Australian Democrats: Hopes for a democratic party crushed

By Sue Boland

Membership ballots to determine party policy and select party leadership — surely these measures guarantee party members' control over elected politicians?

It seems not: the Australian Democrats have such a structure but have ended up with politicians every bit as unaccountable to the membership as Labor, Liberal and National Party parliamentarians.

The Democrat senators' negotiations with the government last month over the goods and services tax and the environment legislation have crushed the hopes of many Democrat supporters that this was a party in which the members controlled the politicians, rather than the other way around.

Last September, a ballot of Democrat members registered only 50% support for a broader consumption tax which included a tax on services. The ballot rejected any "significant shift" from direct to indirect taxes, hardly a ringing endorsement of a GST.

With a June 5-6 Newspoll survey showing only 33% public support for the GST deal and 58% against, disenchantment began to spread amongst Democrat members. Former Democrat leader John Coulter gave voice to this in a letter in the June 18 Australian in which he said Democrat senators can delay "the Senate vote, meanwhile conducting a ballot of members on this package and simultaneously allowing the wider public the opportunity of more time for discussion and debate".

The Democrats' NSW division and Victorian state council joined the call for the Senate vote to be delayed until after a ballot of the rank and file.

Party leader Senator Meg Lees responded, "The senators have made their decision and there is no mechanism to change that" (Sun Herald, June 20). She told the June 21 Sydney Morning Herald, "What is unworkable is if they [party members] try and put a stop-work order on us. Basically they can't do that. But the expectation that they can is part of what is causing some friction at the moment." Lees sounded no different from Labor leader Kim Beazley or Prime Minister John Howard when they are trying to weasel out of keeping an election promise.

How is it that MPs from a party which appears to have a much more democratic structure than the major parties can ride roughshod over the opposition of their party members?

The Democrats' organisational structure allows senators and their staff to operate independently of the party membership because of its parliamentarist political framework. The Democrats believe that progressive reforms can only be won through parliament; extra-parliamentary struggle is seen as irrelevant, unless it is for the purpose of lobbying in support of some MPs against other MPs.

The Democrats share this political framework with the ALP left and the Greens. While the Democrats' and Greens' organisational structures differ from those of the major parties, this has not resulted in the MPs being accountable to party members.

The Democrats' constitution enshrines the right of its parliamentarians to a conscience vote. The Greens also allow their parliamentarians a conscience vote. This prevents the party membership from holding MPs to party policy.

Many members of the Democrats and Greens perceive the conscience vote as a progressive measure. This perception is reinforced by ALP left politicians who try to justify voting for reactionary legislation by arguing that they are bound to follow the party line.

But it is not the lack of a conscience vote that is the problem with the ALP: even when ALP conferences adopt progressive policies, there is no mechanism to force ALP politicians to abide by those policies, especially when they hold government. In any case, the ALP does allow its MPs a conscience vote on the issue of abortion, allowing them to vote in favour of maintaining abortion as a criminal offence, contrary to party policy.

While the Democrats, Greens and even the ALP have a variety of party forums which allow members' input, there is no forum through which members can direct the MPs in their parliamentary "struggle". As a result, the MPs get drawn into the well-established parliamentary practices of horse-trading and watering down of party policy.

Green MPs, as well as Democrats, have fallen victim to this pressure. The Tasmanian Greens entered into an accord with the state Labor government in 1989 and helped pass a horror budget. In the ACT, the Greens voted in favour of some privatisation when they held the balance of power in 1995.

In Europe, Green party politicians in the German and French governments threw their full support behind NATO's bombing campaign in the Balkans.

The Democrats' and Greens' parliamentary focus means they see no need for an active party membership between election campaigns; the primary role of members is to get the MPs elected. The result is a passive membership which is in no position to hold its parliamentarians accountable, even if the structures for doing so existed.

A different relationship between party members and parliamentarians requires a different sort of party, with a different sort of politics. The sort of party that's needed is one which clearly understands the opposing interests of working people and the large corporations, and on that basis, seeks to mobilise people to defend and extend their own rights instead of relying on MPs operating in a political structure (parliament) which was established precisely to make and implement laws to protect the interests of big capital.

Even as they shore up their control of parliaments (through funding the election campaigns of all major parties, for example), the large corporations understand the importance of extra-parliamentary struggle too.

They engaged in such a struggle to win public support for a GST through their control of the mass media and their influence over top government bureaucrats. An equally concerted extra-parliamentary campaign by mass workers' organisations, left parties and social protest movements could have created a political environment in which it was simply not possible for parliamentarians to vote for a GST.

A political party which can mobilise working people to defend and extend their rights needs an active, rather than a passive, membership. This is because in such a party, parliamentarians can only play a useful role if they use the platform of parliament to support and give voice to the struggles outside of parliament, and the only way to ensure that they do that is to give party members the right and means to hold them to account.