20 July 2020: Open Labor’s initial response to Bracks and Macklin’s request for input on Victorian Labor reform priorities, rule changes, operational and cultural changes, factions and Party leadership.
Q.1 As a matter of principle, what should be the reform priority for the Administrators?
Open Labor seeks to work with ALP members and supporters to create a Labor Party that is more powerful because it is more open, inclusive and democratic. Open Labor believes that the first priorities of the Administrators should be:
1. to take decisive steps to stamp out the branch-stacking and wider forms of corruption that have been exposed in recent times (see our answer to question
2. to provide candid, unflinching advice to National Executive about how to create, in the words of the Administrators, “an open, transparent and democratic” party in Victoria – advice that could serve as a model for party reform across Australia.
While the first priority is vital, it is not enough. Without substantial action to on the second priority, reform is unlikely to succeed long term.
We divide proposed reforms on the second priority into five categories:
- give ordinary members more say in selection of candidates – starting with at least 50% of the vote for selection of Senate candidates;
- create a culture of transparency within the party, so that members know what ALP membership means and how they can be effective;
- professionalise the party organisation;
- build a training capacity for prospective Labor MPs and party office holders;
- establish a dedicated focus on membership growth within the party, including ways to involve supporters and trade unionists.
Space prevents us from addressing these issues in full (as our second submission will do). Instead, we offer brief recommendations on what these changes should be.
We seek a party that is organisationally transparent, and not afraid to have big debates in public, so that Australians know what the party stands for.
A party that provides effective professional development for prospective Labor candidates for positions in federal and state parliaments and in local government, as well as within the ALP.
A party that attracts ordinary Labor supporters – people who have no desire to run for office — because their party membership gives them a chance to work with other members to shape their community, state and nation.
Finally, we believe it is critical that party leaders endorse an ambitious reform program. Australia faces hard times ahead, and Labor has a huge role to play in holding society together. But the current party is poorly suited to the task.
Open Labor believes that it is only by understanding what is at stake will party powerbrokers be motivated to work with ordinary members to build the support, strategy and sense of moral purpose that Labor needs.
The Administrators cannot wave a magic wand to achieve these changes. But their advice to the National Executive can begin to put in place the rules and culture changes that will set the party on the path to greater organisational integrity, effectiveness and electability.
Q.2 What are the critical rule changes that you think are needed to guarantee integrity and probity in our Party’s operations?
The Administrators have asked ALP members to suggest both rules and culture changes to the party’s operations. It is difficult to disentangle the two. Moreover, restoring the party’s integrity needs to be built on creating a more capable and transparent party committed to membership growth.
With that in mind, our answers to questions two and three should be taken as one set of intertwined recommendations.
To ban branch stacking and take steps towards a more open, inclusive party:
- establish not only an immediate external audit of membership but an ongoing audit program to examine membership, party donations and expenditure and disputes handling;
- create a new position of party Ombudsman (as recommended by the 1998 Dreyfus Report into reform of the Victorian branch) with powers to examine and make determinations about allegations of party misconduct. This person might be a retired judge or party elder;
- produce a simple, clear definition of legitimate membership based on the requirement that all members pay their membership fee themselves, via traceable means, if they wish to vote in party elections;
- ensure that renewal payments fall due on the anniversary of each member’s initial joining, not on a pre-set date for everyone. This will help to prevent bulk renewals;
- require all new members to attend an induction session, to learn about the party, membership benefits, and how they can contribute to the ALP;
- ensure that all party elections are conducted by secret ballot, with proper external supervision by the Victorian or Australian Electoral Commission;
- require all MPs and party office holders to sign an annual statutory declaration pledging that they have not engaged in branch-stacking over the past year.
Begin the process of creating a culture of transparency by recommending that the Victorian party:
- follows standard organisational practice and holds an annual general meeting open to all members;
- hosts non-binding policy conferences on key topics for all members and perhaps supporters;
- invites ministers to host regular policy forums for members, thereby increasing the appeal of party membership;
- develops a membership and communications strategy that includes:
– a document welcoming new members and telling them how to be involved in party activities;
– use of the party website and emails to communicate to members all significant decisions taken by the party in clear and compelling language.
Q.3 What are the key operational and cultural changes required to support these rule changes?
1. The party as training school
The ALP should commit to identifying promising candidates for public office. Potential MPs and councillors should be trained in how to argue, debate, negotiate, and understand policy and finance.
Time spent in local government should be rewarded as valuable preparation for parliament. The party should run public debates on key policy issues and reward or require participation by potential candidates.
The party should invest in the Labor Academy to produce material, run briefings and train both aspirants to elected office and ordinary members seeking to take part in party operations or campaigns.
2. A new way to think about party reform
The party has to create a capacity to develop difficult reform proposals outside the arenas of National and State Conference.
At present, good ideas get no chance to be debated, let alone adopted, before they are killed in the crossfire of factional conflicts. The shelving of proposals at Conference is sometimes understandable. For example, the trade-off between opening the party by setting a low bar to entry and preventing branch-stacking is complicated and cannot be resolved easily on the conference floor.
At the 2018 National Conference Open Labor and the Independents proposed creating a Forum for Party Growth and Democracy – a body of elected members, affiliated trade unionists and a few MPs that would be empowered to focus on ideas for how to grow the party and open it to a wider membership.
These ideas might include:
- exploring how to give more say to members to preselect candidates while ensuring that the party centre retains some role in preselections (giving members 50 per cent of the vote for Senate candidates is a first step);
- exploring ideas for rebuilding the party’s ties to working-class and disadvantaged communities;
- exploring proposals to give ordinary union members a vote in ALP forums in return for an end to bloc votes wielded by union secretaries.
The Forum would produce recommendations and seek cross-party support for change.
3. A new role for factions and non-aligned members
Open Labor does not oppose factions in principle. It is sensible for people to get together to try to build support for shared positions.
But the flaws of the current system seriously weaken the party’s electability. The factions no longer coalesce around ideas. Their recently expired non-compete clause – the Stability Pact – stifled healthy competition of ideas within the party and made it almost impossible for non-factional members – a substantial share of the membership – to have any influence.
Critically, the system produces weaker MPs. It makes seats in parliament a reward for factional work rather than talent, and it encourages a party culture that champions deal-making behind closed doors rather than the ability to make a public case.
The ALP needs to restore its capacity for public debate, and to establish both the factions and non-aligned groups as centres for competing ideas and positions.
4. Party leadership
If party leaders and the National Executive do not support a substantial program of party reform – and delegate serving leaders or respected party elders to drive change through the party over time – reform will fail.
Are party leaders more interested in the health, strength and electability of the party or in their own power bases? The choice is theirs.
The Administrators cannot make this point strongly enough in their final report.
Q.4 How should the Victorian Branch of the Party operate while Administrators are in place?
The party should immediately move branch and public meetings onto Zoom or another platform. In time, public meetings will again be possible but Zoom provides many advantages, including the opportunity to record meetings for people who cannot attend, and to annul distance, so that someone in Mildura can attend the same meeting as someone in Melbourne.
The Administrators should recommend that the Party restores voting rights for members as soon as the audit of members is complete, ideally next year. The vast proportion of ordinary members are not responsible for the recent branch-stacking and 2023 is far too late for restoration of their rights. An absence of democracy is not solved by even less democracy.
We thank the Administrators for taking on this difficult but potentially transformative task, and welcome the opportunity to discuss the substance of this submission with them at any time.
This submission has a number of grerat points that I hope the party administrators will take on board and give thorough thought to with a view to implementation.,
I hope the Administrators put these suggestions into their recommendations as this would make membership much more meaningful. In particular, the hold of the factions on candidate selection, voting for conference delegates and policy development is of major concern. I note that the use of the term “proportional representation” has been used to describe the division of key roles between the factions. The question occurs to me that if such decisions are truly decided by proportional representation, then shouldn’t the Party members* who are Independents and Non-Aligned be included? Does anyone know how many Party members are not members of the Left or Right factions?
*I use the term Party members as I cannot abide the term “rank and file members”
Question 1
Why do new members leave us? What is the average length of membership for those who might be considered “new blood” – from the viewpoint of membership revitalisation and the diversification of our Parliamentary wing? By new blood I mean (mature, with substantial career record outside politics, unaligned) people who are attracted to our Party manifesto but soon find our internal culture entirely unbearable. Hence they leave. And our self-selecting culture thus remains insulated against any fundamental change. (I know a few such people, all professionals.)
Membership is a fundamental issue. (And our dwindling Primary votes of course.) If frogs disappear from a marsh we know that the environment is toxic.
Question 2
The entitlement of faction bosses to anoint candidates to (good) seats seems to have made our once noble Party rotten to the core. It has spawned a whole generation of “professional” politicians, with little or no experience outside the Party nurseries, who often end up, after their sinecure in Parliaments, as compradors for corporations paying handsomely for their insider’s knowledge of the Alladin’s cave that is our national coffers. This is the elephant in the room. New members see this and wonder Have I have joined a group run by gangs fighting unremittingly over territories?
Question 3
Why did Jieh Yung Lo leave? Was he a canary that dropped off in our underground bunkers?
In this “multicultural” era, it’s high time that Labor cease seeing the Chinese as the John Chinaman whose role is solely to be the Jackie who garners votes and donations. (I have three essays on What is to be done with the Chinese in Oz at the John Menadue Pearls & Irritations website. Just Google Chek Ling for quick access.)
Concluding remarks.
All the democratising tweaks – no branch stacking, audits, membership voting for this or that – will not achieve anything substantial or enduring. It’s so much like “drawing biscuits to satisfy hunger”. So many reviews over the last 25 years – but the rot remains. When the mores of a society are weak the law is unenforceable.
My best wishes, at such a tantalising point in time.
Chek Ling
Last Convenor of (the now wound up) Local Labor Queensland. Left ALP in 2000 after a decade, and rejoined when Shorten vowed to open up the Party. Shorten was berated by faction bosses at his first Victorian State Conference as National Leader and never mentioned the word reform again. Since then it’s ALP business as usual – the shop front for faction bosses – so comfortable for those on the gravy train.
The pandemic has given a wonderful opportunity to reconsider the way branches operate.
I don’t want to get rid of local branches by any means – when they represent healthy, functioning communities they are powerful indeed. But as someone who rents, I’ve lived in four federal electorates in ten years, and connections that I’ve made at the branch level haven’t lasted as I’d hoped.
Becoming a parent has added another obstacle to participation at the branch level: 7pm meetings on a week night? I wish! So seeing how quickly we’ve collectively adapted to Zoom gives me hope that I might find other ways to contribute to the party.
The final note I’d add is that even in the most energetic branches, what happens there feels a LONG way from head office, or wherever decisions are made.
Where do our carefully worded motions go?
Why do branches rarely get responses to those motions from Admin Committee et al?
The challenge we face now is as much about cultural change as it is governance or rules reform.
I find most proposals for ALP reform lacking in imagination eg. the inability to think outside the 50/50, 70/30, whatever/whatever union/member box.
My initial submission put forward the following rule changes:
– the requirement for membership to be tightened so that all members have to pay by traceable means at a meeting they attend, thus making branch-stacking harder;
-the public office selection committee to be abolished, thus preventing disgraces like the “stability” pact and other arrangements under which factional bosses override local members;
– lower house candidates to be preselected by a direct vote of members and affiliated unionists, with a weighting in favour of direct members, thus increasing democracy and participation;
– upper house candidates to be preselected by a vote of the whole conference as one group of 20, thus allowing minor groups in the party some chance at parliamentary representation, with the candidates preselected then to choose which seats they stand for in the order of their election;
the number of members’ delegates to conferences to be based on the number of Labor voters in each electorate, thus encouraging vote-winning, not branch-stacking;
– the number of unionists’ delegates to conferences to be based on the number of workers covered by each union’s EBA, thus encouraging unions to work for workers;
– everyone able to be required to fill in their own ballot paper in secret, with those unable to do so because of some impairment able to request assistance from the returning officer, thus making members think;
– the AEC or VEC to run party elections, thus cutting factional oversight;
– the cabinet to be elected by ALP MPs by proportional representation, not have quotas for each faction and sub-faction, thus reducing insiders’ power;
– MPs to be free to think and speak for themselves and vote against caucus decisions, thus improving decision-making;
– the affirmative action quotas to be abolished thus ensuring the member’ votes cannot be overridden by identity politics.
Thanks Chris.
I think your upper house proposal is very engaging, likewise secret ballot.
But I find your antagonism to quotas and reference to identity politics a little amiss – just a personal comment.
regards Peter Fitzgerald
Thanks Peter.
I think it is fundamentally undemocratic for someone to win a vote and then be replaced by someone with fewer votes because the person who won is the wrong gender. The same principle applies no matter what category of identity is used. It is argued that gender quotas have worked, and they have. But that is as logical as applying a political quota whereby the Liberal Party must always win at least half the seats in the House of Representatives, so if the voters do not vote that way, winning ALP candidates will be replaced by losing Liberals. It would work, but it would still be undemocratic.
Years ago, the Independents faction was a powerful part of the party with prominent figures like John Cain and John Button belonging to it. It has slowly been squeezed out. No one from it could ever win preselection for a normally winnable seat, but its members are party members too. My Legislative Council suggestion is designed to let any group in the party with just under 5% of the vote get a chance to win a seat.
I will elaborate on my arguments in my full submission to the review.
Thanks Chris – I’d be keen to understand the mathematics of your proposal and whether/how existing policies on gender outcomes can be incorporated
Peter,
There is more than one mathematical way to implement my proposal, and asking me to explain how I’d make my democratic proposal less democratic by imposing gender quotas on it is a bit much, but I’m a realist, so I’ll have a go.
I need to backtrack first. I read years ago that there was a principle in industrial law that no decision-making body could be more than two steps from the membership. In our case, it is OK to have an administrative committee elected by a conference that is elected by members but not OK to have a national executive that is elected by a national conference that is elected by state conferences that are elected by members. the more steps you go from direct election the more likely organised groups take over. So, I cannot support the preselection of any candidates by a committee that is elected by a conference that is elected by members because the preselected candidate is three steps from the members.
The conference would be elected by direct members in proportion to the number of Labor voters they could win in each party constituency (whether state electorate, federal electorate or some other arrangement) and by affiliated unions in proportion to how many workers they could succeed in covering by EBAs and awards. The conference would thus be far less susceptible to branch-stacking and far more representative of the rank and file than it is now.
In a conference of 600, the quota for the election of 20 Legislative Council candidates would be c29 votes. The normal rules for a single transferable vote election would apply. Everyone who got 29 votes would be a candidate. The order of election would be known, though you would need a tie-breaking rule for two candidates who had exactly the same number of votes. The first elected candidate would choose the region he or she wished to run in and the position on the ticket in that region. The second would then do the same. Then the third would, and so on. Candidates would be free to choose the number three position in one region over the number two in another if they wished as the party does not win the same number of seats in each region. In a landslide year, all the candidates end up in Parliament. In an off-year, only those with the most party support do.
If you wanted to graft a gender quota onto the system, you could have a simple rule that said no candidate could stand in a number two position unless he or she was a different gender from the candidate in the number one position. If there were not sufficient candidates of both genders in the 20, you could replace them by those of the other gender who had not won enough votes in the reverse order in which they had been excluded from the count. If the first two candidates in each region won, you would have a 50-50 gender balance. If we won only one position in one region and three in another, the gender balance would be only a little way off 50-50. I suppose you could change the electoral laws so that if any region had more than three members from the same gender, the last elected would be replaced by someone of the right gender from a different party.