Oz Politics Blog

In yesterday’s Age, Shaun Carney wrote on the problems of the Labor Party being bigger than Mark Latham. His thesis was that Labor’s main problem is that too few Australians are interested in identifying themselves as Labor voters.

It was an interesting if not remarkable read. Yet one paragraph leapt out.

The former Labor Senate leader John Button, in an article contained in a Fabian Society booklet released this week, paints a similar picture of an inward-looking, largely inbred organisation. “Just under half the membership of the ALP in Victoria live in eight inner-suburban seats. It’s a good place to watch trams but not the lives of the average Australian,” Button writes.

I was gob smacked. Just under half the membership of the Labor Party in Victoria live in eight inner-suburban seats. In rough terms, half the membership lives among one fifth of Victoria’s population.

And then it dawned on me: The Labor Party could face a similar juxtaposition of structure and ideology that led to the downfall of the Australian Democrats.

The Australian Democrats was formed in 1977 by Don Chipp, a former-Liberal member of the House of Representatives and former Minister. The centrepiece of the Australian Democrats structure was its commitment to internal party democracy. It instituted mechanisms to give the membership a real say on policies and directions. The members elect the parliamentary leader and they vote on the party’s policies.

Ideologically, the party initially positioned itself between Liberal and Labor: a mix of responsible economic policy and progressive social policy. In the 1990s it expanded its membership through a series of recruitment drives in Australia’s universities. This had the effect of shifting the membership of the Democrats to the left of the Labor party. The membership was no longer centrist in orientation.

What the Democrat membership failed to appreciate was that its voter base included a large proportion of centrists who held to the original Don Chipp ideology. Electoral success depended on keeping these voters within the tent.

The problems for the Democrats became evident with the resignation of centrist Meg Lees as party leader in April 2001. She was challenged by the left in the party over her support for the goods and services tax, and her willingness to at least consider a fully privatised Telstra. Lees resigned as party leader when a leadership spill was initiated by a membership petition with just 100 signatures.

The new leftist party leader, Natasha Stott Despoja, was supposed to reinvigorate the party. However, she lost electoral ground in the 2001 election after a lacklustre campaign performance. The centrists had their revenge in 2002 and Stott Despoja was toppled as party leader in 2002. But it was a pyrrhic victory for the centrists. Stott Despoja was replaced with another leader from the left.

By 2004 the party was a farce. The Democrats failed to win any Senate seats in the 2004 Federal election and, short of a miracle of biblical proportions, it will be eliminated from the Senate come July 2008.

What is the relevance of this Democrat tragedy for Labor?

First of all, let’s look at structure. When it was formed in the late nineteenth century the Labor Party wanted to keep its parliamentary representatives responsible to the broader labour movement. It did this through the pledge, the power of caucus over the cabinet, and the policymaking role of the state and federal conferences. While not as ‘democratic’ as the Australian Democrats, the membership of the Australian Labor Party exercises significant influence over its parliamentarians – much more so than the Liberal party of Australia.

The second parallel with the Democrats is the left leaning nature of the party’s membership. Half the membership of the Labor Party in Victoria live in eight inner-suburban seats This statistic says one thing. The Labor Party has been commandeered by the latte left. It has been captured by chardonnay socialists (who, for the record, have all moved on to sauvignon blanc).

While the Labor Party has become left of centre in the orientation of its membership, it can only win government if it presents its self as a responsible, middle of the road, party. If the party membership do not recognise this simple truth, it could well use its structures to bind its parliamentarians to the same electoral oblivion as the Australian Democrats.

While my analysis may differ a little, I agree with Shaun Carney: the problems of the Labor Party are much bigger than Mark Latham.