Democrats Facing Oblivion Unless Liberals Lose

by Norman Abjorensen - Canberra Times

Prime Minister John Howard might be staring at some discouraging polls, but nothing quite like those confronting the Australian Democrats who, on present indications, face oblivion after this year's election.

A Morgan poll earlier this month put the Democrat vote nationwide at just 1 per cent, down from 1.5 per cent a few months earlier, and trailing other minor parties like Family First on 1.5 per cent and the Greens on 6.5 per cent.

Unlike both of those parties, the Democrats are unlikely to receive any flow of preferences from the major parties, and three of its four sitting senators Lyn Allison of Victoria, Andrew Bartlett of Queensland, and Andrew Murray, of Western Australia look certain to lose their seats. The fourth senator, former leader Natasha Stott Despoja of South Australia, arguably the best chance the Democrats have in the most likely state, is not standing for re-election.

It has been carnage in instalments. At the 2004 election there was a significant drop in the Democrat vote which saw all three retiring Democrat senators John Cherry, Aden Ridgeway and Brian Greig defeated.

The major parties will shed no tears over the demise of the Democrats, but the party's remarkable record in its 30 years of existence makes it the most successful minor party in the history of federation. In its heyday, it influenced policy both responsibly and constructively, and with few exceptions its Senate representation has been of an extraordinarily high calibre and especially so when pitted against the plodding party hacks from both sides of politics (with a handful of exceptions) who inhabit that dismal chamber.

Australians politics will be the poorer without the Democrats, founded as they were in 1977 from the remnants of disillusioned Liberals who had drifted into the short-lived Australia Party and the South Australian-based Liberal Movement.

The Democrats never sought power for its own sake and this gave them a moral ascendancy that was seldom squandered. Collectively, they transformed the Senate to much the same extent that the reforming Labor senator Lionel Murphy had done a generation earlier, ensuring that it was not merely obstructive nor was it a rubber stamp of government (as it is now).

The Australian Democrats have consistently raised unpopular issues and have sought to ensure that the Senate operated as a genuine house of review, dealing with each item of legislation on its merit. This change represented a significant plus for the health of Australian political life. The late Don Chipp's memorable phrase of being there "to keep the bastards honest" resonated with many Australians for a time.

Alone of the parties, the Democrats were beholden to no interest group.

Unlike the Liberal Party, especially under John Howard with its craven capitulation to business, or the union nexus of the Labor Party, or even the Greens to the environmental lobby, the Nationals to monied rural interests and Family First to its evangelical religious roots, the Democrats stayed above the grubby fray, a source of both strength and weakness. They were a genuine party of the people, and far and away the most internally democratic of all the parties, but their appeal was spread too generously for them ever to find a permanent home.

Originally set up to stake out a position to the left of the Liberals as a sort of middle-class ginger group, and an effective one at that, the Democrats were effectively blindsided by two significant developments in the political landscape: the dramatic shift to the right of the whole political spectrum in the 1980s as the Labor Party embraced a neo-liberal reform agenda under Hawke and Keating and in the rise of the environmental movement that spawned the Greens, who stole in a more focused way much of the Democrat protest vote. On top of that was the rise of the brief One Nation phenomenon which served, for all the wrong reasons, to marginalise much of the Democrat agenda.

Clearly, the Democrat organisation will remain, but as it is staffed almost entirely by volunteers, and the party has precious little income from donations, will there be sufficient motivation to stay afloat?

The Democrats might be down and set to be counted out, but another surprising round or two might be fought before the fight is over, and certainly so if Howard loses the election.

In the event of a Liberal loss, all hell will break loose in Liberal ranks, especially in the states where a moribund and feeble party holds its tongue merely out of respect (or fear) of the one remaining Liberal government that of Howard, who has driven the party into a pragmatically conservative cul-de-sac from which it will have trouble escaping.

There will be dissident Liberals, and their number will increase dramatically in the event of defeat, who will look for political allies in a possible new alignment of the non-Labor parties. Common ground with the Democrats will almost certainly be found.

Down the Democrats might be, but by no means out yet.


Norman Abjorensen teaches politics at the Australian National University.