Australian Democrats

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Australian Democrats
Leader Lyn Allison
Founded 1977
Headquarters Level 1
16 National Circuit
Barton, ACT 2600
Political Ideology Social liberalism
International Affiliation No affiliation
Website Australian Democrats
See also Politics of Australia

Political parties
Elections

The Australian Democrats, who are often known simply as Democrats, are an Australian social liberal party. They were founded in 1977, when prominent parliamentarian Don Chipp formed a new party with members of the Australia Party. Chipp, the inaugural leader of the Democrats, had left the Liberal Party of Australia — a liberal conservative party. His stated aim, and a long-lived slogan for the Democrats, was to "Keep the Bastards Honest" - the "bastards" being the major parties and/or politicians in general.

Following poor performances at the 2004 federal election and the 2006 state election in South Australia, and announcements of forthcoming retirements for prominent Democrat legislators, the party's future is in question.

Contents

[edit] Policy

The party's original support base was disaffected middle-class traditional Liberal voters from the centre-right Liberal Party's socially liberal, "wet" wing, together with a medley of people concerned about environmental issues and social justice. The party aimed to combine liberal social policies with centrist (particularly neo-Keynsian) economics and a reformist environmental platform. However, the major parties, including the social democratic Labor Party, have moved to the right on economics since the early 1980s, shifting the 'centre' of Australian politics well to the right. Thus the Democrats have come to be seen as leaning to the left on economic as well as social issues.

The Democrats' agenda includes interventionist economic policies, commitment to environmental causes, support for reconciliation with Australia's indigenous population through such mechanisms as formal treaties, pacifist approaches to international relations, open government, constitutional reform, progressive approaches to social issues such as sexuality and drugs, and strong support for human rights and civil liberties. Its core support base is overwhelmingly tertiary-educated, and middle-class. The party also explicitly targets voters who seek a brake on the powers of the government of the day to change things, with their long-term hold on the Senate balance of power.

The party has a platform of participatory democracy, with policies supporting proportional representation and citizens' initated referenda. Many important internal issues (such as electoral preselection and leadership) are decided by direct postal ballot of the membership. Although policies are theoretically set in a similar fashion, Democrat parliamentarians have extensive freedom in interpreting them.

[edit] Support

Support for the Democrats historically tended to fluctuate between about 5 and 10 percent of the population and was geographically concentrated around the wealthy dense urban neighbourhoods (known in Australia as the "inner-suburbs and CBD") of the capital cities (especially Adelaide). Therefore, they never managed to win a House of Representatives seat (despite coming close on a number of occasions). During the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s they typically held one or two of the Federal Senate seats in each state, as well as a handful of representatives in state parliaments and local councils.

However, the rise of the Australian Greens and internal bickering in the early 2000s changed this, and the Democrats are now in heavy decline - receiving 1.24% nationally, and less than 3% of the vote at all but a handful of booths, even in their Adelaide heartland.

[edit] Leadership

The Democrats are notable for their willingness to elect female and Indigenous Australian parliamentary leadership. Of the party's ten leaders, six have been women. Aboriginal Senator Aden Ridgeway was deputy leader under Natasha Stott Despoja.

The Parliamentary leaders of the Australian Democrats have been:

[edit] Senators

[edit] Former Senators

[edit] Current Senators

[edit] State parliamentarians

[edit] Former Members

[edit] Australian Capital Territory

[edit] New South Wales

[edit] Western Australia

  • Norm Kelly (1996 - 2001)
  • Helen Hodgson (1996 - 2001)

[edit] South Australia

[edit] Tasmania

[edit] Current Members

[edit] New South Wales

[edit] South Australia

[edit] History

In terms of percentage votes, the Democrats' electoral peak was probably the 1990 federal election. The failure of then-leader Janine Haines to win a House of Representatives seat led to a leadership change; her successor, Janet Powell, was too radical for many in the party and lacked electoral appeal. After an affair with another Senator, she lost the support of much of the caucus. These internal divisions damaged the party in the early 1990s, although recovery occurred under Cheryl Kernot.

During the Hawke and Keating Labor Governments (1983-96), which pursued economic rationalist neoliberal policies, the Democrats positioned themselves to the left of the ALP government and thus at the left end of mainstream Australian politics. However, the party's progressive-liberal politics remained attractive to middle class Liberal supporters ("wet" Liberals) who were disaffected by the Liberal party's social conservatism.

After the election of the Howard government in 1996, this philosophical division became apparent; there was no longer a single obvious location for the party on the political spectrum. The left of the party was horrified by John Howard's policies, and wanted to undermine and block them whenever possible. Others wanted to engage with the government, using the Senate balance of power to negotiate with it and moderate its legislation. The question was whether the Democrats should be a centrist party, at least on economics, (though socially liberal and environmentalist), ready in most cases to negotiate with the government of the day whether Liberal or Labor (the position suggested by the party's "wet Liberal" roots) or a left-wing party, to the left of both mainstream parties on economic as well as social policy, in strong and consistent opposition to the Liberals and willing to take an obstructionist approach in the Senate to the Howard government's legislative program (a position on the political spectrum more similar to the Greens).[citation needed]

This conflict manifested itself in tensions over Cheryl Kernot's policy on industrial relations (see the Workplace Relations Act of 1996). Under Kernot, after negotiations and some compromises from the government, the Democrats voted for the Howard Government's right-leaning industrial relations legislation which decreased union power and allowed a larger role for individual employer-employee contracts. Kernot, however, remained both ambitious and broadly opposed to the Liberal government. This, together with her personal ambition for a role in government, lead her to defect to the ALP in 1997. Initially both Labor and the Democrats benefitted from Kernot's move, with polls showing that the Democrats had attracted a significant "sympathy vote". In the 1998 federal election, the Democrats' candidate John Schumann came within 3% of taking Liberal Foreign Minister Alexander Downer's seat of Mayo in the Adelaide Hills under Australia's preferential voting system.

Internal conflict over the government's proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST), during the 1998 federal election and in Parliament in 1999 was extremely damaging to the Democrats. Meg Lees campaigned on a modified GST platform, opposing the GST on food and books. After negotiations with Prime Minister Howard, Meg Lees and Andrew Murray (both part of the centrist element within the Democrats) agreed to support the GST legislation with exemptions for most food and some medicines. Many left-wing Democrat voters and a large number of party members regarded this as a betrayal, and two senators on the party's left, Natasha Stott Despoja and Andrew Bartlett, voted against the GST.

After very poor state election results in 2001, Lees was replaced by the articulate young left-leaning senator, Natasha Stott Despoja. Stott Despoja worked hard to bring dissafected former Democrat voters back in the 2001 federal election, although she was not able to bring back enough voters to prevent the loss of a seat to Greens Senator Kerry Nettle, indicating the loss of Democrat votes on the left. (The task was not made any easier by the Tampa affair.) Ongoing tensions between Stott Despoja and Lees (who quit the party in 2002, but was supported by some of the Senators, nicknamed the Gang of Four by the media) forced a protracted leadership battle in 2002, which eventually led to the election of Senator Andrew Bartlett as leader. However, the tension led to Meg Lees leaving the party and becoming an independent.

Since the decision to support the GST in 1999, and especially after the very public infighting in 2002, the Democrats have suffered a severe decline in public support. Although the left-right division within the parliamentary party and between the parliamentary party and the grass roots membership has existed for many years, the recent leadership battles have created bitterness within the party, and exposed the disunity to public scrutiny. With the Australian Greens picking up many of their voters on the left, and some voters from the centre returning to the Liberals, the Democrats are facing their greatest crisis to date.

At the height of the disunity in 2002, most political observers believed that the party would soon split or disappear as a serious force in Australian politics. Under Senator Bartlett's leadership the Democrats found a degree of stability and an end to public feuding, but they have made little progress toward recovering their traditional share of electoral support and are now largely ignored by the media.

On 6 December 2003, Andrew Bartlett stepped aside temporarily as leader of the party, after an incident in which he assaulted Liberal Senator Jeannie Ferris on the floor of Parliament while intoxicated. The party issued a statement stating that Deputy Leader Lyn Allison would serve as the Acting Leader of the party. Bartlett apologised to the Democrats, Jeannie Ferris and the Australian public for his behaviour and assured all concerned that it would never happen again. On January 29, 2004, after seeking medical treatment, Bartlett returned to the Democrats leadership. Andrew Bartlett has not consumed any alcohol since that incident.

[edit] 2004 election

Almost totally ignored by the media during the election campaign, the Democrats suffered a massive loss of support at the 2004 Federal election, reducing them to 1.24% of the national vote. Nowhere was this more noticeable than in their key support base of suburban Adelaide in South Australia, where they received between 7 and 31% of the Lower House vote at polling booths in 2001, and between 1% and 4% in 2004. None of their Senators up for re-election survived the vote. Most electoral analysts concluded that, while most of the party's left-wing support had gone to the Greens (who now had an equal number of Senate seats with the Democrats and seemed to have taken their place as the leading minor party), many of the party's centrist middle-class voters from a 'wet Liberal' background had returned to the Liberal Party, helping the Howard Government to win a majority in the Senate, the first government to do so for a quarter of a century. With their Senate numbers almost halved, the Democrats face complete annihilation at the next election if the 2004 result is repeated.

Following the loss, Bartlett did not stand for the normal post-election leadership ballot with Allison becoming the new leader and Bartlett the deputy. However, Allison, like Bartlett, has failed to gain any real media exposure or to increase the party's support in opinion polls.

On 1 July 2005 the Democrats lost most of their remaining parliamentary influence when the senators elected in 2004 were sworn in, giving the governing Coalition outright control of the Senate.

[edit] Current status

On 5 January 2006, the ABC reported that the State Electoral Commission of Tasmania had deregistered that branch of the party for failing to provide a list containing the required number of members.[1]

[edit] 2006 South Australian election and aftermath

On 18 March 2006, at the 2006 South Australian State election, the Democrats were reduced to 1.7% of the Legislative Council (upper house) vote. Their sole member of Parliament up for re-election, Kate Reynolds, was subsequently defeated.

In the days following the election, rumours have been reported in the media that South Australian Senator Natasha Stott-Despoja, facing re-election at the next poll, might quit the party. She has denied these rumours. [2]

In early July, Richard Pascoe, National and South Australian party President, resigned, citing slumping opinion polls and the poor result in the 2006 South Australian Election as well as South Australian Parliamentary leader Sandra Kanck's comments regarding the drug MDMA that have been damaging to the party.[3] [4] [5]

[edit] Death of Don Chipp

On 28 August, 2006 the founder of the Democrats, Don Chipp, died. Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke has suggested that Chipp's death will hasten the death of the Australian Democrats.[6]

[edit] Intention of Senators Andrew Murray and Natasha Stott Despoja to not seek re-election

On 5 July 2006, Democrats senator Andrew Murray announced his intention to not seek re-election at 2007 federal election, citing the frustration arising from the Howard Government's control of both houses of Federal Parliament, and the long duration of any future Senate term.[7] He will however continue to sit as an Australian Democrats senator till the end of the current Senate term in 2008.

On 22 October 2006, Democrats senator Natasha Stott Despoja announced her intention to not seek re-election at 2007 federal election due to health concerns.[8] She will however continue to sit as an Australian Democrats senator till the end of the current Senate term in 2008. Her decision, as the Democrats senator with the highest profile and greatest chance for reelection, is widely expected to make it much more difficult for the Democrats to retain their South Australian Senate seat at the coming Federal Election.

[edit] Notes

  1. Appointed Interim Leader from 23 August 2002 until 5 October 2002.
  2. Resigned from party in November 1986 and sat as an Independent/Unite Australia Party Senator until defeat at 1987 election.
  3. Resigned from party in July 1992 and sat as an Independent until defeat at 1993 election.
  4. Resigned from party in July 2002 and sat as an Independent/Australian Progressive Alliance Senator until defeat at 2004 election.
  5. Resigned from party in 1996 and sat as an Independent until retirement at 2003 election.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Australian Democrats Deregistered in Tasmania, ABC News, 5 January 2006
  2. ^ Stott-Despoja denies rumours she is quitting, ABC News, 22 March 2006
  3. ^ Political analyst predicts Democrats' demise, ABC News 11 July 2006
  4. ^ Former leader sees Democrats in 'tatters', ABC News 11 July 2006
  5. ^ KANCK SAYS RAVE PARTY SAFER THAN THE FRONT BAR, The Advertiser 5 July 2006
  6. ^ Hawke predicts end is near for Democrats, ABC News 29 August 2006
  7. ^ Sydney Morning Herald 8 July 2006
  8. ^ Stott-Despoja to bow out of politics, ABC NEWS 22 October 2006

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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Political parties in Australia

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