By Dave Riley
BRISBANE — Election fever in Queensland is being given the tepid sponge by the ALP. Although the Goss government is committed to a state election before the end of the year the Labor machine is keen to keep a safe distance from the impending electoral debacle in Victoria.
Above all, whenever the election comes, the government is determined that democracy won't be allowed to get in the way of its return to office. While Labor won handsomely by 15 seats back in 1989, a mix of increased public scrutiny and a rush of bad press has prompted the Goss government to seek some collateral insurance.
Labor rode to power for the first time in 32 years less on its own merits than on the abuses and corruption of the coalition parties, paraded in successive sittings of the Fitzgerald Inquiry.
Fitzgerald recommended that an Electoral and Administrative Review Commission (EARC) be established to overhaul the much manipulated state electoral system. EARC bought down its recommendations in December 1991, and the government rushed the new electoral bill through parliament in May.
At a time when there is motion to the left of Labor for some new electoral formations, the new bill was keen to hinder an easy break.
To field candidates in any future state poll, a party currently not represented in state parliament must supply the Electoral Commission with the names and addresses of 500 members, all of whom are to be electors enrolled in Queensland. This requirement applies to the Australian Democrats, for instance, despite their eight federal senators.
Labor, Liberal, and National parties are protected. None are obliged to submit their membership lists to scrutiny.
The initial EARC recommendations were far more liberal than those presented to parliament by the government. For EARC a parliamentary party was one "generally defined as a party which has at least one member in any Parliament in Australia". On that definition, if the Tasmanian Green Independents were to link up with a national formation, that party would be guaranteed registration in Queensland. This prospect was too much for Labor to entertain.
EARC also advocated that parties be recognised with 150 members. Labor, in its original submission to the commission, plugged for a figure of 250. Reconsidering later, the ALP doubled that.
A further specification in the act empowers the Electoral Commission to refuse registration to a party whose name is considered to bring the electoral system into disrepute. The provision is supposedly aimed ist" parties, but formations such as Legalise Marihuana or Defence of Government Schools (DOGS), which have stood candidates previously, could find themselves denied registration on such grounds.
The restrictions impose a tight schedule on the recently formed Queensland Greens if they are to run in the approaching state poll.
Traditionally it has been the socialist parties which have used the state election to put forward a truly alternative program. Both the Democratic Socialist Party and the Socialist Party have fielded candidates in most of the recent state elections. There is no dispute as to whether they exist; what is at issue is their willingness to comply with the restrictive terms of the act.
Jim McIlroy, the DSP's Brisbane secretary, pointed out that the Queensland law is the most restrictive of all the new registration laws brought in, mainly by Labor governments, around the country.
"This is not untypical of the Goss government", he told Green Left Weekly. "This government has prided itself on being the Labor government which has learnt from all the others. In fact, what it has done in a number of areas like land rights, abortion legislation and so on is to look at what has been done elsewhere by Labor governments and then go one step worse."