and private enterprise in achieving the party’s aims of economic growth, full employment and equality of opportunity. </p>
<p>Hawke and Keating had introduced their economic rationalist policies with the support of the trade union movement. They had even increased private profits by <a href="http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/eserv/UQ:195374/JQ4031_J64_2000.pdf">trading off</a> real wage increases and some working conditions in return for providing superannuation, education and welfare benefits. </p>
<p>The Rudd government did not embrace such economic rationalism as enthusiastically as Hawke and Keating had. Nonetheless, both the Rudd and Gillard governments still saw a healthy private sector as having a crucial role to play in achieving <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8497.2011.01614.x/abstract">Labor’s aims</a>. Kevin Rudd and – contrary to popular opinion – <a href="http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/121064/20111205-0008/www.pm.gov.au/press-office/labor-australia-movement-address-chifley-research-centre-canberra.html">Julia Gillard</a> both saw the ALP as already being a modern social democratic party.</p>
<p>So, given that retaining the socialist objective hasn’t prevented Labor from developing pro-market policies, why is it still seen as such a significant issue? Why does it still generate passionate debate? </p>
<p>The objective’s <a href="http://www.lukefoley.com.au/wran_lecture">opponents</a> argue that it is time to make a definitive and symbolic break with Labor’s more radical socialist past. They claim Labor needs to reformulate its social democratic objectives given that nationalisation is no longer on the party’s agenda.</p>
<p>Since that clearly is the case, why are others still wanting to hold on to the objective? One reason is that the objective does reference a time when the ALP still had a critique of capitalist markets, even if a somewhat qualified one. </p>
<p>Also, vague references to “democratic socialisation” – and only when essential to prevent “exploitation” and “anti-social features” – can potentially include a variety of regulatory measures or forms of public sector provision, not just nationalisation. The sub-paragraphs explaining the objective make that clear. Many left-wing ALP members are concerned that Labor’s embrace of market-based solutions has gone <a href="http://www.challengemagazine.com.au/our_socialist_objective">too far</a>.</p>
<p>After all, if there are no significant problems with relying on markets, why do we even need social democratic parties like the ALP? Consequently, Labor’s socialist objective has a much deeper significance than appears to be the case at first sight. Rather than just being an anachronism, it still raises issues about the ALP’s fundamental nature and political mission.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45233/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carol Johnson receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Given that retaining the socialist objective hasn’t prevented the ALP from developing pro-market policies, why is it still seen as such a significant issue?Carol Johnson, Professor of Politics, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/446552015-07-26T09:04:33Z2015-07-26T09:04:33ZALP national conference: experts respond<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89713/original/image-20150726-8465-1owbx44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The ALP's national conference, held in Melbourne over the weekend, was Bill Shorten's first as Labor leader.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tracey Nearmy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Bill Shorten survived an internal push for a future Labor government to ban turning back asylum seeker boats at the ALP national conference.</p>
<p>The party’s three-day national conference, which concluded in Melbourne on Sunday, also resolved to recognise Palestinian statehood “if there is no progress in the next round of the peace process”, committed federal MPs to a binding vote in favour of same-sex marriage after another two parliamentary terms and made small progress on internal party reform.</p>
<p>The Conversation’s experts were watching the conference with an eye across key policy areas. Their responses follow.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Asylum seekers</h2>
<p><strong>Alex Reilly, Director of the Public Law and Policy Research Unit, Adelaide Law School at University of Adelaide</strong></p>
<p>As a result of the ALP national conference’s failure to ban turning back asylum seeker boats, there is nothing to distinguish the architecture of Labor and the Coalition’s asylum seeker policies. Both are committed to a unilateral response to boat arrivals that involves turnbacks and offshore processing to ensure no asylum seeker arriving by boat will be granted protection in Australia.</p>
<p>This is a stunning concession to the Coalition’s hardline policy. The Coalition has won the debate on turnbacks. It is now mainstream policy. And yet, we would do well to remember just how dramatic the policy is. </p>
<p>The policy is pursued in the face of the objections of Indonesia – to whom the majority of turnbacks are directed. It is in clear contravention of Australia’s voluntarily assumed obligations under the UN Refugee Convention. It is undertaken at considerable risk to the asylum seekers who are forcibly returned to the shores of Australia’s international neighbours.</p>
<p>The assessment of it being “safe” to carry out the policy would seem to refer only to a narrow assessment of the seaworthiness of boats that are turned back with no regard for the personal circumstances of the asylum seekers on board, or their subsequent plight.</p>
<p>The Labor left moved a motion to ban turnbacks. It argued instead for a policy that pursued strong regional and international arrangements and improved the protection outcomes of asylum seekers before they reached Australia by boat.</p>
<p>The motion was doomed to fail – it did not address the dilemma for Labor in formulating its asylum seeker policy. It is clear that Labor must take to the next election a policy that guarantees that asylum seeker boats will not again arrive in large numbers under its watch. </p>
<p>Both Labor’s left and the right missed an opportunity at the national conference to pursue an alternative way. The policy Labor takes to the next election need not focus on stopping the boats – as far as we know, this has all but been achieved. Labor only needs to ensure that the boats do not start coming again in significant numbers. This outcome is more easily achieved, and does not require either a turnback policy or regional processing on Nauru or Manus Island.</p>
<p>The answer lies in a much more robust engagement with both Malaysia and Indonesia. Labor’s 2011 agreement with Malaysia offers a useful blueprint. As I have <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-labor-can-create-a-humane-refugee-policy-without-reviving-boat-arrivals-44132">outlined</a> previously, a return to a policy along these lines preserves the human rights of asylum seekers and offers an opportunity to engage positively with Malaysia and Indonesia, with whom we share the dilemma of addressing the needs of asylum seekers in our region.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Climate change and energy</h2>
<p><strong>Peter Christoff, Associate Professor, School of Geography at University of Melbourne</strong></p>
<p>In tackling climate policy head on at its 2015 party conference, Labor made a virtue out of necessity. There is no way it could have done anything else. The alternative was being bludgeoned by the Coalition about its “hidden plans” for a carbon tax and emissions trading between now and the next election.</p>
<p>And so Shorten went out on the front foot. He used his opening speech at the conference to aggressively promote climate as a key electoral issue. He affirmed that Labor will support a target of 50% of stationary energy from renewables by 2030 and establish a national emissions trading scheme (ETS). </p>
<p>The platform also indicates that Labor will introduce tougher vehicle emissions standards and provide ongoing support for important climate institutional innovations – the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Climate Change Authority – created by previous Labor governments and attacked by Abbott.</p>
<p>The platform and Shorten’s comments use four narrative claims that aim to frame and capture the initiative for Labor in the upcoming climate debate:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Shorten emphasised climate is “an economic and environmental cancer that demands early intervention”. In other words, this issue is about national security and “national health”. </p></li>
<li><p>Labor is pushing for innovation and investment in a “clean energy future” – a claim that fits with Labor’s traditional self-representation as Australia’s only party of national modernisation. </p></li>
<li><p>Shorten underscored the policy’s economic and social responsibility. It will produce – rather than cost – investment and jobs, and lower household energy bills. </p></li>
<li><p>Shorten and his environment spokesman, Mark Butler, have aimed to blunt Coalition claims of “rash leadership” by arguing this new policy is merely trying to catch up with others, and is specifically following the lead of major economies like the US and China.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>So what could be better and what’s missing? </p>
<p>Electricity production is currently responsible for around 33% of Australia’s national emissions. The ALP’s renewables announcement therefore implies a national emissions reduction target of at least 16% below present levels by 2030. </p>
<p>With the ETS and the use of other emissions reduction and energy efficiency measures, tougher targets are possible. And they are essential if Australia is to do its fair share in keeping global warming well below two degress Celsius.</p>
<p>Given the Abbott government’s ongoing refusal to divulge Australia’s targets in the run-up to the UN climate negotiations in Paris this year – Australia is the only developed country to not have done so - Labor missed an important political opportunity by not now announcing its own national emissions targets and national carbon budget for 2025, 2030 and beyond. </p>
<p>These targets and the carbon budget could have been justified in reference to the research of the Climate Change Authority – just as Labor’s platform does for vehicle emissions standards.</p>
<p>Labor also failed to make any mention of tackling Australia’s very substantial public subsidy to the fossil fuel sector. The International Monetary Fund recently reported that Australia’s subsidy to this sector to expected be around A$41 billion in 2015, or around 2% of GDP. </p>
<p>Ending this environmentally destructive subsidy would help level the economic playing field between alternative energy sources and provide significant additional revenue for the budget – including for investment in renewables. On this matter too, the ALP platform is silent.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Party reform</h2>
<p><strong>Rob Manwaring, Lecturer, Politics and Public Policy at Flinders University</strong></p>
<p>The late British Labour MP Tony Benn once quipped that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>New Labour is the smallest political party that’s existed in Britain – the only problem is that they are all in cabinet. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Tony Blair and the modernisers made reform the party a central part of his efforts to re-make the party. His greatest achievement was to re-write Clause IV – de-socialising UK Labour’s key aim.</p>
<p>The Australian Labor Party, under Bill Shorten’s leadership, has deferred its “Clause IV” moment. Modernisers, especially on the right, won the conference battle to “review” the long-standing socialist objective. </p>
<p>In a feisty debate, NSW Labor leader Luke Foley led the battle to re-write the ALP’s core mission, calling for an objective that “true believers can believe in”. Veteran Kim Carr led the counter-charge, with a pointed “Comrade, I could not disagree with you more” and some old style tub-thumping.</p>
<p>On other reform matters, Labor has, in classic style, tentatively and messily moved forward. Conference committed to increasing Indigenous membership and required state branches to direct elect delegates. Kevin Rudd’s leadership changes were endorsed. Labor’s gender 40:40:20 rule will eventually become a stronger 50:50, but only by 2025. Critical issues like changing the trade union block vote were not even debated.</p>
<p>This all suits Shorten. Labor has signalled some progressive intent, but the difficult decisions have yet again been postponed and deferred – the same-sex marriage amendment is a perfect example. Internally, the left faction has not been able to impose itself.</p>
<p>Debates on internal rules are often dismissed as party “navel-gazing”. While they have little immediate impact on the party’s electoral appeal, they remain central to what the party stands for. Blair knew this, which is why changing Clause IV was such an early crusade.</p>
<p>Shorten, despite his modernising tendencies, is unlike Blair. First, he lacks a cohort of like-minded modernisers. Second, his “vision” of modernising the party is neither as clear nor radical. This might just help get him into office, but it remains hazy what he might do if he got there. </p>
<hr>
<h2>Education</h2>
<p><strong>Bill Louden, Emeritus Professor of Education at University of Western Australia</strong></p>
<p>The Labor values underpinning the education platform are reassuringly familiar: equity, access and inclusion. The platform hits all the contemporary educational hotspots, too:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Better early years education and care;</p></li>
<li><p>More support for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) teachers;</p></li>
<li><p>Needs-based and sector-blind school funding;</p></li>
<li><p>An independent national curriculum and assessment system;</p></li>
<li><p>Higher standards in initial teacher education;</p></li>
<li><p>The primacy of the public TAFE provision; and </p></li>
<li><p>Accessible and affordable higher education. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>So, is it a matter of “move along, nothing to see here”? Not really, because beneath the educational values that have served Labor so well electorally lie some unresolved policy tensions.</p>
<p>As always, these are mostly about money. The continued commitment to the Gonski resource standards in schools will be welcomed by most in the school education industry. The platform acknowledges that delivering on this will require Labor to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… work co-operatively with the states and territories to increase school funding. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>More co-operation and more money would be good, but the federation has a lot of moving parts. Without significant reforms to the federation the states won’t have more money to contribute. Without reductions in outlays in other portfolios it is hard to see how a future Labor government could afford to invest more in school education.</p>
<p>The policy tensions in higher education lie between the commitment to “a strong, affordable and accessible higher education system” and the opposition to “deregulation of fees, or the introduction of full fee degrees for undergraduates”.</p>
<p>It’s said to be dangerous to get caught between a vice-chancellor and a bucket of cash, but the near-unanimous support of vice-chancellors for Education Minister Christopher Pyne’s funding reforms reflects real financial pressure on higher education. The demand-driven system has opened up access, and this is a good thing. But declining income per student is undermining the quality of teaching and research. </p>
<p>So, the policy tension remains after the national conference. In government, Labor values have delivered accessible and affordable higher education. But without funding reform the system will be weaker, not stronger.</p>
<p><strong>Gwilym Croucher, Higher Education Policy Adviser at University of Melbourne</strong></p>
<p>As widely speculated, the national conference reaffirmed the ALP’s strong opposition to the current government’s planned deregulation of university fees. Senator Kim Carr said a future ALP government “will rebuild what the Coalition has torn down”, and that the platform makes it “clear that Labor will never support fee deregulation”.</p>
<p>Carr also signalled again that while a future Labor government would respect university “autonomy”, there will be an expectation that in receiving public funds they will be “accountable for how they spend taxpayer dollars” through “partnerships”.</p>
<p>This will be read by many as further evidence that the ALP intends to return to the previous policy of requiring universities to sign “compacts” with the government, which would set out agreed goals in exchange for public funding. The previous Labor government’s use of compacts was unpopular – they were seen as ineffective.</p>
<p>The ALP’s platform signals a return to higher education targets. It seeks 40% of 25–34-year-olds holding bachelor-level degree or higher by 2025, and 20% of university undergraduate enrolments made up of low socioeconomic background students by 2020. These were dropped by the Coalition once they formed government.</p>
<p>Australia is likely to achieve the first target with little change to the system as numbers are already close. But the low-socioeconomic goal has remained elusive – there has been only slow progress on this in recent years despite significant investment.</p>
<p>Regarding research, the platform promises the full cost of research will be funded while encouraging:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… researchers to engage with end-users, including industry, to improve the impact of their research for industrial applications and the public good.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<h2>Health</h2>
<p><strong>Lesley Russell, Adjunct Associate Professor, Menzies Centre for Health Policy at University of Sydney</strong></p>
<p>Labor’s 2015 policy platform on health is the equivalent of motherhood and apple pie – a traditional presentation of what the party has always stood for and what the electorate wants and expects.</p>
<p>Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme are essential components of Labor’s vision for a fairer Australia. Together they deliver access to health care based on need not ability to pay. And there is a lead role for the Commonwealth government in the funding and delivery of healthcare services.</p>
<p>The party platform gives little indication of what health and healthcare policies will be taken to the next election or implemented should Labor win. That’s not surprising: its main role is to serve as the yardstick by which policies and programs should be judged. </p>
<p>The good bits: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Recognition that investing in good health for all Australians will deliver a productive workforce and a competitive economy and that climate change is having an impact on health outcomes;</p></li>
<li><p>Acknowledgement that the social determinants of health are crucial to more equal health outcomes – especially important when it comes to tackling Indigenous disadvantage;</p></li>
<li><p>Commitment to a strong and properly resourced public health system, including primary care and preventive health;</p></li>
<li><p>Mental health as a priority for action; and</p></li>
<li><p>The statement that lack of dental care represents a significant gap in the provision of universal health care.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The not-so-good bits: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>No clear role delineation for public and private sectors; </p></li>
<li><p>Nothing new proposed to address the chronic disease challenge; and </p></li>
<li><p>A very clinical approach to prevention.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The real problem is the failure to clearly recognise and articulate the difference between achieving good health and delivering health care. Thus, despite the invocation of social determinants, health does not appear in other parts of the platform concerned with infrastructure, environment, education and employment, and social justice. That’s a function of the way the platform document is produced.</p>
<p>Effective delivery of Labor’s goals for health and well-being and Closing the Gap will require a whole-of-government approach that, for the moment remains, undisclosed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44655/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Reilly is on the Management Committee of the Refugee Advocacy Service of South Australia.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bill Louden was deputy chair of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership and chaired its National Initial Teacher Education Committee from 2011 to 2014. He represented Western Australia on the Board of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority from 2008 to 2012. He was a member of the Rowe Review into the teaching of reading in Australia.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwilym Croucher is a higher education policy analyst in the office of the Vice-Chancellor at the University of Melbourne.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lesley Russell is a former policy advisor to the federal ALP.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Christoff is on the Board of the Australian Conservation Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Manwaring does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Conversation’s experts respond to the ALP national conference on matters of asylum seekers, health, education, party reform and more.Alex Reilly, Director of the Public Law and Policy Research Unit, Adelaide Law School, University of AdelaideBill Louden, Emeritus Professor of Education, The University of Western AustraliaGwilym Croucher, Higher Education Policy Adviser, The University of MelbourneLesley Russell, Adjunct Associate Professor, Menzies Centre for Health Policy, University of SydneyPeter Christoff, Associate Professor, School of Geography, The University of MelbourneRob Manwaring, Lecturer, Politics and Public Policy, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/446982015-07-22T20:12:47Z2015-07-22T20:12:47ZLonging for Labor to reform itself? National conference may not provide it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89100/original/image-20150721-12567-18xwmas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Not all of the bold initiatives for internal party reform that Bill Shorten laid down in 2014 appear on the ALP's national conference draft agenda.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Julian Smith</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hopes for root-and-branch internal reform of the federal Labor Party at its national conference look set to be dashed. The <a href="https://lab15.org.au/conference-documents">draft organisational reform agenda</a>, published ahead of this weekend’s conference, signals that wholesale democratisation of the party’s decision-making structures may not happen.</p>
<p>Expectations had been building for more than a year that the national conference would deliver deep organisational reform. This belief was sparked in April 2014. Bill Shorten, who won the leadership of the federal Labor Party in its first election to involve rank-and-file members, set down his vision for a “modern, outward-looking, confident and democratic party” in his <a href="http://billshorten.com.au/towards-modern-labor-party">“Towards a Modern Labor”</a> speech. </p>
<p>Shorten called for:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>a reduction in the structural power of the union in party matters; </p></li>
<li><p>increased membership involvement in preselections for the lower house (70:30 split between local members and a central panel) and for the Senate (50:50 split); </p></li>
<li><p>increased female representation across all party domains; and</p></li>
<li><p>direct election of delegates to national conference.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>However, not all of the bold initiatives that Shorten laid down in 2014 appear on the draft agenda. Conspicuously absent from the document are commitments to enshrine the new rules for <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-this-kevin-rudds-new-labor-party-15888">selecting the leader</a> in the national party constitution, and significant reform of preselection. </p>
<p>Many of the agenda items are less radical proposals to introduce online policy branches and consider new types of local branches. These sit alongside the usual calls to increase the membership, encourage union members to become active party members, and foster greater engagement by the parliamentary party with the rank and file. </p>
<p>There are also reforms that could be construed as increasing the centralisation and consolidation of power in the hands of party elites. The proposal to require state campaign directors to consult the leader and the national campaign director before the selection of candidates in both targeted and safe Labor seats is a case in point.</p>
<p>The draft statement also “supports state branches that are considering direct election”. Significantly, it proposes an implementation committee be established to further explore the direct election of national conference delegates. While this could ultimately result in reform, it is just as likely to postpone change in the short term. </p>
<h2>Why such a tentative agenda?</h2>
<p>Three key factors can explain the reforms being put forward.</p>
<p>First, while Shorten is federal parliamentary party leader, he does not have the power to change the rules unilaterally. A majority of national conference delegates must approve the changes. </p>
<p>Second, as a decision-making forum, the conference is not naturally suited to deep, system-wide organisational reform. Achieving agreement among 400 delegates on comprehensive organisational reforms is a logistical feat, especially when no faction has a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/labor-powerbrokers-lose-control-with-reform-back-on-the-agenda-20150617-ghqeiy.html">majority of delegates</a> capable of mobilising the numbers. </p>
<p>It is complicated further because the conference also seeks to tackle <a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2015/05/02/factions-jockeying-over-key-alp-policies/14304888001826">contentious matters</a> of policy and platform, such as climate change, same-sex marriage, the treatment of refugees and the recognition of Palestine. The national conference has many issues to deal with, and only three days to do so.</p>
<p>Third, although Shorten is in a unique position to argue for the reforms as party leader, he would need to expend significant political capital on this. Given the possibility the Abbott government will call an <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/five-reasons-why-tony-abbott-could-call-an-early-electionand-five-reasons-why-it-may-not-happen-20150626-ghyb1o.html">early election</a>, and Labor being <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bill-shorten-and-tony-abbott-hit-by-popularity-nosedive-fairfaxipsos-poll-20150705-gi5ga4.html">ahead in the polls</a>, Shorten may be reluctant to allow the party to become embroiled in contentious debates, which may evoke memories of the divisive Rudd-Gillard era. </p>
<h2>Does it matter if internal reform is not achieved?</h2>
<p>The presumption is that failing to achieve substantive outcomes will consign the ALP to political and electoral irrelevance, and Shorten’s leadership to oblivion. Both are dramatic overstatements.</p>
<p>For a start, although Gough Whitlam’s efforts to reform Labor’s organisational structures are widely lauded, few recent Labor leaders have systematically pursued – let alone secured – major organisational change. Leaving aside Kevin Rudd’s move to have rank-and-file involvement in electing the party leader in the dying days of the last Labor government, <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/10/04/1033538778242.html">Simon Crean</a> has been the only federal leader to achieve major reform in recent times. </p>
<p>And although political commentators are <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/crean-kelty-combet-george-seek-reform-in-alp-union-nexus/story-e6frg6z6-1227448157288">deeply engaged</a> in the issue of organisational reform, it is rarely a vote-winning issue. </p>
<p>Elections are usually decided by public policy issues, leadership and government performance – not by matters of internal party reform. Both the ALP (2007) and the Liberals (2013) were able to win office while largely failing to act on the major reforms recommended by internal party organisational reviews. </p>
<p>However, there are signs that momentum for organisational reform is gathering pace. </p>
<p>Senior party figures such as former senator <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/oct/07/john-faulkner-labor-must-eliminate-stench-of-corruption-to-restore-faith">John Faulkner</a> and ex-Victorian premier <a href="http://www.afr.com/news/politics/election/bracks-backs-faulkner-in-calling-for-labor-reform-20140409-ix70e">Steve Bracks</a> have renewed their calls for change. They have been joined by former union bosses, such as <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/industrial-relations/actu-elders-warn-labor-to-resist-unions-rising-power/story-fn59noo3-1227448381108">Greg Combet and Bill Kelty</a>, in calling for structural and cultural change. Within the party, newly formed ginger groups such as <a href="http://www.openlabor.net.au/what-we-stand-for.html">Open Labor</a> are calling for party democratisation. </p>
<p>It would be a mistake, then, to view the national conference as a failure if comprehensive organisational reform is not achieved. The short-term importance of reform to Labor’s electoral fortunes and Shorten’s leadership has generally been exaggerated. However, the pressure to change is unlikely to dissipate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44698/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As a decision-making forum, the Labor Party’s national conference is not naturally suited to deep, system-wide organisational reform.Narelle Miragliotta, Senior Lecturer in Australian Politics, Monash UniversityNicholas Barry, Lecturer, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/329352014-10-28T00:30:19Z2014-10-28T00:30:19ZLabor will be making a mistake if it simply divorces the unions<p>Proposed reforms in the Australian Labor Party aim to give members a greater voice in party governance and policy development. This is driven by the need to reverse the party’s shrinking support base after disastrous recent election results and declining membership. </p>
<p>Reform is commonly framed in terms of reducing the role of unions in the party, as their own membership has declined. It is argued this would break down factional control by “union bosses” of candidate pre-selection and of bloc votes at state and federal conferences that determine policy. Under ALP rules, <a href="http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/australianlaborparty/pages/121/attachments/original/1365135867/Labor_National_Platform.pdf?1365135867">50% of delegates</a> are union representatives. </p>
<p>Senator John Faulkner is the latest to <a href="https://theconversation.com/cut-union-representation-in-labor-conferences-faulkner-32634">propose reducing union conference representation</a>. Party reviews have already downgraded the union-party relationship to “partnership” in 2002, and “links” in 2010, alongside “other community organisations”. </p>
<p>When proposing that union membership no longer be required for new party members, federal Labor leader Bill Shorten <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bill-shorten-outlines-alp-reforms-aimed-at-boosting-party-membership-20140422-zqxvb.html">said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It used to be said that Labor was the political arm of the union movement. I’m saying today, as proud as I am of unions and what they’ve done, the Labor Party is the political arm of no one but the Australian people. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The ALP has always sought broad appeal to “the people” and must continue to do so for electoral viability. Nevertheless, the unions remain the largest membership-based representative civil institutions in Australia, rivalled only by the number of people who at least occasionally attend religious services. It would be a strategic error for the ALP to distance itself further from unions.</p>
<h2>Affiliates are unrepresentative of labour movement</h2>
<p>The problem is that unions affiliated to the ALP are unrepresentative of unionism as a whole. Only 11 unions account for all federal Labor parliamentarians with union backgrounds, nine of which are affiliated to the party. Almost half of these 39 MPs come from three affiliates: the Shop Distributive and Allied Industries Union (eight), Transport Workers’ Union (five) and Australian Services Union (five).</p>
<p>The unions that originally affiliated to the ALP in the early 20th century were predominantly blue-collar. However, these unions have declined in significance along with traditional blue-collar jobs. </p>
<p>Most white-collar unions, especially in the public sector, remain unaffiliated. But white-collar and public sector unionism expanded from the 1960s to 1980s. Although contracting after that, public sector union membership is 42% compared with 12% for the private sector. Public sector unions account for 41% of all union members. </p>
<p>The historical unions-ALP relationship suggests ways for improving political mobilisation and participative processes in the ALP by broadening the union base. In each of the Australian colonies where Labor parties originated in the early 1890s, peak union bodies played the initiating role. </p>
<p>In New South Wales and Queensland, where the ALP first became strongly established, the Sydney Trades and Labour Council and the Australasian Labour Federation, respectively, brought a mass base of unions to the party because they broadly represented most unions in their colony. </p>
<p>It is important to note that this political mobilisation was not dependent on high union density. The NSW union membership rate was barely 20% in 1890, although this was comparatively high at the time.</p>
<p>The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), representing virtually all Australian unions, could play the same role as its 1890s equivalents. The Australian Labor Advisory Council (ALAC), which previously brought Labor and ACTU leaders together for policy discussion, has been dormant for some years; its revival could be an important step in this direction. </p>
<h2>Nordic models of engagement</h2>
<p>Scandinavian examples suggest further possibilities. Swedish, Norwegian and (until 1995) Danish Labour or Social Democratic party executives have traditionally included peak union leaders. Norwegian party and union leaderships meet weekly in a joint consultative committee. Such measures could develop a policy platform around which the ACTU could mobilise.</p>
<p>When the ALP was formed, individual unions also played a major role at the local level. Unions were largely localised organisations. Early party branches also enjoyed some autonomy. This allowed for a high degree of participatory democracy, but over time both unions and parties became more centralised.</p>
<p>Union affiliation at the central party level could be replaced by affiliation of local union branches or workplace groups at the local ALP branch level. This is similar to the successful <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-can-learn-a-lot-about-public-policy-from-the-nordic-nations-32204">Swedish Social Democratic</a> practice. </p>
<p>Affiliation would occur only where local union groups were sufficiently engaged to affiliate. It could be based on substantial work sites, clusters of work sites or residential areas with significant proportions of members from particular unions.</p>
<p>This might require new branches or redrawing of branch boundaries, but the advantages would be twofold: potentially boosting party membership at the branch level; and breaking up central control of union bloc voting at conferences, upon which factions rely.</p>
<p>These restructuring proposals provide opportunity for greater rank-and-file participation at the “grass roots” level, as well as greater coordination with the ACTU, which represents all unions. This would reinvigorate the ALP’s position as a mass party for workers, rather than a party of disconnected “union bosses”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32935/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ray Markey is a member of the National Tertiary Education Union, which is not affiliated to the ALP.</span></em></p>Proposed reforms in the Australian Labor Party aim to give members a greater voice in party governance and policy development. This is driven by the need to reverse the party’s shrinking support base after…Ray Markey, Director of the Centre for Workforce Futures, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/332642014-10-21T23:29:23Z2014-10-21T23:29:23ZWhitlam’s hard fight for reform holds lessons for Labor today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62420/original/qp3ypqsh-1413927993.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gough Whitlam took principled revisionism to the very top of Labor politics.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Sergio Dionisio</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There was nothing inevitable about Gough Whitlam’s rise to the top. He had to fight every inch of the way. The fight was not only against born-to-rule Liberals who thought he had betrayed his class but also against dedicated Laborites who had achieved much and weren’t willing to give it away to someone they saw as an opportunist and upstart. Jim Cairns captured this sentiment when in the heat of the battle for party leadership in 1968 he <a href="http://www.afr.com/p/national/no_prime_minister_changed_australia_7CikCvuuI2I9sCToOFJv5O">said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Whose party is this – ours or his?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What Whitlam’s enemies didn’t bargain on was that his politics weren’t based on expediency but rather a well-thought-out vision and strategy for Labor. He was Australia’s version of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Crosland">Tony Crosland</a>, a principled revisionist with a “freedom and equality” agenda that made political and moral sense to the baby boomer generation. Along with an older generation of Labor supporters who were tired of impotence, they became his sword-carriers for party reform.</p>
<h2>Fixing party rules and structures</h2>
<p>Whitlam took principled revisionism to the very top of Labor politics. He stood up against party officials and their parliamentary supporters who saw the federal parliamentary Labor Party as little more than delegates of the extra-parliamentary party. His victory wasn’t complete – for example, his proposal to give rank-and-file party members a voice in the National Conference wasn’t realised – but he did see to it that the party leader and deputy gained seats. </p>
<p>Whitlam believed in the labour movement and its disciplines, if not all of its practices, but thought that the parliamentary party and its leader needed extra status and the space to exercise leadership if the electorate were to take them seriously. </p>
<p>To have leaders waiting for orders and the parliamentary party impotent to contribute to policy represented a death sentence. What Whitlam sought was balance between the three wings of Labor – members, unions and parliamentarians – and, importantly, between the leader and party officials. </p>
<h2>Building a sound policy platform</h2>
<p>At the heart of Whitlam’s revisionism was a new and relevant policy platform. He described the <a href="http://whitlamdismissal.com/1973/07/10/whitlam-address-to-alp-national-conference.html">1969 ALP conference</a> as “the most creative and constructive” in its history. It passed 61 resolutions in a wide range of areas and was very much “the program” his office had been developing in the previous five years. Health and education reform were re-affirmed and urban planning came to the table as did land rights for Aboriginals.</p>
<p>Whitlam was able to say in the election of that year that Labor had a plan for the next decade to “renovate, rejuvenate, reinvigorate and liberate”. This was the language the baby boomers loved to hear. When coupled with measures to support workers and their families, it produced increased representation for Labor, but not a majority, in that election. That was to come three years later.</p>
<p>Whitlam’s reforming zeal put Labor at the centre of Australian life where it needed to be if the party was to beat not just the conservatives but also reforming Liberals like prime minister John Gorton and Victorian premier Dick Hamer. He understood that if you aren’t ahead of the pack you are more than likely to be at its rear.</p>
<p>On a number of occasions Whitlam staked his career on the principles of revisionism. He took great risks that some might see as reckless but which history has judged as necessary. In 1966 he was nearly expelled over state aid (seven votes to five) and in 1968 resigned as leader in order to re-contest. He won, defeating Jim Cairns by 38 votes to 32. </p>
<p>Whitlam’s conflicts with Arthur Calwell were legendary, as were those with F.E. (“Joe”) Chamberlain. Whitlam played it as hard as his enemies but he had to in order to bring change. In this context, the comments by Chamberlain in his autobiography are telling:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was a pity that Whitlam’s stature as a person was diminished by the sometimes brutal, insensitive and unconstitutional means he used to ride to power in the Labor Party. Despite this, he has my deep admiration for being one of Australia’s and one of Labor’s great prime ministers. My argument has always been that unfair means cannot justify the end. Perhaps Whitlam’s fine performance in office is the exception that breaks the rule.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Three lessons for Labor today</h2>
<p>What lessons are there in all of this for contemporary Labor? Firstly, that structure and organisation aren’t just means to an end. They are political factors in themselves, sending signals to the community about who is in charge and what they represent. </p>
<p>Secondly, policy matters. Parties can never devote enough time in the search for and refinement of those which can “renovate” and “reinvigorate”. </p>
<p>Finally, political will matters. Risks have sometimes to be taken if progress is to be achieved.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33264/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geoff Gallop is a member of the ALP and a former premier of Western Australia.</span></em></p>There was nothing inevitable about Gough Whitlam’s rise to the top. He had to fight every inch of the way. The fight was not only against born-to-rule Liberals who thought he had betrayed his class but…Geoff Gallop, Director, Graduate School of Government, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/297372014-07-27T12:36:59Z2014-07-27T12:36:59ZBoth sides are finding party reform a challenging process<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54961/original/67dhpvfb-1406460433.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54961/original/67dhpvfb-1406460433.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54961/original/67dhpvfb-1406460433.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54961/original/67dhpvfb-1406460433.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54961/original/67dhpvfb-1406460433.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54961/original/67dhpvfb-1406460433.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54961/original/67dhpvfb-1406460433.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Labor leader Bill Shorten knows that party reform is a slow process.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Nikki Short</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bill Shorten’s reference to party reform was once-over-lightly when he addressed the NSW ALP conference on Sunday.</p>
<p>Shorten said Labor had to “rebuild as a party of members, not factions”. Members had to be entitled to participate “in the choice of our leaders, our candidates, our policies”; Labor must be a party “where more people are more involved more often”.</p>
<p>“That’s the direction this branch has set,” he said. But NSW Labor at the weekend had in fact moved just one foot forward on democratisation, while keeping the other one firmly planted where it was.</p>
<p>It brought the state into line with the federal practice by giving the rank and file a 50% say in choosing the party leader. As expected, however, it knocked back party elder John Faulkner’s move to allow the membership to choose Senate and state upper house candidates, who are at present selected by the factions (and ratified by state conference).</p>
<p>The debate over Labor party reform has been going on for literally decades, starting back in Gough Whitlam’s time (when some significant change was made). There is currently pressure (including from Shorten, though how hard he’ll go is yet to be seen) to open the party up, and the inevitable factional pushback to limit what’s done.</p>
<p>But while giving party members more say on various fronts looks the obvious way to go, that could also throw up problems. The membership is small and often unrepresentative of the broader community or even of Labor voters.</p>
<p>And there is no cause to be confident that democratisation would lead to a substantial and sustained increase in membership (Shorten has a target of 100,000, more than twice the current number). There are many reasons why people don’t want to join parties, ranging from the competing pulls on their time and interest, to the fact they are turned off politics.</p>
<p>In his memoir <em>The Fights of My Life</em>, out this week, former Labor minister Greg Combet suggests a radical way of boosting membership. He proposes members of affiliated unions should be asked whether they are Labor voters or would like to become party members.</p>
<p>Under Combet’s idea, they’d then be eligible to vote alongside ALP members (on the same basis or with a weighted vote) to elect delegates to conferences and in preselections. He argues the numbers would be too large for factions to manipulate them and believes this could be the first step towards broader community participation.</p>
<p>But the Combet plan would run into opposition from those concerned about the impression (or reality) of the party being tied even more closely to the union movement.</p>
<p>The problem of the big parties being “hollowed out” is a bipartisan one; like its Labor counterpart, the NSW Liberal party is also considering changes, with its weekend state council receiving an update. </p>
<p>A committee headed by former prime minister John Howard has recently finished a report that looks at preselections, an exercise Abbott, former NSW premier Barry O'Farrell and state president Chris Downy got under way. One spur was the family ethnic branch stack that gave Jaymes Diaz a second unsuccessful shot at a Greenway, a seat they should have won in both 2010 and 2013.</p>
<p>The Howard committee argues that rather than having candidates for lower house seats chosen by delegates, there should be full plebiscites of all party members in the electorate (with eligibility rules to prevent people being brought in at the last moment).</p>
<p>The plan, which follows the model used in the Victorian Liberal party, has received a very mixed response from the factions. The hard right is in favour; the country-based conservatives are concerned about regional representation; the centre right and the moderates (the two groups that dominate the division) have serious reservations.</p>
<p>Democratisation is considered to have worked well in Victoria, but there is no golden rule that ensures it will produce the best result in a particular case. An example was the Kew state preselection, where minister Mary Wooldridge (whose seat had disappeared in a redistribution) was beaten despite having Premier Denis Napthine’s backing.</p>
<p>More importantly, having rank and file preselections is not automatically going to prevent determined branch stackers from getting their way.</p>
<p>A fundamental problem in the NSW Liberal party is cultural. It has an especially nasty, virulent case of the disease of factionalism. The division has a high proportion of zealots. Reforming the preselection system won’t necessarily cleanse the party of some of its bad practices – factions are very adaptable – although it may mean that which faction gets the advantage is altered (a reason for those in control to resist change).</p>
<p>Democratisation would be unlikely to lead to a substantial influx of members. Apart from the general disincentives, the toxic culture would probably remain strong enough to put many people off.</p>
<p>As with NSW Labor, so with the NSW Liberals: change will be slow. In Victoria it took years. Nationally, the last federal council was due to discuss modest updates to the party’s constitution - the move was aborted when a majority of delegates decided they had not been given enough time to consider them.</p>
<p>The NSW Liberal state council will discuss the Howard plan when it meets later this year.
The ALP’s national conference next year will consider various proposals for party members to get more of a voice generally.</p>
<p>On both sides, party reform is a fraught process, with disputes about the right way to go and doubts about what various outcomes would follow.</p>
<p>This is not to say parties don’t need to change, in the hope of achieving at least a modicum of broadening and revitalisation. If they don’t, the democratic system will go further backwards.</p>
<p>Just don’t expect too much any time soon, or, if and when advances happen, for them to have a transformational effect on the quality of candidates, or the way politics operates.</p>
<p>There are too many other negative forces at work, including the modern media cycle, the way those who enter politics get trashed and trash each other, and the cynicism in the community.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29737/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Bill Shorten’s reference to party reform was once-over-lightly when he addressed the NSW ALP conference on Sunday. Shorten said Labor had to “rebuild as a party of members, not factions”. Members had to…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/294852014-07-24T04:26:09Z2014-07-24T04:26:09ZFaulkner’s reforms will fail as NSW Labor refuses to change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54595/original/nc8mky5z-1406077547.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It seems things are not yet bad enough in the Labor Party to make significant reform, such as John Faulkner's proposed changes to preselection, likely. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Daniel Munoz</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Labor senator John Faulkner <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/john-faulkners-preselection-proposal-faces-defeat-20140717-zty3l.html">does not anticipate</a> that his moves to reform the party’s preselection processes will succeed at this weekend’s NSW State Conference. Faulkner is hoping to have the rules changed so that candidates for upper house elections in NSW and federally will be chosen directly by party members, rather than by the ALP’s Administrative Committee, where trade union delegates are <a href="http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2014/07/19/faulkner-expects-state-conference-defeat-party-reform/1405692000#.U8yfrGS1YhQ">all powerful</a>.</p>
<p>The relationship between trade unions and party rank-and-file members has been strained from the Labor Party’s birth in the 1890s. In the early years of the 20th century almost every state ALP conference saw protests by either unionists or local members that one or the other was being sidelined. </p>
<p>Today, trade union delegates dominate state conference, which is the policy-making body of the party, so they are unlikely to give up their power voluntarily.</p>
<h2>A long history of conflict</h2>
<p>The first NSW Labor Party – the Labor Electoral League – was created by the trade union movement in the 1890s precisely to defend its interests in the parliamentary arena. The unions still regard the party as theirs.</p>
<p>However, it is unwise to rely too heavily on history to justify present-day policies, since both the Labor Party and the trade union movement have been utterly transformed since the late 19th century. The NSW party has been virtually recreated many times since then:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>by <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/holman-william-arthur-6713">William Holman</a> in order to make it electable to majority government in 1910;</p></li>
<li><p>by the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) creating a rigid faction system in order to get rid of supporters of conscription (including Holman) in 1916-17;</p></li>
<li><p>by <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lang-john-thomas-jack-7027">Jack Lang</a> to create his own personal political machine in the 1920s and 1930s;</p></li>
<li><p>by <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mckell-sir-william-john-15293">William McKell</a> in the early 1940s to restore sanity and to foster the values of postwar reconstruction of Australian society;</p></li>
<li><p>by <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/obituaries/neville-wran-labor-premier-had-a-golden-run-20140421-370ho.html">Neville Wran</a> to further the principles of Gough Whitlam’s social agenda and;</p></li>
<li><p>most recently by <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/labor-to-seek-life-ban-for-eddie-obeid-ian-macdonald-and-five-others-20140717-ztwed.html">Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi</a> to outdo Lang in using the party for personal profit. </p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54626/original/y268t9q8-1406094139.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54626/original/y268t9q8-1406094139.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54626/original/y268t9q8-1406094139.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54626/original/y268t9q8-1406094139.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54626/original/y268t9q8-1406094139.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54626/original/y268t9q8-1406094139.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54626/original/y268t9q8-1406094139.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54626/original/y268t9q8-1406094139.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eddie Obeid and others recast the NSW ALP in a bid for personal profit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Paul Miller</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Not surprisingly, many party members are hoping for a modern-day McKell to restore sanity. </p>
<p>The union movement also bears little resemblance to the Trades and Labor Council of the 1890s. It is now called Unions NSW and very few of its leaders have ever worked at the coalface or spent half a lifetime recruiting members among shearers or stonemasons, as was the typical career path for union leaders until the 1960s. </p>
<p>Now, most union leaders hold their positions because they have university degrees and management experience, irrespective of the craft or trade of their members.</p>
<h2>What chance is there for genuine reform?</h2>
<p>Calls for the Labor Party to reform are nothing new. Every election defeat at federal or state level brings an official inquiry and report explaining that further effort should be made to stop the decline in party membership and to introduce structural changes to the party to make this possible.</p>
<p>Occasionally there is a more formal inquiry, as with Bob Hawke and Neville Wran’s <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/2002/08/09/hawke-wran-alp-review.html">report</a> after the party’s loss at the 2001 federal election. However, its modest recommendations disappeared without trace.</p>
<p>In his first stint as prime minister, Kevin Rudd tried to reduce the role of large unions by denying a role for left and right factions to <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2007-09-29/rudd-seizes-power-from-factions/684454">choose his ministry</a>. The present leader, Bill Shorten, <a href="https://theconversation.com/shorten-the-unions-and-the-challenge-of-labor-party-reform-25854">talks up</a> the need for modest party reform but, as a former union leader himself, it is unlikely that his words will lead to firm action.</p>
<p>In previous eras, federal intervention could force reform of corrupt state branches. The party’s federal executive has intervened in the NSW ALP at least half-a-dozen times and leaned rather heavily another three or four times. The most important occasions were to get rid of Lang in 1939, to disband a pro-communist state executive in 1941, and to sort out the problems of the DLP split in the 1950s. </p>
<p>However, it is difficult to see federal intervention forcing the NSW party to introduce internal democracy. Trade unions are also dominant at the federal level. A very strong party leader, with unchallengeable electoral support, could force the federal conference or executive to intervene in this way, but such a leader is not currently in view.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54628/original/jpvfrfc6-1406096286.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54628/original/jpvfrfc6-1406096286.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54628/original/jpvfrfc6-1406096286.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54628/original/jpvfrfc6-1406096286.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54628/original/jpvfrfc6-1406096286.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54628/original/jpvfrfc6-1406096286.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54628/original/jpvfrfc6-1406096286.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54628/original/jpvfrfc6-1406096286.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Federal Labor leader Bill Shorten has talked up the need for modest party reform.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dan Himbrechts</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In one sense, the current political climate is not favourable for such reforms. At the next NSW state election the ALP should improve its position markedly, although it is unlikely to win. At the federal level the reaction against prime minister Tony Abbott is so strong that there is a genuine possibility that Labor could win the next election, even led by a lacklustre Shorten. Party minders will be saying that now is not the time to rock the boat.</p>
<p>The alternative that will become more likely the longer nothing is done is the complete reformation of the party. Robert Menzies accomplished this in the 1940s when he helped to create the present Liberal Party from the ashes of the previous United Australia Party (UAP), which had imploded over leadership and policy issues. </p>
<p>Gough Whitlam completely transformed the federal Labor Party in the late 1960s, although the party structures and name maintained considerable continuity. But such leaders do not come along every day.</p>
<h2>A final caveat</h2>
<p>Giving power over preselection to local members does not guarantee <a href="https://theconversation.com/careful-what-you-wish-for-the-pitfalls-of-internal-party-reform-25387">genuine party democracy</a>. Especially in a party where membership is declining and apathetic, local branches can very easily be stacked, as has been demonstrated time and time again. And stacked branches go with faction-driven preselections. </p>
<p>In the 1922 state conference, for example, AWU branch stacking was so all-pervasive that a motion was debated that all preselections be abolished and any candidate should be allowed to present at election. That is even less likely to be supported in 2014 than in 1923. </p>
<p>Perhaps the better alternative is to allow candidates to contest primary elections open to a vote of non-party members, as in the US, and as happened recently in the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/verity-firth-wins-community-preselection-for-seat-of-balmain-20140503-zr41m.html">selection of Verity Firth</a> for the state seat of Balmain. But primaries can become very expensive and the need for electoral funding becomes even more pressing – along with its temptations. And in a tight contest, it is open for members of opposed political parties to penetrate the process in order to block a candidate whom they fear. </p>
<p>All in all, the lesson seems to be that things are not yet bad enough in the Labor Party to make significant reform likely.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29485/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Hogan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Labor senator John Faulkner does not anticipate that his moves to reform the party’s preselection processes will succeed at this weekend’s NSW State Conference. Faulkner is hoping to have the rules changed…Michael Hogan, Associate Professor and Honorary Associate, Department of Government and International Relations, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/258542014-04-24T03:20:19Z2014-04-24T03:20:19ZShorten, the unions and the challenge of Labor Party reform<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46949/original/w3mfdggn-1398297138.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bill Shorten’s objective of an 'inclusive' Labor Party is hard to argue against in theory, but achieving it in practice is likely to prove fraught.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Julian Smith</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Federal Labor leader Bill Shorten has outlined <a href="http://billshorten.com.au/towards-a-modern-labor-party">his vision</a> for a rejuvenated Labor Party. His speech earlier this week was a call to arms for the reform of federal Labor’s organisational rules. While Shorten’s objective of producing an “inclusive”, “membership-based party” is hard to argue against in theory, achieving it in practice is likely to prove fraught.</p>
<p>Although the speech was light on detail and did not set a timetable for action, the most important ideas contained within it included:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>reducing the barriers to individuals joining the party by introducing a “one-click” online model and reducing the cost of national membership;</p></li>
<li><p>removing the requirement that prospective party members be affiliated to a union;</p></li>
<li><p>reforming federal pre-selection processes to increase the weight accorded to ordinary members in the selection of Labor candidates, including the use of community-based pre-selection methods in non-held lower house seats;</p></li>
<li><p>altering the composition of delegates at National Conference, the party’s <a href="http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/australianlaborparty/pages/121/attachments/original/1365135867/Labor_National_Platform.pdf?1365135867">supreme governing body</a>, so as to privilege individuals over union delegates; and</p></li>
<li><p>advocating for all state and territory Labor leaders to be elected by a combined vote of caucus and the membership.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>As Shorten acknowledged, party reform is an uncertain venture. Changing party rules will inevitably make losers out of winners. Those who find themselves on the wrong side of the reform agenda are likely to seek to frustrate it by any means possible. </p>
<p>An added risk is that the conflicts that the reform putsch will produce will spill over into the public arena with damaging consequences for the Labor Party’s image.</p>
<h2>Victim of its own success</h2>
<p>It is not clear that organisational reform can fix the problems at the heart of Labor’s malaise. Labor’s main challenge is <a href="https://theconversation.com/dysfunctional-brand-at-the-core-of-labors-current-crisis-25427">fundamentally sociological</a> in nature. The ALP, like many other social democratic parties in industrialised democracies, is a victim of its own policy successes.</p>
<p>Over the decades, Labor has addressed some of the worst excesses of societal disadvantage and inequality when in government. In doing so, it has transformed both the life opportunities but also the political and social expectations of Labor’s former working-class base.</p>
<p>This has left Labor with a <a href="https://theconversation.com/identity-crisis-who-does-the-australian-labor-party-represent-25374">constituency</a> that is fractured between a progressive and traditional cohort. The gulf between these constituencies is wide. Increasing the party’s membership is unlikely to bridge the policy and cultural divide that separates these voting segments.</p>
<h2>The unions problem</h2>
<p>Some of the reform sentiments within Shorten’s speech might also prove disadvantageous to Labor’s actual interests. For example, Shorten was at great pains to put distance between <a href="https://theconversation.com/whither-the-unions-what-shorten-can-learn-from-uk-labour-25385">Labor and the unions</a>, making clear that the modern Labor Party he wanted was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…not the political arm of anything but the Australian people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Shorten justified this distancing from the union movement on the grounds that the role of the unions within the party “has developed into a factional, centralised decision-making role”. While the union connection is clearly messy and embarrassing for the party on occasions – such as in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-alp-becomes-its-own-worst-enemy-in-wa-senate-shambles-25306">disastrous WA Senate election</a> – it is also a relationship that remains beneficial to Labor. That is, the relationship between Labor and unions is not just historical but is ongoing.</p>
<p>The union movement has long served as a recruiting and training ground for many aspiring Labor politicians. This includes Shorten himself, who was national secretary of the powerful Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) before entering parliament. The unions also mobilise for the party at elections and make a substantial financial contribution to ALP coffers.</p>
<h2>A faction-free Labor Party?</h2>
<p>It is far from clear that a larger, more inclusive party will produce a factionless party, free from the destructive power struggles that can grip this – and any other – organisation.</p>
<p>It is difficult to prevent power from aggregating around cliques in any organisation. The larger the party grows in terms of its numerical size, the stronger are the incentives for power to collect around individuals and groups. The rank and file can become disempowered by the sheer size of the organisation.</p>
<p>Also, reforms aimed at breaking up extant power groupings may only temporarily frustrate them. As labour historian Bradley Bowden <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-ending-union-ties-would-change-little-for-labor-25439">recently noted</a> on The Conversation, union bosses are likely to circumvent any efforts to significantly sideline them by encouraging their members to join as individuals.</p>
<p>Shorten is <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-this-kevin-rudds-new-labor-party-15888">not the first Labor leader</a> to aspire to reforming the party organisation, nor is he is likely to be last. He is staking his leadership on achieving a modernised Labor Party and is leveraging his status as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/rob-manwaring-12769/profile_bio">first member-elected party leader</a> as the basis for his mandate to pursue these reforms. </p>
<p>But as a factional warrior of the Victorian branch of the Labor Party who profited from many of the rules that he now seeks to challenge, Shorten’s credibility on this matter might be somewhat tarnished.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading:</strong> The Conversation’s recent series on <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/labors-future">Labor’s future</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25854/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Narelle Miragliotta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Federal Labor leader Bill Shorten has outlined his vision for a rejuvenated Labor Party. His speech earlier this week was a call to arms for the reform of federal Labor’s organisational rules. While Shorten’s…Narelle Miragliotta, Senior Lecturer in Australian Politics, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/253872014-04-14T20:40:54Z2014-04-14T20:40:54ZCareful what you wish for: the pitfalls of internal party reform<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46080/original/5rpjs75m-1397103713.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Labor senator John Faulkner is one leading voice to call for reform of the party in response to recent poor electoral performances.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In the wake of the ALP’s poor result in the recent Western Australia Senate election, The Conversation is publishing a series of articles looking at the party’s brand, organisation and future prospects.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The dust had barely settled from Labor’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-alp-becomes-its-own-worst-enemy-in-wa-senate-shambles-25306">poor performance</a> in the Western Australian Senate re-election when calls for internal party reform from the likes of party elder <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/john-faulkner-to-pursue-real-change-in-nsw-labor-party/story-fn59niix-1226877903605">John Faulkner</a> and national president <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/alp-president-jenny-mcallister-calls-for-party-reform/story-fn59niix-1226878335940">Jenny McAllister</a> began.</p>
<p>In practice, political parties are hierarchical organisations whose primary function is to select people from within their midst to be candidates at elections. If elected, these representatives will carry their party’s interests in the legislature. For Australia’s two major parties – Labor and Liberal – winning executive power is the benchmark of success. </p>
<p>Failing to win government, however, represents something of a corporate failure on the part of the party. Naturally enough, failure also results in party reviews. Both major parties participate in what is now becoming a post-election ritual for the losing side. </p>
<p>According to reviewers from both sides of politics, bringing in more ordinary citizens as party members is crucial to rejuvenating the party in the wake of a loss. But as enticing as the idea of a party bursting at the seams with members is to notions of party democracy, the reality is the empowerment of party members does have its dangers. </p>
<p>This is especially the case if the views and outlooks of these members are at odds with the electorate.</p>
<h2>What reviews find</h2>
<p>The conclusions major parties reach in post-election reviews have some interesting areas of commonality. They tend to see electoral failure as organisational failure - a conclusion that can conveniently absolve the parliamentary leadership of some of the responsibility. </p>
<p>Reviews by party elders John Valder (who <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/archive/news/libs-must-face-facts-to-regain-power/story-e6frg73o-1111115097247">reviewed the Liberal Party</a> after its 1983 election loss), John Faulkner, Bob Carr and Steve Bracks (<a href="http://resources.news.com.au/files/2011/02/18/1226008/222073-labor-review-report.pdf">Labor, 2010</a>) and Peter Reith (<a href="http://australianpolitics.com/downloads/liberal/11-07-18_review-of-2010-election-campaign_reith.pdf">Liberal, 2010</a>) commonly concluded that one of the reasons their parties didn’t perform as well as they would have liked was poor candidate selection.</p>
<p>Another commonly held view is that increased membership can only happen if ordinary people have a reason to join. Party oracles all seem to conclude that giving the ordinary citizen more power to select candidates should act as an important incentive for becoming a party member. </p>
<p>For the Victorian branch of the Liberal Party, the very American party notion of having caucuses and conventions has become a model for the pre-selection process. The Labor Party also likes American ideas and has <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/05/14/labor-state-bosses-stare-down-pm-on-primaries">played around with primaries</a>. Both parties project these ideas as proof of their commitment to participatory democracy.</p>
<p>This is a powerful political argument used by the reformers to outflank their internal party critics. After all, who would want to be cast as an opponent of democracy?</p>
<h2>Swinging voters and ideologues</h2>
<p>There is potential for a significant disconnect to occur between party members an especially those voters who make up the “swinging” electorate.</p>
<p>Leaving aside those who join political parties because they aspire to a parliamentary career – or those who have been recruited by someone who aspires to a parliamentary career – the remainder may well be those who see politics as a clash of ideas and ideologies. They have very firm views on what changes to society their parties should make when they win executive power.</p>
<p>This may be quite different from the outlook of the 30% of Australian voters who reside in swinging marginal seats. Their choice is the one that actually decides which of the major parties governs the country. </p>
<p><a href="http://dspace.flinders.edu.au/jspui/bitstream/2328/26061/1/Manning%20Swinging.pdf">Swinging voters</a> are pragmatic in that they see politics not as a battle of philosophies or ideology, but as a question of which party is most likely to deliver services without raising taxes, and which is unified enough to at least give the semblance of order and stability. To win government, the major parties have to appeal to this very centrist and pragmatic constituency.</p>
<h2>The Victorian Liberals’ example</h2>
<p>An insight into the potential that enfranchising an ideological mass membership has to disrupt the pragmatic aspirations of those who lead the party’s parliamentary wing arose in Victoria earlier this year. Liberal state government minister Mary Wooldridge <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/wooldridge-loses-kew-preselection-in-blow-for-premier-20140302-33tmb.html">sought pre-selection</a> for the seat of Kew after her current seat had been abolished in a redistribution. </p>
<p>With premier Denis Napthine <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/denis-napthine-urges-vote-for-mary-wooldridge-in-kew-battle-20140225-33fb0.html">backing her candidacy</a>, Wooldridge faced the Liberal members of Kew. However, the rank-and-file preferred the social conservative views of an alternative candidate, <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/new-kew-liberal-candidate-tim-smith-always-wanted-to-captain-teams-20140303-340k1.html">Tim Smith</a>.</p>
<p>The result has damaged the Liberal Party. This is partly because of the impact this decision had on <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/liberal-infighting-threatens-napthine-20140314-34qv5.html">Napthine’s standing</a> and partly because the pre-selection battle has precipitated a <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/mary-wooldridge-may-have-lost-preselection-over-refusal-to-review-abortion-laws-womens-trust-20140303-33vgi.html">debate about abortion law</a>. It’s a debate the Liberal government simply does not want in an election year. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46088/original/kgg87drn-1397110015.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46088/original/kgg87drn-1397110015.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46088/original/kgg87drn-1397110015.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46088/original/kgg87drn-1397110015.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46088/original/kgg87drn-1397110015.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46088/original/kgg87drn-1397110015.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46088/original/kgg87drn-1397110015.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Victorian premier Denis Napthine has been damaged over a bungled pre-selection involving party members.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/David Crosling</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Labor, on the other hand, has structural barriers through the existence of its factions to mitigate the ability of branch members to dominate pre-selections. This is precisely what party reformers propose to give up in a bid to be seen to be embracing “party democracy”. </p>
<p>What’s more, some Labor reformers – including federal leader Bill Shorten – <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/labor-to-loosen-union-ties/story-fncynjr2-1226876136712">have floated</a> the idea of distancing the party from the trade union movement. This is a proposal that would have serious implications for Labor’s financial well-being. Labor received <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/labor-mates-kicked-in-6-million-before-the-last-federal-election/story-fnii5s3x-1226817087676">around A$700,000</a> in direct donations from trade unions in the 2012-13 financial year.</p>
<h2>Reform just window dressing?</h2>
<p>Advocating internal party reform in the aftermath of an electoral failure has now become part of the election ritual. </p>
<p>At the moment, it is Labor that is failing and so it is Labor that is currently romanticising the idea of the noble branch member as the antidote to factional cronyism and poor policy formulation. If only politics were that simple.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25387/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Economou does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the wake of the ALP’s poor result in the recent Western Australia Senate election, The Conversation is publishing a series of articles looking at the party’s brand, organisation and future prospects…Nick Economou, Senior Lecturer, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/191482013-10-15T00:51:36Z2013-10-15T00:51:36ZShorten’s ‘New Labor’: policy and the challenges of leadership<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33028/original/kkwjd2k2-1381791466.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What do we know so far of the policy positions of new opposition leader Bill Shorten?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his pitch to Labor’s rank and file for the right to lead the federal parliamentary party, Bill Shorten <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/gloves-left-on-as-two-labor-hopefuls-stake-their-claims-20130924-2uca1.html">declared</a> that his aim - should he become prime minister - would be to serve on behalf of:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the powerless, for the disempowered, for people who don’t have a voice in society.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Shorten returned to this theme in his <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/labor-will-start-again-says-bill-shorten/story-fn59niix-1226739294973">first speech</a> as party leader and reiterated his commitment to “develop(ing) the right policies, which are then explained with persistence”.</p>
<p>But how might such sentiments translate in a policy sense under Shorten’s leadership?</p>
<p>You would not be alone in wondering how Shorten actually intends to resurrect the Labor brand. Very little of policy substance was debated during the leadership contest between Shorten and Anthony Albanese, even though Shorten lauded the process for encouraging the party to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/13/bill-shorten-wins-labor-ballot">“talk about ideas”</a>.</p>
<p>The lack of specificity from both Albanese and Shorten is not all that surprising. How adventurous can we expect any leadership aspirant to be when every utterance is captured by reporters and potentially used against them at some later time? Perhaps Shorten won the contest not because of what he said he would do, but because he appeared to more “prime ministerial” in his manner of saying it.</p>
<p>Having said this, Shorten has provided some clues about those areas (as against policies) that he intends to emphasise as opposition leader.</p>
<p>Shorten has indicated that he will oppose the Abbott government’s plans to abolish the <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/national/shorten-under-pressure-on-carbon-tax/story-e6frfku9-1226739416850">carbon tax</a>. He has signalled his support for <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/bill-shorten-rejects-paul-howes-gay-marriage-push/story-fn59niix-1226731444706">same-sex marriage</a>, and even said that he would <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/bill-shorten-weighs-equality-ministry-in-support-of-gay-marriage/story-fn59niix-1226727683284">“actively consider”</a> creating a shadow ministry for equality. </p>
<p>Shorten has vowed to be pro-immigration and more sympathetic to the plight of asylum seekers, including a willingness to revisit the issue of extending working rights to those found to be refugees <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/09/25/shorten-backs-bigger-australia">“at the first pass”</a>. </p>
<p>Shorten remains <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/labor-leadership-contenders-split-on-tony-abbott-baby-pay/story-fn59niix-1226730352862">open minded</a> about the new government’s paid paternity leave scheme. He has waxed lyrical in a wonderfully unspecific way about the virtues of internal party democracy and of the need to <a href="http://www.alp.org.au/billshorten">“modernise”</a> the ALP’s relationship to the union movement. </p>
<p>There is, it seems, a little something for everyone in Shorten’s new Labor: from party members to disgruntled Labor voters, small business owners, farmers and professional women.</p>
<p>However, in order to make good on his promises, Shorten must find a way to conquer the electorate, the party and the government. All three present their own unique threats.</p>
<p>One of the biggest challenges for Shorten will be to traverse a policy course that satisfies both Labor’s traditional base, composed largely of working class voters, and its more affluent constituency.</p>
<p>Both segments of Labor’s base are often excited by many of the same policy issues but often for very different reasons. Take, for example, the issue of asylum seekers. Whereas the ALP’s traditional base is much more inclined to support a hardline stance on asylum seekers, its middle class supporters reject such a position. </p>
<p>There is no easy fix and both constituencies are important to Labor. While the party’s working class supporters are in the numerical ascendance, the middle class base dominates the trendy inner metropolitan seats held by Labor MPs.</p>
<p>In the context of the party caucus, Shorten is likely to find his colleagues fairly compliant: Anna Burke’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/14/anna-burke-women-labor-party">break with discipline</a> is likely to be an isolated event. Part of the reason for this is because the recent federal election result has thoroughly subdued caucus. But another reason is that the party is now led by the same person who was at the centre of much of the intrigue that <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/julia-gillard-was-graceful-when-bill-shorten-called-to-tell-her-shed-lost-his-support/story-e6frfkp9-1226671062531#mm-register">fatally wounded</a> two Labor prime ministers. Shorten possesses the necessary guile to extinguish any serious ill-discipline before it can surface.</p>
<p>This is not to say that factional considerations won’t prove to be tricky for Shorten to manage. While caucus might be on its best behaviour, it doesn’t automatically follow that factional chiefs sitting outside of parliament won’t complicate matters. We got a taste of what this might mean when Joe de Bruyn, leader of the powerful Shop, Distributive & Allied Employees Association, <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/bill-shorten-is-not-serious-on-gay-quotas/story-e6frfkp9-1226730342596">intervened unilaterally</a> to qualify Shorten’s position on the issue of parliamentary quotas and same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>Finally, there is the question of Shorten’s strategy in opposition. Shorten says that he will not replicate Abbott’s tactic of being “relentless negative”. While this is a virtuous position in principle, it may not be possible in practice. Shorten has not been gifted the situation of minority government that was served up to Abbott when the latter was opposition leader. </p>
<p>And while the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-2013-senate-contest-australia-lurches-to-the-right-17535">incoming Senate</a> crossbench is complex, it is unlikely to present a serious obstacle to the implementation of much the Abbott government’s agenda. In order to be relevant, Shorten may have to go out much harder against the government than he might otherwise wish.</p>
<p>The role of opposition leader can be a poisonous chalice. But Shorten is smooth, smart, articulate and wily. Importantly, he is different from both of his predecessors. Unlike Rudd, Shorten earned his political stripes in the cut and thrust of trade union politics. He truly comprehends the importance of keeping his friends close and his enemies even closer. </p>
<p>And unlike Gillard, he has the happy luck of being a man.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19148/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Narelle Miragliotta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In his pitch to Labor’s rank and file for the right to lead the federal parliamentary party, Bill Shorten declared that his aim - should he become prime minister - would be to serve on behalf of: … the…Narelle Miragliotta, Senior Lecturer in Australian Politics, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/190412013-10-13T04:08:26Z2013-10-13T04:08:26ZShorten wins, but the ALP plays it safe with democracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32919/original/ybjg26bd-1381635503.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bill Shorten is the new ALP leader, after an election contest where the votes of the rank and file party members were included for the first time.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>So the election between two middle-aged, middle class, white men with broadly shared policy agendas is over. In this case, it is not the federal election between Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott, but the month-long Labor leadership contest between Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese that has finally come to a conclusion, with Shorten emerging triumphant.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-this-kevin-rudds-new-labor-party-15888">first for the Labor Party</a>, Shorten was elected with a 50:50 weighting split between the parliamentary party and the rank and file membership. Despite losing the rank and file vote to Albanese (polling just 40.08% of over 30,000 members’ votes), Shorten won 63.95% of his caucus colleagues’ support for a total of 52.02% overall.</p>
<p>For Labor, this has been largely a therapeutic exercise. Not since the <a href="http://resources.news.com.au/files/2011/02/18/1226008/222073-labor-review-report.pdf">2010 National Review</a> - undertaken by party elders Bob Carr, Steve Bracks and John Faulkner - has the party membership’s views been given so much weight. Perhaps not since Simon Crean’s <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/08/09/1028158016882.html">internal reforms</a> has the party membership been taken as seriously by the leadership.</p>
<p>Yet for all the boldness of the new election process, this is something of a missed opportunity for the ALP. In a strategic bid to bury internal divisions, both candidates claimed similar ideological ground. A more open competition might have helped the party renew further. </p>
<p>A wider contest might also have been a battle of ideas, not just a demonstration of leadership skills. Chris Bowen, the interim leader since the election, is a noted social liberal, and his <a href="https://theconversation.com/chris-bowens-plan-to-win-hearts-and-minds-and-save-labor-16028">recent book</a> argues Labor should reclaim this tradition. In contrast, former prime ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd oscillated between Labor’s labourist and social democratic traditions. </p>
<p>It would have been interesting to speculate on how former ministers Greg Combet and Nicola Roxon might have enlivened this debate - although both have now left parliament.</p>
<p>Regardless of the result, Labor will be pleased with the process. Drawing upon wider research, British political scientist Tim Bale notes in his <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/archives/29942">book</a> - The Conservatives Since 1945: The Drivers of Party Change - that opposition parties need to do several things to get elected. Freshening the leadership and maintaining party unity and discipline are crucial to the process of renewal. To some extent, the ALP is extracting the poison of its <a href="https://theconversation.com/rudd-wins-the-game-of-thrones-15573">previous leadership problems</a>.</p>
<p>The ALP is often a late adopter of reform processes. It is the latest of a number of parties to “democratise” its selection processes. Following the 2010 election debacle, the British Labour Party <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/sep/25/ed-miliband-wins-labour-leadership">elected Ed Miliband</a> through a new process. The electoral college was split three ways between MPs, individual members of trade unions, and party members. Effectively, the reforms ended the trade union “bloc” vote in the British Labour Party. Rudd, in reforming the ALP, just cut them loose.</p>
<p>In the UK contest, while neither Andy Burnham or Diane Abbott (for example) had much chance of winning, they did enrich the policy debate. British Labour was both tormented and tantalised by Tony Blair’s “New Labour” and the “coronation” of Gordon Brown. So, the new leadership process was also a healing one - except perhaps for David Miliband, who was narrowly defeated by his brother.</p>
<p>Across the Tasman, New Zealand Labour has yet to find a worthy successor to Helen Clark. In 2012, it reformed its leadership rules to enable the rank and file to vote. On a version of UK Labour’s electoral college, David Cunliffe was <a href="https://theconversation.com/albo-and-shorten-should-look-to-new-zealand-for-primary-guidance-18295">elected party leader</a>, on a vote split between the party caucus (40%), party members (40%) and trade unions (20%).</p>
<p>The Canadian centre-left New Democratic party has also reformed its leadership structures. At its <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democratic_Party_leadership_election,_2003">2003 leadership contest</a>, party members were given a 75% weighting, while trade unions were given 25% (in effect, a “bloc” vote). In 2006, the party shifted to a one-person one-vote process for party members, with Tom Mulcair <a href="http://thechronicleherald.ca/canada/77153-mulcair-wins-ndp-leadership">winning the leadership</a> under this method in 2012.</p>
<p>In the case of the traditional western European social democratic parties - and unlike the Labour parties - trade unions and other affiliates are not usually given formal power in internal structures.</p>
<p>In Germany, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) elected its leader through the national assembly. Peer Steinbrück secured a huge 93% of the vote, but still <a href="https://theconversation.com/german-elections-the-merkel-factor-leads-to-her-third-term-18503">failed to topple</a> Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats at the recent election. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/13/sweden-social-democrats-stefan-lofven">Stefan Löfven</a>, the current opposition leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) was elected through the party room. Current Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt won the leadership of the Social Democrats through the support of party members in 2005. Austrian chancellor Werner Faymann and Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) leader recently retained office in a “grand coalition” at last month’s election. Faymann was elected through the party convention. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32918/original/zc3yg8q5-1381633189.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32918/original/zc3yg8q5-1381633189.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32918/original/zc3yg8q5-1381633189.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32918/original/zc3yg8q5-1381633189.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32918/original/zc3yg8q5-1381633189.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32918/original/zc3yg8q5-1381633189.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32918/original/zc3yg8q5-1381633189.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Current British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband won the leadership in 2010 on a weighted electoral college of MPs, party members and affiliated groups such as unions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Andy Rain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Local context is crucial to understanding leadership change, but all the major political parties are suffering from declining membership. While the ALP might be buoyed by the <a href="http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/caucus-votes-on-leader-in-labor-ballot-20131010-2v91r.html">apparent influx</a> of 4000 new members, this might prove to be a short-term boost. Current British Labour leader Ed Milband enjoyed a surge in <a href="http://research-information.bristol.ac.uk/files/8434495/Labour_s_Lost_Grassroots_BP_FINAL.pdf">membership</a>, which then shrunk - as did <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/may/13/labour-party-record-surge-membership">membership under Tony Blair</a>. </p>
<p>In presidential France and the US, there is a strong tradition of primaries, which enable both party and public to get a good look at the candidates. Of these, failed presidential contender Ségolène Royal tried to make participatory democracy a key party of her appeal in the lead-up to the 2007 French presidential election. Royal, like US president Barack Obama, was an innovator in e-campaigning to find new sources of support.</p>
<p>In this context, Bill Shorten might do well to continue the reform process of the ALP. In “playing safe” with democracy, it might spur a further appetite for democratic reform. And all Australians, not just ALP members, might appreciate that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19041/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Manwaring does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>So the election between two middle-aged, middle class, white men with broadly shared policy agendas is over. In this case, it is not the federal election between Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott, but the month-long…Rob Manwaring, Lecturer, Politics and Public Policy, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/182952013-09-18T20:43:37Z2013-09-18T20:43:37ZAlbo and Shorten should look to New Zealand for primary guidance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31507/original/gjffnp3c-1379466366.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">New Zealand's new Labour leader David Cunliffe has been elected in a process involving direct voting by the party membership.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">NZN/Laura McQuillan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>While Australia’s Labor Party is digesting a significant electoral defeat, the New Zealand Labour Party, in opposition since 2008, has gone through another leadership change and is positioning itself to compete for office at the next general election, to be held by November 2014.</p>
<p>Labour not only has a new leader in David Cunliffe, but for the first time used a “primary-style” internal party process for electing him. And some have <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/9164503/Loved-and-loathed-the-polarising-politician">compared Cunliffe to Kevin Rudd</a>. With Anthony Albanese and Bill Shorten engaging in the first contest for the leadership of the ALP involving a direct vote by party members, the Cunliffe result is worth examining in detail.</p>
<p>But first, some background. Helen Clark’s Labour-led government was defeated in 2008, just after the worst of the global financial crisis had struck. The incoming minority conservative National-led government was headed by prime minister John Key. National were returned to office in the 2011 election with <a href="http://www.parliament.nz/en-nz/parl-support/research-papers/00PlibCIP191/the-2011-general-election">47.3% of the party vote</a>, the largest ever under the proportional representation system in place in New Zealand since 1996.</p>
<p>Labour, by contrast, gained a mere 27.5% of the party vote, and a contest for the party leadership began soon afterwards in early 2012. This was won by David Shearer, whose main rival was Cunliffe. Shearer, however, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/22/david-shearer-resigns-new-zealand">never really cut it as leader of the opposition</a>. Relatively new to parliamentary politics, Shearer spent most of his career in humanitarian work in the developing world. He lacked experience and insider savvy, and rarely displayed the cut-through required of a politician on television and in the debating chamber.</p>
<p>Shearer narrowly avoided the sack by resigning, and this set in train a new process for Labour to elect its leader – a ballot weighted 40% for caucus, 40% for paid-up party members and 20% for affiliated trade unions. Hustings events were quickly set up across the country and the process was covered extensively by the news media.</p>
<p>As there were three candidates, a preferential vote was applied.</p>
<p>Cunliffe won on the first round with a total of 51%, but only a third of his caucus colleagues voted for him. Nearly half of them preferred instead his closest rival, former deputy leader Grant Robertson. It was the wider party membership and affiliates whose votes won the race for Cunliffe.</p>
<p>Naturally this has <a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11125921">raised questions</a> about how unified the Labour caucus will be under Cunliffe’s leadership, but the desire to win office in 2014 may well take care of that, at least on the surface. In the meantime, though, the prime minister can taunt the leader of the opposition about an apparent lack of support from his caucus colleagues.</p>
<p>The party election results also reflect what many have said for some time about Cunliffe – that he is very intelligent and articulate, with a media presence that Shearer lacked, but with a divisive style. He appeals to the party rank and file but is prone to being a bit grandiose and seemingly narcissistic – or at least he fails to hide those less desirable self-regarding traits that are probably quite common among political leaders. Many of those who have to work with him appear to be less than keen. Hence the comparisons (justified or not) with Kevin Rudd.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31510/original/282nfz4w-1379467312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31510/original/282nfz4w-1379467312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31510/original/282nfz4w-1379467312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31510/original/282nfz4w-1379467312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31510/original/282nfz4w-1379467312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31510/original/282nfz4w-1379467312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31510/original/282nfz4w-1379467312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Will new Labour leader David Cunliffe be able to take the fight to prime minister John Key?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">flickr/Kelvinhu</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The important comparison for Cunliffe, though, will be with John Key, the present prime minister. Key’s intelligence and business nous are combined with an unassuming and down-to-earth manner that connects well with Kiwi voters, while simultaneously making sense to “the markets.” He has seen off three Labour opponents so far, and his government is in good enough shape at present to help him see off this next contender.</p>
<p>Key’s repeated message is that Labour is heading to “the far left.” As Labour will probably need a coalition with (at least) the Green party to form a government, then a vote for them next election is also implicitly a vote in favour of the Greens. And there is no doubt that Labour’s recent “primary” election has shown that their strategy is to pitch for the left, especially for the one third of those eligible who did not vote in 2011. </p>
<p>Their aim is thus to shift the position of the median voter to the left by encouraging the poor and disfranchised who didn’t vote last time to vote Labour next time. Hence, Cunliffe has made promises about raising low wages and taxing the well-off in order to win that support.</p>
<p>This is a socially worthy but politically high-risk strategy for Labour, especially if it means losing ground from the all-important centre. As an Ivy-league educated, business-friendly middle-class white guy, there is a risk that Cunliffe simply won’t inspire the unemployed or low-income workers, especially Maori or Pacific-Islanders, to come out and vote for him.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18295/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Grant Duncan is a member of the New Zealand Labour party.</span></em></p>While Australia’s Labor Party is digesting a significant electoral defeat, the New Zealand Labour Party, in opposition since 2008, has gone through another leadership change and is positioning itself to…Grant Duncan, Associate Professor for the School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/164562013-07-29T01:23:59Z2013-07-29T01:23:59ZArguments against party reform: heeding lessons from 1832<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28213/original/4g8z9788-1375059831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Reform of the ALP has been raised by several key figures such as former leader Mark Latham, and implemented in some form by current prime minister Kevin Rudd.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his recent <a href="http://www.quarterlyessay.com/issue/not-dead-yet-labors-post-left-future">Quarterly Essay</a>, Mark Latham compared Labor parliamentary representation to the rotten boroughs of the 18th century. Though union membership has fallen away, suggested Latham, union officials still exercise considerable influence over the selection of Labor parliamentarians, and retain a number of seats and Senate spots for themselves.</p>
<p>Since the Latham essay, reform of the Australian Labor Party has been raised in books by <a href="https://theconversation.com/chris-bowens-plan-to-win-hearts-and-minds-and-save-labor-16028">Chris Bowen</a> and <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/kim-carr/letter-to-the-next-generation-9780522864458.aspx">Kim Carr</a>, and adopted by the parliamentary caucus. The issue will be considered by the national conference of the party after the 2013 federal election.</p>
<p>In calling the ALP undemocratic, in thrall to a privileged few, Latham evoked the British parliament before the Reform Act of 1832. So what lessons can would-be reformers draw from that experience? A <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/may/03/perilous-question-antonia-fraser-review">new book</a> by historian Antonia Fraser - Perilous Question: reform or revolution? Britain on the Brink, 1832 - provides some clues.</p>
<p>In the early 19th century, reform was a new word in the political lexicon. The Terror remained potent in British minds, as did more recent upheavals in France and Belgium. Defenders of the realm could point to the demons unleashed where mob rule prevailed; with aristocracy marched to the guillotine just across the English Channel, the ruling caste had little patience for argument in favour of careful and measured adjustment to circumstance.</p>
<p>Yet by 1830, the long-standing Tory governing alliance was breaking up, riven in part by arguments about Catholic emancipation. A new king, William IV, ascended the throne, and a Whig administration, led by Earl Charles Grey, secured a majority in the House of Commons. It was a time of prolonged economic recession, dislocation caused by new machinery, the growth of large industrial cities without any voice in government, and regular riot in the countryside. Voices calling for change became harder to ignore. Grey, the new prime minister, confirmed his intention to pursue electoral reform, and Britain faced a constitutional crisis.</p>
<p>The heart of the issue was a clash between tradition and contemporary realities. The Parliament of England traced its origins to Magna Carta. Despite major changes, including union with Scotland in 1707 and the creation of Great Britain from 1801, electoral boundaries and voting eligibility remained haphazard and inconsistent. This led to famous anomalies such as Old Sarum, once a significant town but now an uninhabited hill in Wiltshire returning two members of parliament. Such a prize commanded high prices – the electorate of Gatton in Surry, with six houses, sold for £18 million. The village of Dunwick in Suffolk had long fallen into the sea, but still elected two MPs while the town of Birmingham, with more than 145,000 residents, had no voice in parliament.</p>
<p>These were the rotten boroughs evoked by Latham – guaranteed seats in parliament, usually the property of aristocrats who could return themselves, or their allies, to elected office. Even in electorates with more eligible voters, property requirements restricted the franchise, bribery was common, and an open ballot ensured the bought stayed bought. There were no votes for women, and no women in either parliamentary chamber, though a few brave women and men argued the case.</p>
<p>For readers of Perilous Question, the case for reform may seem obvious given such unfair rules of parliamentary selection. Yet in 1830 democracy was reviled as mob rule. The Parliament of Great Britain considered itself the finest body of gentlemen in the world; anything that might threaten that noble status would be resisted fiercely. Advocates of reform did not claim their proposals as the first step toward an egalitarian society. Their bill was modest, reforming boundaries and expanding cautiously the franchise to those with a household income of at least £10, or around one in six adult males.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Rhetoric_of_Reaction.html?id=NjMIu-vQheYC&redir_esc=y">The Rhetoric of Reaction</a>, published in 1991, American economist Albert Hirschman argued that opponents of major reform typically rely on three basic arguments – perversity, a claim that intervention will only make the problem worse, futility, the sense that no government action can make a difference, and jeopardy, an concern change in one area will only make things worse in other areas of public life.</p>
<p>Those who opposed the Reform Bill championed by prime minister Grey relied on a slightly broader range of objections, but perversity, futility and jeopardy all featured.</p>
<p>The most popular response was the perennial this is not the right time to be discussing this issue. There had been a palace coup in France in July 1830, revolt in Belgium, and signs of agitation across the United Kingdom. Critics of the Reform Bill claimed that even discussing change was stirring up discontent. There were more important issues to consider – better to leave the question of electoral reform for another, unspecified time.</p>
<p>In any case, the Reform Bill should be dismissed because it risked unintended consequences, which is a form of jeopardy. Britain was made great by the genius of its inherited institutions. Move away from the ancient constitution and all might be lost. Parliamentary debates around the Reform Bill were filled with apocalyptic prediction. As the Duke of Wellington, a fierce opponent of change, argued:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I cannot see what is to save the Church, or property, or colonies or union with Ireland, or eventually Monarchy if the Reform Bill passes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A related argument is the thin edge of the wedge line of reasoning. Adopting one set of reforms would only lead to further demands. As Sir Robert Peel, leader of the Tories in the Commons, told parliament:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have been uniformly opposed to reform upon principle, because I was unwilling to open a door which I saw no prospect of being able to close.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it is a contemporary version of an old claim about the futility of action. According to the Duke of Wellington, the present parliament was “a legislature which answered all the good purpose of legislation, and this by a ‘greater degree’ than any legislation ever had answered in any country whatever”. Such a parliament may be hard to justify in principle, but its fine record vindicated keeping everything untouched. Institutions should be judged by their results, not by the validity of their claims to authority.</p>
<p>Another opposition gambit was the silent majority – that despite noise and clamour, most people support the status quo. The Private Secretary to the King, Sir Herbert Taylor, wrote to the prime minister dismissing the large political gatherings around the nation calling for reform: “His Majesty cannot consider public meetings as a just criterion of the sentiments of the people”. Sensible Englishmen, at home in their beds, understood the merits of present arrangements and did not seek change.</p>
<p>There was also the secret agenda claim: while the proposal may look reasonable, it has a hidden aim. As the Earl of Dudley claimed: “the details of the bill were most ingeniously devised for the great objective of its framers, that Whig supremacy should be eternal”. To oppose the bill allowed Dudley to claim that Tories were “the true friends of order and liberty”.</p>
<p>Finally, those opposed to reform can always cite the risk to business confidence. Stocks fall sharply amid crisis. As one banker noted gloomily at the time, the French revolution of 1830 knocked some 30% of stock prices “and I hope to God this will not be repeated this time in England”. To even discuss reform is to put prosperity at risk.</p>
<p>These were the principal cases advanced to oppose the Reform Bill. When arguments fail, there was always strategic outrage over process. This objection takes many forms, but the essence is simple: while I do not object to your proposal, I’m so offended by the way the question has been raised I will vote against the measure. This allowed some parliamentarians, aware of strong feelings in their constituency, to oppose the reform measure without taking a position on its substance.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28214/original/x9ch9xyg-1375060077.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28214/original/x9ch9xyg-1375060077.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/28214/original/x9ch9xyg-1375060077.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28214/original/x9ch9xyg-1375060077.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28214/original/x9ch9xyg-1375060077.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28214/original/x9ch9xyg-1375060077.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28214/original/x9ch9xyg-1375060077.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/28214/original/x9ch9xyg-1375060077.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former British PM Charles Grey was a key advocated of party reform almost two centuries ago.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Portrait Gallery, London</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Concerns over process allowed the Tory party to hold together a coalition of opponents and waivers in the House of Lords, and block the legislation despite overwhelming support in the Commons. It required first an election, then the threat of new peers to secure a Lords majority, before the Duke of Wellington and his allies absented themselves from the Lords, so allowing the Reform Bill to pass.</p>
<p>There were celebrations all over Great Britain. The young poet Alfred Tennyson joined a local bonfire to mark the occasion. Though the Duke of Wellington declared in a private letter that “the government of England is destroyed”, stability endured. Britain avoided the European revolutions of the following decades.</p>
<p>Yet the Tory nobles were right about the great consequences to their way of life. As Fraser notes: “outwardly in the Whig world, it seemed that nothing had changed. Yet in reality nothing remained the same”. By expanding the franchise, the Great Reform Act set Britain on the path to democracy. It took nearly a century to arrive – universal suffrage for all adult women and men was not achieved until 1928 - but the spirit of reform was now abroad in the land. </p>
<p>By the end of the 19th century almost every public institution, from schools to courts had been reviewed, redesigned, made anew. Change even became the credo of the new Conservative Party – “to reform ills while conserving the good”, as Sir Robert Peel proclaimed in his Tamworth Manifesto of 1834. The Duke of Wellington was right to sense the threat to his familiar domain, even if the Bill itself was but a small part of a much larger transformation.</p>
<p>Those for and against the Reform Bill produced ingenious arguments but usually acted in predictable ways according to their interests – the excluded pushing for access, the powerful seeking to entrench control, the rich scared of the poor, the monarchy concerned above all with preserving its authority. The most interesting actors were nobles such as Charles Grey and John Russell who championed reform, or beneficiaries of a rotten borough such as Thomas Babington Macaulay who acknowledged the claims of a more equitable electoral system and voted for a bill that abolished his sinecure.</p>
<p>Mark Latham draws a parallel between rotten boroughs and union domination of some parliamentary posts. A good analogy draws attention to similarities and invites discussion. The argument over Australian Labor Party reform now underway is part of a wider global discussion about creating more democratic political institutions. In Britain and Canada, conservative parties led the way in internal reform. As the debate plays out locally, some of the arguments of 1832 may be heard again. </p>
<p>If Antonia Fraser’s reading proves a reliable guide, political institutions can reform from within, but only with the confluence of a simple proposal, determined leadership, a degree of selflessness, and lots of external noise so participants must justify their claims to a wider audience. For students of politics, there is a fascinating debate in prospect.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/16456/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Glyn Davis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In his recent Quarterly Essay, Mark Latham compared Labor parliamentary representation to the rotten boroughs of the 18th century. Though union membership has fallen away, suggested Latham, union officials…Glyn Davis, Professor of Political Science and Vice-Chancellor, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/159182013-07-10T03:52:18Z2013-07-10T03:52:18ZThe Rudd reforms: are they democratic?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/27194/original/9jxdf675-1373414262.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The new and improved Kevin Rudd wants to change the way Labor elects its leaders. But is his proposed method democratic?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Image News Corp Australia Pool/Gary Ramage</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Monday, prime minister Kevin Rudd announced a <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-more-coups-against-labor-pms-under-new-rudd-rules-15887">series of proposals</a> to change the way the Australian Labor Party selects its parliamentary leader. </p>
<p>Under his proposal, incumbents can only be challenged by MPs if three-quarters of the party caucus agree (leaders are expected to resign following an electoral loss). In ballots for the leadership, he proposes that ALP members will be able to vote for the leadership with equal weight to that of MPs.</p>
<p>The interpretation of this proposal has largely been reported in two ways. </p>
<p>The majority of coverage has been through the lens of the Rudd-Julia Gillard leadership contest. This is unsurprising, as this personalised power struggle has dominated political reportage for over three years. Certainly this proposal – if adopted, as appears likely – would close off the type of situation that occurred in 2010, where Rudd was removed by a simple majority of MPs (led by the ever-present “faceless men” of the ALP’s factions) irrespective of the weight he retained in the popular imagination.</p>
<p>Had Labor had this system in 2010 Rudd would have retained the leadership, or the conspirators would have had to be more public recruiting for the spill and selling their cause to rank-and-file party members. </p>
<p>Another focus of discussion is on the practicalities of this change. Leadership challenges in the past tend to be comparatively quick affairs, brewing up over a week or so, and leading to a vote at the first available window of opportunity when MPs are gathered together. Leadership contests also tend to create uncertainty in the community and skittishness in the economy. </p>
<p>With this new system, considerable planning and campaigning will need to occur in the event of a spill vote if the rank-and-file members are to be included. In these situations, there will be longer periods of uncertainty where the National Executive or opposition leadership team is in disarray.</p>
<p>While these possible problems are real, it is important to see this as more than the fallout of the ALP’s leadership squabbles. The decision to explicitly recognise an expanded role for party members clearly acknowledges a widening gap between Australia’s professional parties and the wider public. </p>
<p>Over a number of decades, the shift of parties as “mass” (up to 10% of the electorate) institutions to professional parties that focus on the use of centralised campaign techniques and marketing has distanced parties from the electorate. As parties move away from ideological positions and focus on servicing particular market needs, they’ve redefined their relationships with citizens.</p>
<p>The tipping point of this change is often associated with the advertising-focused and leader-oriented <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jykIqQxEOw">“It’s Time”</a> campaign of Gough Whitlam. While it was an effective campaign in terms of its reach and longevity, it cemented the tendency towards centralised campaigns focused on mass media targeting swinging voters.</p>
<p>With the increase in marketing-oriented political campaigns, parties have tended to become more volatile in their ideological positioning and tended not to think about voters as people with whom they have a relationship, as much as economic actors with which they engage in periodic transactions.</p>
<p>To this end, in recent years the ALP and the National Party have been experimenting with US style open “primary” contests: electorate-level contests to select candidates which include both party members and general members of the public. A good example of this is the Nationals primary in the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-13/nationals-vote-on-new-england-preselection/4627032">electorate of New England</a>, won by current senator Barnaby Joyce.</p>
<p>To date, the democratic character of these primaries varies in terms of the percentage weighting given to party members and citizens over party functionaries. Their use in marginal and opposition-held electorates has also undermined the claim of a pure democratic motive over more pragmatic attempts to grab seats through more intensive campaigning in important electorates. </p>
<p>Democratic structures and procedures within organisations may be easy to change for a leader like Rudd, who has managed to hold his party hostage to his own personal position. But at a basic democratic level, the proposal presents some problems. </p>
<p>Rudd suggests it will end the type of leadership dysfunction we’ve seen for several years, but this is a questionable claim. This system could result in the retention of extremely unpopular leader who has a core group of committed supporters, and the very undemocratic possibility of being the leader with only 25.1% support in caucus. </p>
<p>It could result in a leader being subject to rolling spills where they face the overwhelming disapproval of MPs and member support. </p>
<p>Finally, because there is no “recall” option of rank-and-file members, member participation is highly contingent on the politics of the “faceless men” of the parliamentary wing. Like with the limited experiments with open primaries, access to the ballot remains controlled by the inner circle.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15918/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter John Chen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On Monday, prime minister Kevin Rudd announced a series of proposals to change the way the Australian Labor Party selects its parliamentary leader. Under his proposal, incumbents can only be challenged…Peter John Chen, Lecturer in Department of Government and International Relations, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/159112013-07-09T20:40:50Z2013-07-09T20:40:50ZFactCheck Q&A: broadband, climate change and Labor Party reform<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/27256/original/mydtcvx7-1373490524.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We factcheck Malcolm Turnbull and Anthony Albanese on this week's Q&A program.</span> </figcaption></figure><figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Dh-CgQnb690?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Catch up on Q&A from 8 July. Source: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>UPDATED: We were inundated with ideas for statements to check from Monday night’s Q&A on ABC TV. Here, our experts tackle four claims on three of the most requested topics.</em></p>
<h2>1. Anthony Albanese: claims about the speeds available under Labor’s National Broadband Network.</h2>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>“The NBN will allow uploads of 400 [megabits per second], 1000 [megabits per second] downloads, for a total cost of $30.4 billion in terms of equity. Malcolm’s plan is $29.5 billion.” - Communications minister Anthony Albanese, Q&A, 8 July. (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh-CgQnb690&t=30m55s">Watch the NBN segment here</a>).</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The access speeds of a telecommunications network are facts that can be verified. The costs debate is much trickier - more on that shortly.</p>
<p>Albanese’s claim that the national broadband network (NBN) will allow uploads of 400 megabits per second (Mbps) and downloads of 1000 Mbps is correct. However, it should be pointed out that these speeds are not yet available in <a href="http://www.nbnco.com.au/get-an-nbn-connection/wholesale-speeds.html">NBN Co’s current standard household implementation</a>, which is limited to 40 Mbps upload speeds and 100 Mbps downloads. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.nbnco.com.au/about-us.html">NBN Co</a>, the government enterprise rolling out the network, has said it will offer much faster speeds <a href="http://www.nbnco.com.au/blog/nbn-gigabit-available-december.html">by the end of this year</a> at wholesale prices of between $70-$150 a month.</p>
<h2>Verdict</h2>
<p>Albanese’s claims about NBN speeds are correct. <strong>- Peter Gerrand</strong></p>
<hr>
<h2>2. Malcolm Turnbull: Labor’s National Broadband Network would cost $94 billion-$100 billion.</h2>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>“[The Coalition’s NBN plan is] about $60 billion cheaper… Your plan would cost $100 billion… On very conservative assumptions it would cost $94 billion.” Shadow communications minister Malcolm Turnbull, Q&A, 8 July. (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh-CgQnb690&t=30m55s">Watch the NBN segment here</a>)</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>According to Labor, taxpayers’ share of building the NBN by 2021 will be $30.4 billion in equity, which was revised up from an <a href="http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2012/8/8/national-affairs/national-network-broadly-track">original estimate of $27.5 billion</a>.</p>
<p>The Coalition says that its rollout of an “affordable” version of the national broadband network could be finished sooner by 2019 and cost taxpayers $29.5 billion.</p>
<p>The major saving proposed in the Coalition’s plan is its preference for implementing Fibre to the Node instead of Fibre to the Home (see <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tale-of-two-nbns-the-coalitions-broadband-policy-explained-13304">this article</a> for more detail).</p>
<p>On Q&A, Albanese did not dispute the Coalition’s $29.5 billion figure, instead arguing that there was little price difference between the parties’ plans and: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“why would you buy an inferior product for basically 29 bucks rather than 30? That’s the difference in terms of equity between the two”.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Turnbull’s claim that the current Labor/NBN Co plan could cost an extra $60 billion is based on his own consultants’ advice, which is included as a 12-page analysis in <a href="http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Background.pdf">background papers</a> for <a href="http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Broadband.pdf">The Coalition’s Plan for Fast Broadband and an Affordable NBN</a>.</p>
<p>That claim is based on four key assumptions: much lower broadband revenue, 40 per cent higher costs to connect premises in established areas, more people choosing wireless-only connections by 2028, and an extra four years of work on top of the current eight year schedule - a 50 per cent blow-out.</p>
<p>As the analysis for the Coalition also notes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“This is a simple model. It is subject to the normal uncertainties of any such analysis, but it is in the Coalition’s view a much more likely forecast than that contained in the NBN Co 2012‐2015 Corporate Plan.” (<a href="http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Background.pdf">Background Papers</a>, page 29)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The truth is, the cost estimates in either party’s business plan are only as good as their underlying assumptions. </p>
<p>For a ten-year “build and operate” engineering infrastructure project as massive as this, it is likely that some of the assumptions – under either plan – will inevitably be found to be significantly in error.</p>
<h2>Verdict</h2>
<p>The costs of completing a national broadband network - under either a Labor or Coalition government - can only be considered estimates until the network is actually implemented, and all costs and revenues brought to book. </p>
<p>The merits of the Labor/NBN Co and Coalition NBN plans deserve more analysis and debate in an election year. However, there are too many uncertainties and assumptions to be able to provide a definitive fact check on which party is right on its costings. <strong>- Peter Gerrand</strong></p>
<hr>
<h2>3. Malcolm Turnbull: Obama’s climate change policies are more like the Coalition’s than Labor’s.</h2>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>“[US president] Barack Obama gave a <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/25/remarks-president-climate-change">great speech about climate change</a> recently, a lot of initiatives, [and] an emissions trading scheme is not part of them. The measures he announced are more like the Coalition’s policies in fact.” - Shadow communications minister Malcolm Turnbull, 8 July.<em><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh-CgQnb690&t=59m32s"> (Watch his statement here)</a>.</em></strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Climate policy is back in the news, both in Australia and in the United States. The Labor leadership change, from Julia Gillard to Kevin Rudd, has sparked <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2013/s3799051.htm">speculation that the government will move</a> from the current fixed carbon price to an emissions trading scheme in 2014, a year earlier than currently planned.</p>
<p><em>(You can read an explainer on <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-difference-between-a-carbon-tax-and-an-ets-1679">the differences between an emissions trading scheme and a carbon tax here</a>.)</em> </p>
<p>While Malcolm Turnbull has long made it clear that <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/abbotts-climate-change-policy-is-bullshit-20091207-kdmb.html">he personally favours emissions trading</a>, he stressed on Monday’s show that he <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/market-system-best-to-reduce-emissions-turnbull-20130709-2pn12.html">“will support the collective wisdom of the party room”</a>. Rather than making businesses pay for emissions permits, under the Coalition’s <a href="http://www.greghunt.com.au/Issues/DirectAction/DirectAction-Index.aspx">Direct Action plan</a> an Abbott government would buy emission reductions from industry, provide support for rooftop solar panels and start a tree-planting program.</p>
<p>So is Labor or the Coalition closer to Obama’s current policy position?</p>
<p>President Obama <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/25/remarks-president-climate-change">last month</a> announced a suite of climate change initiatives including regulating greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants and further investment in clean-energy companies.</p>
<p>Both Obama’s and the Coalition’s approaches are based on direct government intervention. In Obama’s proposal, the government reduces emissions by regulating emitters to stop or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. In the Coalition policy, the government would pay the emitters directly to stop or reduce. Both are different from emissions trading, in which permits to pollute are bought and sold by major emitters - such as power generators and factories - who then move towards stopping or reducing their emissions to lower their costs.</p>
<p>But it’s easy to go too far here. The Obama policies are <em>more</em> like the Direct Action scheme than Labor’s current carbon price, but much of the detail of the Coalition’s policy is yet to be made clear. At the moment, we know Direct Action will provide a voluntary mechanism where organisations can bid for funding to reduce emissions. Obama’s will be a mandatory system imposed by regulation. </p>
<p>It’s not the same, but it’s certainly not emissions trading either.</p>
<p>To some extent, Obama has been forced to go down the path of regulation. Since 2009, Obama has essentially faced some of the same difficulties that Labor faced while trying to introduce a carbon price in Australia. </p>
<p>During his election campaign, Obama, along with the Republican candidate, were both expressing a strong view that a move to address climate change was critical. In 2008/09, there was a move to introduce an emissions trading scheme, commonly known as the <a href="http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h2454/actions_votes">Waxman-Markey Bill</a>. There was initially a lot of support for it in Congress but ultimately it failed because by the time Obama got into government the Republicans resisted it strongly.</p>
<p>So then it became difficult, if not impossible, for Obama to get his market-based policy through congress. In his second term, he was forced to try and find alternatives. His new regulatory approach is much more likely to succeed as it does not need congressional approval.</p>
<h2>Verdict</h2>
<p>Turnbull is correct – the current policies of the Obama administration are closer to the Coalition’s than Labor’s. But this shouldn’t be read as an assessment of the Coalition’s policy against the government’s. <strong>- Tony Wood</strong></p>
<hr>
<h2>4. Anthony Albanese: political party reform is happening around the world</h2>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>“[Political party reform] is happening around the world with parties of both the left and the right.” - Deputy prime minister Anthony Albanese, 8 July. <em><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh-CgQnb690&t=8m10s">(Watch his statement here)</a>.</em></strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Particularly since the <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/occupy-movement">Occupy Wall Street movement</a>, the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/15/spain-15-m-movement-activism">15th May movement</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/arab-spring">Arab Spring</a>, there has been debate about how governments and political parties can do more to involve people in politics. “People want engagement, people don’t just want to receive, they want to also be able to participate in a real way,” Albanese said of <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-more-coups-against-labor-pms-under-new-rudd-rules-15887">Labor’s proposed reforms</a>, which would ensure the leader is elected jointly by party members and members of parliament. Now, MPs have the sole right to elect the leader.</p>
<p>Political parties in Western representative democracies have often found the need to re-energise themselves. This happened under Gough Whitlam’s leadership in the 1960s when there was an expansion of National Conference and the national executive and federal interventions in NSW and Victoria. </p>
<p>The British Labour Party is sometimes cited as an example of recent reform that Labor is following. But that change happened in 1981, some 30 years ago, when the election of the party leader was opened up from the caucus (the current ALP system) to a tripartite college of caucus, unions and membership.The BLP was following the path blazed by the British Liberal Party in 1976. </p>
<p>The British Conservative Party opened to party membership the election of party leader, but only when there are two final candidates, in 1998, some 15 years ago. In Canada, the Parti Quebecois (a leftist provincial party) opened the election of its leader to its members back in 1985. So the recent reform by the Labor party equivalent, the New Democratic Party, is not so new for Canada.</p>
<p>The French Socialist Party introduced primaries for its supporters to elect its leader in advance of the 2012 election. And the Italian Democratic Party (PD) allowed primaries in 2011. In Italy’s case, it needs to be seen in the context of almost 20 years of political reform to what was a corrupt political system.</p>
<p>It’s possible to see Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s initiative not as part of a democratic idea sweeping the world - if that is what Albanese meant - but part of the sporadic happenings of parties that find themselves in substantial political difficulties. Parties have to respond to each generation of voters, and attempts to involve voters through the internet have been arguably more important to increasing voter participation than opening up leadership ballots to party members. </p>
<h2>Verdict</h2>
<p>It is a stretch to say that Rudd’s proposed reforms are part of a recent global trend - they have been happening for more than four decades. Usually, changes to the election of leaders have had more to do with parties responding at various times to local political difficulties than to a general blossoming of political participation across the globe. <strong>- Mark Rolfe</strong></p>
<p><div class="callout">The Conversation is fact checking statements made in the lead-up to this year’s federal election. Normally, these are reviewed. But each week, we will also check significant factual assertions on the ABC’s Q&A program. To allow us to publish these checks as soon as possible, there will be no review process. Request a check at checkit@theconversation.edu.au. Please include the statement you would like us to check, the date it was made, and a link if possible.</div></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15911/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span> Tony Wood owns shares in Origin Energy, BHPBilliton and other ASX200 companies.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Rolfe and Peter Gerrand do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>UPDATED: We were inundated with ideas for statements to check from Monday night’s Q&A on ABC TV. Here, our experts tackle four claims on three of the most requested topics. 1. Anthony Albanese: claims…Peter Gerrand, Honorary Professorial Fellow in Telecommunications, The University of MelbourneMark Rolfe, Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, UNSW SydneyTony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/158882013-07-09T00:27:08Z2013-07-09T00:27:08ZIs this Kevin Rudd’s ‘New Labor’ party?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/27074/original/tygz75jd-1373273962.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Prime minister Kevin Rudd has announced reform to the workings of the ALP, including that the parliamentary leader will be jointly elected by rank-and-file and caucus members.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Public servants often complain that when their ministers go on holiday, they usually return with a rag bag of new policy ideas. Since regaining the ALP leadership, Kevin Rudd has a three year backlog of holiday ideas for both country and party. </p>
<p>Rudd’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-more-coups-against-labor-pms-under-new-rudd-rules-15887">latest proposal</a> is to change how the Australian Labor Party elects its parliamentary leader. In an act of political retribution, Rudd is moving swiftly to consolidate his place as leader and take full advantage of the rapid upswing in the ALP’s fortunes. To the victor go the spoils.</p>
<p>Instead of the party caucus solely electing the leader, Rudd’s proposal is a 50:50 split between MPs and the rank-and-file ALP members. Rudd proposes three “triggers” for a leadership spill: the leader’s resignation, a federal election loss, and a 75% no confidence vote by party caucus. </p>
<p>Given that Rudd won the most recent ballot <a href="https://theconversation.com/rudd-wins-the-game-of-thrones-15573">57 votes to 45</a> (56% of the caucus vote), cynics will see this as a brazen act of defiance to any likely challengers – most likely Bill Shorten. However, Rudd claims this is a long overdue measure to reinvigorate party democracy and – less vocally – garner some protection from the powerful factional leaders.</p>
<p>Despite the recent trauma of Gillard’s removal, it is likely that many ALP members will welcome Rudd’s proposal. The <a href="http://resources.news.com.au/files/2011/02/18/1226008/222073-labor-review-report.pdf">2010 ALP National Review</a> offers a desperate picture of the ailing party. Echoing these deep sentiments, one member argues:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>At the moment, the party branches are dying, because the rank and file are given no voice in the party. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is striking, however, that 2010 review fell short of recommending changes to how the party leader was chosen. Like the <a href="http://www.australianpolitics.com/parties/alp/02-08-09_hawke-wran-review.pdf">2002 Hawke/Wran Review</a>, most of the recommendations in the 2010 review have been sidelined.</p>
<p>Commentator and former Rudd adviser Troy Bramston laments Labor’s <a href="http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2012/02/manwaring.html">“lost decade”</a> during the Howard era to reinvigorate the party’s structures. Bramston despairs that, unlike <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/1994/oct/05/labour.uk">“New Labour”</a> in the UK, the ALP has not had its <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/uk/labour/clauseIV.shtml">“Clause IV”</a> moment. Following the death of John Smith in 1994, then-UK opposition leader Tony Blair set about completing what Hugh Gaitskell failed to do after Labour’s 1959 election defeat. Blair amended the party’s mission to abandon the cause of nationalisation, and went on to “fix” its internal structures.</p>
<p>Despite being “sister” parties, there are differences between British Labour and the ALP. British Labour has a long tradition of not replacing the party leader until after an election defeat. Neil Kinnock was allowed to lead the party to two election defeats in 1987 and 1992. The ALP would never have let Gordon Brown lead the party so ineptly at the 2010 election. The ALP has a much stronger appetite for deposing a leader before an election: Julia Gillard, Bill Hayden and Rudd himself are all victims of this “tradition”.</p>
<p>A further, crucial distinction between the two parties is how they elect the leader. British Labour has long held a form of an <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8444558.stm">“electoral college”</a>, with a weighting between affiliated trade unions, the parliamentary party and local branches. Following the 2010 election defeat, British Labour amended the leadership rules to have an equal weighting between the members of each of these groups, with the rank-and-file given a direct say. </p>
<p>Strikingly, Rudd’s proposal singularly fails to include a direct trade union vote as part of an electoral college. While Gillard couched her agenda in <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-class-war-searching-for-labor-values-in-the-labor-party-13047">“labor values”</a> and had a much closer relationship with the unions, Rudd casts himself – more like Blair – as social democrat. </p>
<p>Rudd is well aware of the incongruence of declining union density in Australia – <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/latestProducts/6310.0Media%20Release1August%202012">fewer than 20%</a> of the workforce are union members – and yet unions hold a 50:50 bloc vote at party conferences. Again, like Blair, Rudd favours forms of plebiscitary forms of democracy for party members, allowing them votes on predetermined options. This can open up greater party democracy. UK research shows that British Labour members were in favour of the reforms. Yet, at the same time, the changes had the net effect of increasing the power of the party leadership.</p>
<p>The irony for Kevin Rudd is that under Gillard’s leadership, there was a fresh <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national-news/queensland/queensland-alp-drops-membership-fee-from-50-to-5-in-recruitment-drive/story-fndo4ckr-1226474723378">recruitment wave</a>, with a target of 9,000 new members. While membership has apparently increased, Rudd is proposing giving new voice to those members – many of whom are likely to be Gillard devotees. If accepted, his reforms might increase the gap between himself and the party base, even if he were to deliver them an unlikely election win.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/15888/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Manwaring does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Public servants often complain that when their ministers go on holiday, they usually return with a rag bag of new policy ideas. Since regaining the ALP leadership, Kevin Rudd has a three year backlog of…Rob Manwaring, Lecturer, Politics and Public Policy, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/111712012-12-11T01:16:33Z2012-12-11T01:16:33ZGallop: ALP reform is a must for social democracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/18532/original/xw937j7w-1355183768.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former Premier Geoff Gallop helped reform the Western Australian Labor Party. But can it be done federally?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are always two challenges that face a political party operating in a democratic system such as ours – public trust and public policy.</p>
<p>When I was elected leader of the Western Australian Parliamentary Labor Party in 1996, the trust factor was pre-eminent. The public had invested much in the Labor Government of the 1980s, only to be disillusioned by the corruption revealed in <a href="http://www.slp.wa.gov.au/publications/publications.nsf/inquiries+and+commissions?openpage">WA Inc. Royal Commission</a>. </p>
<p>Senior Labor figures both inside and outside parliament were found wanting. Some were criticised, some charged with offences and some went to jail. It wasn’t a pretty picture.</p>
<p>Strangely enough, however, it provided Labor with an opportunity to become the party of political reform, as the Coalition government was lukewarm about some of the commission’s recommendations. This created space which we were only too happy to occupy. Indeed, the recommendations were consistent with what many of us saw as core values, such as one-vote, one-value democracy, accountability and the public interest.</p>
<p>This helped Labor re-position itself but was never going to be enough. Would the public believe in Labor and trust it to deliver? Had the party learned the lessons from the 1980s?</p>
<p>We succeeded but it required disciplined effort around three objectives: trimming the edges of factionalism; ensuring all communities throughout the state knew that Labor was active and listening; and keeping vested interests well away from caucus deliberations. Some sections of the party resented this style of politics but they were in a minority, except on the question of organisational renewal.</p>
<p>It needs to be said, however, that the organisational renewal question was not as important as it is today. There was energy within the party and robust political debate over important issues such as market reform, forest conservation and native title. My commitment to a reformist approach wasn’t ticked off before there had been widespread consideration in all party forums – from committee, to executive, to conference, to caucus.</p>
<p>None of this was perfect – it never is – but we did look and feel like an accountable organisation in which the common good had a better than even chance of winning.</p>
<p>This brings us to New South Wales Labor today, and indeed to the ALP more generally. The case for serious reform in the organisation has become crucial. The party has too few members, too few supporters and too few voters. What may have been an acceptable mix of tradition and change in the late 1990s won’t be enough now.</p>
<p>There are lots of ideas about how the ALP can be changed and how those changes can be managed – equality of votes, membership selection of leaders, primaries and better scrutiny and training of candidates. There are, of course, many variations on a theme when it comes to the best “package” required to make a difference. However, one question stands out amongst all others: what role should unions play?</p>
<p>Two features of the party stand out. It has a corporatist structure but lives in an era of participating democracy, and it is based on 50% union affiliation, though unions now play less of a role in the consciousness of the working class.</p>
<p>In other words, too few individuals from too narrow a political base are in the dominant position and will need to be convinced that change is needed.</p>
<p>The argument isn’t easy, as particular unions with their particular interests will be on a level playing field. Candidates too will find the going tougher as they are more closely questioned on their politics and their aspirations. Leaders will enjoy more authority but will be tested more thoroughly before being given the right to lead.</p>
<p>However, it’s only a reformed Labor Party that will have the capacity to break the back of the populist right and the green left. Both of these currents have a constituency which is damaging Labor, but not an acceptable philosophy for government.</p>
<p>Social democrats and their main opposition, liberal conservatives, do provide such a philosophy. Indeed, they compete for the right to govern. They do this, however, by way of political parties and they need supporters and members, connections and networks, and activists with energy.</p>
<p>There’s still life in the ALP but without reform will it be enough to meet the challenge of contemporary democracy? What’s at stake here is social democracy: is it an idea that has the potential to define government, or is it just one idea amongst many which seeks influence but not power?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/11171/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geoff Gallop is a member of the ALP and has delivered executive programs for ALP International. </span></em></p>There are always two challenges that face a political party operating in a democratic system such as ours – public trust and public policy. When I was elected leader of the Western Australian Parliamentary…Geoff Gallop, Director, Graduate School of Government, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/18532011-09-19T04:28:21Z2011-09-19T04:28:21ZThe light on the hill has been extinguished: does Julia Gillard have the spark Labor needs?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/3683/original/Gillard_statues_for_Gauja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gillard is trying to re-cast her party building on the tradition of great ALP leaders John Curtin and Ben Chifley.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s <a href="http://www.alp.org.au/special-pages/pm-special-address-crc/">rally to the Labor faithful</a> on Friday called for party reform. </p>
<p>It’s become a familiar pattern of introspection within the ALP, starting with the <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/news/2002/08/02-08-09.shtml">Hawke Wran Review</a> in 2002, and followed almost a decade later with the <a href="http://www.alp.org.au/australian-labor/member-news/2010-alp-national-review-report/">Bracks, Faulkner and Carr Report</a>. </p>
<h2>Flawed structure</h2>
<p>In her speech to the Chifley Research Centre Gillard acknowledged fundamental flaws in the party’s outdated structure and called for “change” – “vital to strengthen our party and be a party of ideas”.</p>
<p>Addressing the party at a time when many political commentators have placed Labor close to death’s door, Gillard nonetheless refuted the assertion that social democracy was dead. But, as an organising principle Gillard argued that it was in desperate need of modernisation. </p>
<p>While not discounting the fact that the ALP is a party “built unashamedly with collective action as our foundation stone”, given expression through a variety of party decision-making structures such as local branches, affiliation with trade unions, and the binding discipline of Labor caucus, Gillard argued that these structures were insufficient to deal with the “complex and personalised politics of today”. </p>
<p>Her solution? Labor must also embrace “choice and control within our political party – not just collective action”. The individual must be given a voice within the party organisation. </p>
<h2>Brave policy making</h2>
<p>In emphasising the need for the ALP to be a leader in national policy development, Gillard remembered the great victories of successive Labor governments built on the basis of collective action, decision-making and well-being, such as <a href="http://www.medicareaustralia.gov.au/">Medicare</a>. </p>
<p>Yet she also pointed to the tough political decisions that need to be made today: “Yesterday’s Snowy Hydro Scheme is today’s National Broadband Network. Yesterday’s dollar float is today’s carbon pricing”. </p>
<p>Gillard’s examples illustrate that over the years the challenges faced by policy-makers have basically remained the same. </p>
<p>They grapple with how to balance Australia’s short-term and long-term interests, striking a compromise between different groups in Australian society, and combining economic prosperity with social well-being.</p>
<h2>The role of the party</h2>
<p>However, the role of political parties as policy-makers in Australian politics and society has changed. </p>
<p>One line of argument amongst political scientists is that parties are no longer fulfilling the role that they once played as a wellspring of policy ideas and as a means of linking citizens and state through vibrant party memberships and organisations built on grassroots democracy. </p>
<p>Rather, they are now hollow shells, with the parliamentary party increasingly making the key policy decisions with very little input from party members.</p>
<p>Another argument is that there never was a “golden age” of political parties: they have always acted as centralised, hierarchical organisations with only a superficial deference to the membership. </p>
<p>This view is based upon an organisational reality that reflects the competitive nature of party politics and the constant struggle for electoral advantage. </p>
<p>Both conceptions of political parties have important implications for the changes that Gillard is proposing to reinvigorate the Labor Party. </p>
<h2>Gillard’s proposals</h2>
<p>In pushing for change, Gillard has argued that the ALP needs to modernise its decision-making processes “and recognise that the old branch structures alone are not the future”. Last Friday’s speech put forward a number of proposals for party reform, to be debated at the national conference in December: </p>
<ul>
<li>Recruiting 8,000 new members in 2012 and establishing a community organising approach to developing connections within citizens.</li>
<li>Trailing community pre-selections, or primary-style candidate selection contests, in some seats.</li>
<li>Offering members “more opportunities to have a say and a direct vote in important decisions”, such as the direct election of the Party President.</li>
<li>Embracing online membership and opportunities for supporters to become more involved.</li>
</ul>
<p>These reforms are based on a conception of political engagement that is moving away from the notion of collective action and towards individual initiatives for involvement. As Gillard emphasised in her address: </p>
<p>“Every individual Australian wants to write the story of their own lives with more choice and control than ever before. This approach – combining the strengths of collective action and the opportunities for individual choice – needs to live and breathe in our political party as well as our government”. </p>
<h2>Party membership</h2>
<p>So how does Gillard’s view of a new ALP organisation fit with the competing characterisations of political parties?</p>
<p>Both perspectives emphasise that parties are crucial for democracy, but differ on the extent to which a large, grassroots membership is needed to achieve electoral success and policy goals. </p>
<p>At face value, the proposed reforms appear to be invoking the first conception of a political party - that of a strong and responsive membership organisation where reform is necessary in order to stem membership decline and bring the party back to what it once was.</p>
<p>Initiatives such as recruiting 8,000 new members, community organising, direct votes for members, primaries and online supporters’ initiatives all appear to support this goal by strengthening activity within the party.</p>
<h2>Classes of membership</h2>
<p>But viewed from another perspective, the reforms also have the potential to downplay the role of membership. </p>
<p>For example, party scholars have written on the dampening effect of the introduction of direct democracy and one-member one-vote decisions in political parties, which are believed to marginalise the voice of party activists at the expense of the largely inactive, and moderate, individual party members who typically defer to the decisions of the parliamentary leadership. </p>
<p>The increasing prominence given to the involvement of “online members” and party supporters might also serve to dilute the views of existing active members. The introduction of party primaries (in allowing members of the community to participate in party pre-selection contests) arguably removes one of the key incentives to join political parties (the right to select candidates for public office). </p>
<h2>Progressive party?</h2>
<p>If adopted by the <a href="http://www.alp.org.au/australian-labor/national-conference-2011/">ALP National Conference</a> in December, the reforms may well reinvigorate the Labor Party organisation, but in a way that substantially alters the rights and obligations of a traditional party membership. </p>
<p>If Julia Gillard has read the expectations of the Australian public and its desire to participate in parties on a more “individual” basis correctly, then they might well attract a new base of support to the ALP. </p>
<p>But how this type of party organisation and shift in the character of party membership proposed by the reforms might serve the ALP as a progressive policy-maker will remain to be seen. </p>
<p>In order to succeed as a “party of ideas”, Labor will need to be able to listen to and reconcile the views of thousands of individual members in a way that preserves the bottom-up spirit of the party’s collective organisational principles, rather than being dictated by the party’s leaders. </p>
<p>New technologies may provide the opportunity to do this, but they also need to fit with the community organising principles that Gillard has proposed. </p>
<h2>Dangers of reform</h2>
<p>Online party membership and supporters’ networks need to be thought through in relation to traditional financial party membership. </p>
<p>The logistics of party primaries need to be considered, as well as the potential for <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-05-24/branch-stacking-lessons-learned-from-history/838382">branch-stacking</a> to re-occur. </p>
<p>Labor needs to think through the implications and some of the inconsistencies in its reform package before it promises too much, because if it once again fails to deliver on party reform, disaffection with the party will only increase.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/1853/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anika Gauja does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s rally to the Labor faithful on Friday called for party reform. It’s become a familiar pattern of introspection within the ALP, starting with the Hawke Wran Review in 2002…Anika Gauja, Lecturer, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.