Socialists and the coming federal elections
The slogan of all the left should be “Kick the Liberals Out”
By Bob Gould
Socialists in Australia should decide their tactics, in the
run-up
to the elections to be held sometime next year, with an eye to the
immediate circumstances, and to the evolving demographics, considered
in the context of Australian electoral and demographic history.
The Australian electoral system and its history
The most striking feature of the Australian electoral set-up
is that
it is one of the most democratic bourgeois electoral systems in the
world. It evolved radical bourgeois democratic aspects earlier than
most countries and many of these aspects still don't exist in other
ostensible bourgeois democracies such as the United States.
Australia developed manhood suffrage earlier than most
countries and
votes for women earlier than most countries. Preferential voting in one
round of elections was adopted in the first half of the 20th century,
and it is such an unusual feature of any electoral system that
preferential voting was for many years known as the “Australian ballot.”
The current Australian electoral system
The third tier of government, municipal councils, have a
varied
electoral system from state to state. In some states the municipal
electoral system is mainly first past the post, which is essentially
undemocratic. In NSW, the largest state, municipal councils are divided
into wards, for which councillors are elected by proportional
representation, usually three to a ward.
In a few a municipal councils there are four councillors per
ward,
with proportional representation, which is an extremely democratic
arrangement, because it dictates a quota of one-fifth of the number of
voters. This often helps Greens and Laborites to be elected. Socialists
should strenuously defend this four-representatives per ward model.
At the second level of government, the six states and the two
territories, there are single-member electorates in lower houses, with
one vote-one-value in most states, although in WA there is still an
undemocratic weighting in favour of rural electorates in the lower
house. An attempt by the Labor government to introduce
one-vote-one-value has just been blocked by the WA Supreme Court
because the vote in the parliament in favour of one-vote-one-value did
not get an absolute majority of parliamentarians entitled to vote,
although it got a simple majority.
The two exceptions are the state of Tasmania, where the lower
house
is elected by a Hare-Clark proportional representation system, and the
ACT, which has a one-house system elected by proportional
representation. The two territories and the state of Queensland have
only one-house parliaments, the five other states have lower houses,
with individual electorates, and upper houses, which began life as
reactionary nominee relics of the British colonial system, but have
been democratised over time, largely by Labor governments. They are now
all elected by proportional representation, even the Victorian upper
house, which was the last conservative hold-out, and the change to
proportional representation there is in process now.
The Labor Party is in electoral control of all houses of all
state
and territory parliaments for the first time in Australian history,
although in several states it relies on the support of independents,
Democrats and Greens to govern.
At the federal level, the Commonwealth Parliament consists of
two
houses, the lower house elected on a one-vote-one-value basis,
state-by-state, and the Senate elected on proportional representation,
with half the senators retiring at each election, so that they serve
eight-year terms.
The Senate has one extremely undemocratic aspect, which is
that the
smallest state, Tasmania, with a population of about 500,000 has the
same representation as the largest state, NSW, with about 6.5 million.
In practice, however, this doesn't have a dramatic effect on
Australian politics because the political configurations are similar in
each state, i.e. Labor gets about 40 per cent, the conservative parties
get a similar vote, the Greens get about 10 per cent, and independents
get about 10 per cent. So, despite the imbalance in the representation
of the states, the net pattern of voting in the Senate, still reflects
the general political trend in the country at large.
In addition to this, the proportional representation aspect of
voting for the Senate leaves the way open for some minority
representation, including radical minorities, and the main feature of
the Senate in recent times has been the rise of the Greens, on the
left, to the magic 10 per cent, which usually ensures at least one
Senator in each state in each round of elections, and the rise on the
right of the xenophobic One Nation party.
The net effect of proportional representation in the Senate is
that
the reactionary Howard Liberal government, elected in the lower house,
chronically lacks a majority in the Senate for much of its reactionary
legislation and this has led the Howard Government to flag the idea of
“reforming” the Senate to give reactionary governments greater power.
It goes without saying that socialists should strenuously
oppose
such “reforms”. Australia's evolved Senate set-up is useful, in
immediate circumstances, from a socialist point of view. (Introducing
proportional representation in the Senate, which was the personal baby
of Arthur Calwell, later a federal Labor parliamentary leader, was the
last act of the Chifley Labor Government before its electoral defeat in
1949.
It has to be stressed that the institution of preferential
voting
(the “Australian ballot”) is central to the electoral system at all
levels. Minority parties and independents call for a vote for
themselves and then express numerical preferences, although in some
houses, in some states, this is optional. Unsuccessful candidates are
eliminated from the lowest vote upwards, and their preferences are
distributed according to the voters' indication.
This is an excellent system for radicals who want to challenge
the
less radical in elections but don't want to support the most
conservative candidates. It eliminates the agonising choice faced by
voters in the US, Britain and France, for instance, who in choosing to
vote for radical candidates often take votes from moderate candidates,
with the result that the worst reactionaries are elected.
In practice, the combination of preferential voting and single
seats
in lower houses, which tends to accentuate the broad class division
between Liberal and Labor, and the combined preferential proportional
representation system in upper houses, which allows scope for radical
minorities, is a quite useful electoral system from the point of view
of socialists, which should be used strategically, from a Marxist point
of view.
The demographics of Australian voting
Australians become entitled to vote on turning 18. This is the
one
area in which the Australian electoral office, which is a pretty useful
and effective institution overall, hasn't quite got it together yet. It
takes a while for people turning 18 to be picked up by the electoral
office, and in practice people turning 18 are the only cohort of
Australian voters whose registration to vote tends to be slightly lower
than average.
In every other aspect, the federal and state electoral offices
are
very effective democratic mechanisms. They do systematic sweeps
everywhere, spaced over time to ensure that everyone eligible is on the
roll, and this is very effective, although obviously people who for one
reason or another wish to evade the system still do so.
Australia is an immigrant country, and these days close to 50
per
cent of the population have some non-English-speaking background.
Recent NESB migrants are a high proportion of the population. Recent
immigration to Australia has been extremely rapid and a very high
proportion of migrants take up Australian citizenship as soon as it's
available, after two years permanent residency. (The only exception
seems to be British migrants, who have a somewhat lower take-up of
Australian citizenship.)
The net result of all this is that about 90 per cent of
Australian
residents older than 18 are on the electoral roll, which is, for
instance, dramatically more democratic than the situation in the USA.
To cap all the other other features, Australia is one of the
few
countries where voting is compulsory. When this was introduced in the
late 1920s, the proportion voting rose dramatically from about 65 per
cent to about 95 per cent.
The fine for not voting is nominal and rarely enforced, but
the
psychological impact of the legal requirement produces a 90-95 per cent
return in all elections.
Polls in Australia are almost always held on a Saturday from
8am to 6pm.
In other countries, such as the US and Britain, the energies
of
parties contesting elections are largely thrown into the process of
getting out the vote. In Australia, this is replaced by a process of
campaigning for people's votes, with the general assumption that most
people will vote. This throws the electoral focus partly into intense
campaigning at the booth on election day.
I have discussed other aspects of the evolution and
demographics of
Australian politics in three articles which are available on Ozleft: The
Republic Referendum, a View from the Left, The Real
Story About the “New Class”: Three Cheers for the Australian Bureau of
Census and Statistics and The
People's Choice: Electoral Politics in 20th Century NSW.
Trotskyists, Communists and Australian elections
Australian Trotskyists mainly adopted an open party tactic
from
their emergence in 1932 up to 1940. In 1941 they entered the Labor
Party and conducted much of their activity in that framework until the
early 1970s. For the old Australian Trotskyists, from the 1940s to the
1970s the electoral framework was pretty simple, working hard from
within the ALP for the election of Labor candidates, preferably
left-wingers.
The Communist Party had a more complex relationship with
Laborism.
It went through a few spasms of Third Periodism, when it denounced
Labor politicians, Labor supporters and all their works, but it
recovered rapidly from these sectarian episodes. For most of its
existence it ran in elections under its own banner in some seats, but
it generally practised a united front electoral strategy, epitomised by
the slogan the CP often used, “kick the Liberals out”, accompanied by a
call to vote for CP candidates and give second preferences to Labor.
During the Second World War, some Communist candidates got large votes,
and one Communist, Fred Paterson, was elected as a state Member of
Parliament for a North Queensland seat. A number of Communists were
elected to municipal councils. Jim Healy, the charismatic wharfies
leader, got more than 100,000 votes for the Senate in NSW one year, and
20 years later, so did the similarly charismatic leader of the
Builder’s Laborers Federation, Jack Mundey.
The CP went through various episodes of more agressively
trying to
“show the face of the party” in elections, in which it ran quite a lot
of candidates, but this was usually in the framework of “kick the
Liberal out”.
This was particularly the position adopted by the CPA in
elections
at moments of crisis in the country and the Labor movement: the split
elections in the 1950s, the 1966 and 1969 elections dominated by the
Vietnam crisis, the 1972 and 1975 elections, the latter dominated by
the removal of the Whitlam government. This “kick the Liberals out”
slogan has the capital value that it intersects with the mood of the
overwhelming majority of the class-conscious working class, and
sections of the radical middle class, who tend to close ranks around
Labor as the alternative party of government to the reactionary
Liberals at moments of social crisis.
At such moments of crisis, class-conscious workers and radical
middle-class people generally don't respond at all well to
simple-minded exposure of Laborism. They're generally more preoccupied
with getting rid of the Liberals.
The Trotskyist organisation, the Socialist Labour League,
adopted a
similar “kick the Liberals out” strategy when it was of some
significance in the 1970s and the early 1980s, as also did the DSP up
to the time of its eccentric turning away from the united front with
Labor in 1984-85.
The coming federal elections are clearly going to be crisis
elections of the highest order. The reactionary Liberals are clearly
going to attempt to unleash every primitive, reactionary, racist
passion that they can arouse for electoral purposes. In this they will
have the vociferous support of the reactionary wing of the media,
particularly the Murdoch media, and we are getting a foretaste of this
reactionary blizzard from the Murdoch press in the past few days on the
Kurdish asylum seekers and the conflict in the ALP over tax cuts. The
venom express by Peter Boyle and Co towards Carmen Lawrence on the Green Left
Weekly discussion list,
is only matched elsewhere by the venom of the Murdoch press towards
Lawrence, and the danger she possibly represents from the point of view
of the bourgeoisie.
In these conditions, a dopey, hysterical exposure strategy of
the
sort that is currently being directed at the Laborites, particularly by
the DSP leadership, is the opposite of what is required. The electoral
strategy adopted by socialists in the run-up to these elections should
be the old leftist slogan, particularly crafted by the CPA in its saner
moments, “kick the Liberals out”.
For Marxists and other serious socialists, elections, although
they
are important parts of political life, aren't the real centre of
politics. For socialists the centre of political life is mass agitation
in working class communities, trade unions, etc.
Nevertheless, elections are important, because the political
consciousness of the masses is heightened and sharpened during
elections. Slogans directed at the masses during elections should be
consistent with the overall activity of socialists in society at large.
Socialists operating in the Labor Party have, in my view, the
following responsibilities in elections. They should campaign very hard
inside the ALP for the following preference arrangements: second
preferences to the Greens, third preference to socialist groups, fourth
preference to any progressive independents and fifth preference to the
Democrats. Socialists in the ALP should also fight to put all the
reactionary parties last. It goes almost without saying that socialists
in the ALP should work hard for Labor on the booths on election day. A
reasonable day's work on the booths for the ALP makes up for a variety
of other sins committed by socialists in the course of their necessary
political agitation in the community at large and in the ALP.
A small but important current issue for socialists in the ALP
is
that they should vigorously oppose the vindictive move to reduce the
number of councillors from four to three in each ward in the
Marrickville municipality. This move is directed, clearly, at the
Greens. It's an essentially undemocratic proposition, and it's pretty
dangerous for the ALP nationally at this time, when all the skills of
the ALP parliamentary operators should be directed at making the
necessary preference deals with the Greens.
Socialists operating in the Greens should fight hard,
obviously, for
second preferences to Labor, third preference to socialist groups,
fourth preference to progressive independents and fifth preference to
the Democrats, again putting the reactionary parties last.
Socialists operating in the small socialist groups running in
the
elections, such as the Socialist Alliance, the Socialist Party and the
Progressive Labour Party, should campaign for second or third
preference to the Greens or Labor, fourth preference to progressive
independents and fifth preference to the Democrats, with the
reactionary parties last.
There are obviously all kinds of difficulties in the path of
such a
united front electoral strategy by socialists in the coming elections.
For a start, there's an unpleasant tradition in the ALP of
Machiavellian behaviour in relation to preferences, and not
preferencing radicals such as the Greens.
Despite this past Labor behaviour, however, the Greens have
broken
through both in the Senate electoral process (towards the magic 10 per
cent), and even in the lower house, in Cunningham. Unless Labor
preferences the Greens in the Senate, there is a real danger of handing
control of the Senate to the Liberals, which apart from matters of
general principle, is a powerful reason for the ALP electoral managers
to make the appropriate Senate preference deal with the Greens, and
even in realpolitik terms this flows over into making a sensible deal
with the Greens in lower house seats.
The same principle applies to preference arrangements with the
small
socialist groups, although they are of vastly less practical importance
because of the tiny votes they will get.
The problem for socialists operating in the Greens is a
certain
Green sectarianism arising from the bad behaviour of Labor on many
important political questions and a perception in Green circles that
the Greens are on the way up and they may stand to gain by not
preferencing Labor.
Nevertheless, the overriding consideration that should be
stressed
by socialists in the Green camp is the absolute necessity of removing
the Liberal government in these elections as a step towards achieving
the progressive reforms that the Greens favour.
When you get to the small socialist groups, two of them — the
DSP
leadership and the leadership of the much smaller Socialist Party in
Victoria, have been engaged in a politically eccentric Third Period,
exposure of Laborism strategy and rhetoric for some years.
Persistence with this strategy and rhetoric in these elections
will
isolate those socialists even further from the overwhelming majority of
the organised working class, migrant communities and progressive forces
in the new social layers, who vote Labor and Green in a defensive way
in crisis elections.
That the small socialist groups such as the DSP, and the
Socialist
Party should adopt a sane, united front strategy towards Labor in these
elections is much more an issue for their own political training and
the political health of their memberships than it is an issue that has
much to do with the outcome of the election (Peter
Boyle’s self-styled "gnats" be warned).
Those socialists who spend election day — the moment of
greatest
political interest — in simple–minded exposure of the Laborites, and to
a lesser extent the Greens, will deepen their isolation and their
appearance of bloody-minded eccentricity. If these socialist groups
could find it in their minds and hearts to make a turn to a united
front strategy in these elections, they would increase their audience
in the working class and the radicalised middle class.
What is required most of all by socialists campaigning in the
coming
elections, regardless of their tactical orientation to the ALP, the
Greens or to independent socialist electoral activity, is a sense of
proportion.
The central slogan for serious socialists in these coming
crisis
elections must be “kick the Liberals out”, with the necessary tactical
adaptations that flow from this slogan.
In presenting the electoral tasks in this way, I look back to
other
crisis elections in which socialists subordinated their other
differences to this kind of slogan, and working on that basis in those
elections was an exhilarating experience because it intersected in a
real way with the political consciousness with the leftist side of
Australian society.
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