The same day the illegal corflutes appeared former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was giving an address to the Harvard Club of Washington DC which reflects on the rise of independents this election and why members of Liberal Party branches may choose to vote for them instead of those candidates chosen for them by overruling members of 12 Liberal branches. An extract from this reads,;
Big Tent Parties captured by extremes
In many countries, including Australia and the US, you have a big political party on the centre right and on the centre left. In our country the Labor Party, historically the political wing of the trade union movement, is the main party on the left, and my party, the Liberal Party, is the main one on the right - a misnomer you could say, but its founder, Sir Robert Menzies, was anxious to ensure that the party was not narrowly perceived as a conservative party, like its counterpart in the UK.
Historically these parties were big tents or broad churches with members with a wide range of views, and inevitably that meant that the left of the centre right party often overlapped with the right of the centre left party thus enabling the type of cooperation and compromise that all democratic systems depend on if they are to function effectively.
In recent times however, and especially in the Trump dominated GOP, a big tent party can be hijacked and those who don’t share the views of the dominant faction are either driven out or rendered irrelevant.
Australia has not been immune to this trend, although not to the same degree as here. My own party called Liberal has in the past been a combination of both the liberal and conservative traditions, but since my deposition in 2018 it is fair to say that the liberal, or moderate, voices have been marginalised and their influence is much diminished and diminishing - especially on the toxically controversial issue of climate change where the political right, supported by Murdoch’s media, have opposed effective action for many years.
So what does a traditional voter for, say, the Liberal Party in Australia or the Republican Party in the US do if they think their party has moved too far to the right? They can vote for the other side - Labor in Australia, Democrats in the US - but that may be a bridge too far. To quote Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a Republican, “I don’t really know what the party stands for anymore…I think mentally I feel more like an independent than a Republican.”
In Australia, the existence of preferential voting opens up another option and we are seeing it play out in this election. In a number of hitherto safe Liberal seats, residents have organised to support small “l” liberal independent candidates who are typically progressive on climate and social issues, but more conservative than Labor on economic issues.
If such an independent can get enough primary votes to finish second behind the Liberal incumbent, and if that incumbent’s vote is reduced to around 40% or less then the independent will likely win on the preferences of Labor, the Greens and other independents.
In many respects this may be the most interesting part of the whole election, because if more of these “teal” independents win, it will mean the capture of the Liberal Party will be thwarted by direct, democratic action from voters. People power, you might say.
Of course the big parties’ arguments against independents is always the same - instability, chaos and so on. But in truth, many parliaments, including in Australia, have operated with stability and good effect with major parties requiring the support of independents or minor parties to pass legislation and, in fact, in our Senate that has almost always been the case. Formal coalitions are also very common - the Liberal Party has always been in coalition with the (rurally based) National Party for example. Political instability invariably comes from internal ructions within the major, governing parties not from independents on the cross benches.
Imagine what it would mean here if traditional Republican voters were able to vote for an independent Republican who better represented their values than Mr Trump’s pick and who could go on to win a district on Democrat preferences. By direct democratic action, voters could ensure they have, in this case, the centre right representatives that best share the values and political agendas of the majority of the electorate.
In other words, even if the members of a political party cannot escape from the thrall of the dominant faction, their traditional supporters in the electorate can do so by voting for an independent who has a real chance of success.
To conclude, there are clear solutions to the electoral problems I have discussed - and while it is easy to throw reform in this area into the too hard basket, I cannot emphasise enough that just as disaster follows neglecting repair and maintenance of industrial systems, so too does neglect imperil the continuance of our democratic institutions. If January 6 did anything it should have banished complacency.
Mr. Turnbull's reference to preferences is timely given one of the candidates for Mackellar, standing for Pauline Hanson's One Nation party, has not been seen nor heard nor attended any of the Mackellar Candidates forums being hosted locally. Darren Joseph Dickson's page on the Pauline Hanson’s One Nation website is completely blank: https://www.onenation.org.au/mackellar. He appears to be a resident of Queensland, not the seat of Mackellar.
The Australian Electoral Commission has stated it is investigating the series of doctored posters that appeared overnight, incorrectly showing the names and faces of independent candidates with the Greens logo.
