Steven Paul argues that If the ALP is to be saved from itself this time, it needs to take a good governance and cultural change approach rather than the failed rules-based ‘deficit model’ approach.
Once again, the Australian Labor Party is focusing on rule changes to save itself from itself.
However, rule changes to make the party more democratic often fail because the party culture is directed more to deals that provide an armistice to factional wars seen as preventing the ALP from winning elections.
This armistice is achieved by a divvying up the winnable seats on offer. It fails when the factional deals no longer represent the political fortunes of the various party groups. When agitation for realignment is rejected open warfare erupts.
Administrative reform and the good governance approach
The current ‘deficit model’ of organisational development is where experts come in, determine the problem, and provide the solution, and then disappear. When the solution fails, it is seen as the fault of those who were left to implement the solution. This approach doesn’t allow ownership of either the problem or the solution.
The alternative is asset-based community development where the organisation looks at the assets and strength of its people and the organisation as a whole, conducts a detailed SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), and then clarifies and determines its vision, its values, purpose or mission, aims and objectives. These together tell the story of what the organisation believes in and what it wants to achieve.
Every action of the organisation is then be governed by its values and focussed on achieving the mission and vision. Everyone is held accountable. When people come into the organisation they are asked to understand the organizational values and commit to them.
This is the model the ALP should adopt. The modern ALP is a multi-million-dollar national organisation. It needs to embrace corporate governance.
The ALP employs people to run the party and they should allow them to do so. The Administration Committee (AC) and National Executive (NE) should act more like a Board of Directors and not interfere in day-to-day administration, or micro-manage such things such as branch membership processing. The AC should ‘steer’ and the paid staff should be allowed to ‘row’. In this model, party members are the shareholders and owners of the party. Party officials are then accountable to the members and not their factional or union allegiances.
Too many people are appointed to the AC on the back of factional deals and farcical party democratic processes. They often see their prime focus as looking after their factional interest, with the hope of future factional rewards, rather than looking after the interest of the party as a whole.
One administrative change which could help delineate the roles and responsibilities is to separate running the party from running election campaigns. The State Secretary should be responsible for day to day party administration, as well as organising the servicing of policy committees, state conferences, party branches, party members and all election and ballots for party positions.
The campaign director should be responsible for the campaign, fundraising, the ensuring of appropriate candidates and the development of the party’s policies and platform.
While there is and remains a need for the National Executive to have the overarching power to intervene in the decisions of a state organisation, particularly when these decisions are egregious, there needs to be protocols for when and how the National Executive intervenes and overturns a decision. These interventions need to have references to the values, vision and mission of the ALP. It cannot simply be as a fiat by those in charge.
We must clarify what the ALP stands for
The rules, behaviours, administration and actions of an organization derive from its culture. Rules cannot create culture, only values can. In my view, there are only four rules for morality:
- Two wrongs do not make a right
- The ends do not justify the means
- If you reward bad behaviour, you will get more of it
- The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
How we get somewhere is just as important, if not more so, than the getting to there. Until we clarify what we stand for – our values, our vision and our mission – we will always go from one existential crisis to the next.
The current ‘deficit-model’ approach does not address these issues and is therefore fundamentally flawed.
We would all benefit if the Administrators did a literature review of all past party reviews and rules changes and explained why these rule changes have largely failed. Unless the reason for past failures are understood and acted upon the party will go through yet another process of rules change and then over time go back to winnable seats and party offices being been divvied up by factional warlords and union chieftains in secret ‘backroom’ negotiations.
[Editor’s note: David Barda has undertaken a review of all ALP reviews for Open Labor as suggested, though this analysis has not explained why these rule changes have largely failed.]
Related readings
Overcoming perverse incentives for branch stacking – by Julia Thornton, Open Labor, Sept 2020
We want a well-run party that values its members – by Eric Dearricott, Open Labor, Sep 2020
Integrity in Politics, the Power of Ideas – Lindsay Tanner, delivered at the Jim Carlton Integrity Lecture, May 2012
Victorian Labor, progress & integrity – Administrator’s discussion paper – 27 Aug 2020
Eric Dearricott says
It may be possible, as Stephen suggests, for the Victorian ALP to operate under some variation of a corporate structure with the Administrative Committee (sorry not Administration! Committee Stephen) as its Board of Directors and the State Secretary as its CEO and the Admin Committee not interfering with the day to day administration by the staff.
But there is a mammoth change required in Party culture, State Office staffing levels and structure for such a proposal to succeed.
Stephen decries the idea that the Admin Committee would micro-manages such things as branch membership processing. In the circumstance of federal intervention in the Victorian Party because it has not properly defended itself from branch stacking it wasn’t the best day to day function to choose.
I do not claim that the Administrative Committee has done a great job in protecting the Party from branch stacking – it hasn’t.
But it is worth noting that it has been some members of the Admin Committee by their work and oversight, and certainly not State Office Officials, who have exposed phantom branch meetings, forged signatures and attendance books, false addresses, bulk payments of memberships using bank cheques, branch stacking using anonymous transferable gift cards, renewals payments by people not authorised to make them, etc.
I do think that significant change is required in the management structure of our Party. However much more detail needs to be added, especially about how to ensure that those who are elected to the Administrative Committee and appointed as Party Officials will put Party not faction first and what inbuilt protective oversights would be included before I could sign up to Stephen’s model
STEPHEN PAUL says
A Response to Eric:
Can I first note that the paper published was an edited version of my original paper, apparently people can’t read something of more than 300 words and retain interest. I would like to thank Eric for his response.
While what was published is a fair representation of what I wrote, though toned down, I made this point about the review being undertaken: “The approach that is being undertaken is fundamentally immoral, has no truth, no honesty and no integrity and therefore has to hope of achieving what it purports to be trying to do.”
If you don’t ask the right question, you won’t get the right answer and if you don’t identify the real problem you won’t devise a real solution. Eric is under the misconception that the Federal intervention into the Victorian Branch is all about dealing with the high level of Branch stacking that was being engaged in prior to the 60 Minutes story. I believe that Federal intervention was instigated to protect certain sitting MP’s and Senators from pre-selection challenge. I think people should note that it was the National Executive that took rights of the average Member’s democratic away not the alleged Branch Stackers.
While Eric didn’t put up his alternate view it appears he believes the problems within the Victorian Branch is all about the moral failure of individuals and if we had more good individuals we could overcome the moral failures of the party. Eric would have “Guardians” to protect the Party from itself. While this is superficially appealing, the weakness of this approach was pointed out in Plato’s time with the question, “Who would guard the Guardians”.
Eric talks about the mythical good people on Admin who worked to uncover the rorts within the Party. The brutal truth about the matter is that these good apples failed along with the bad apples to administer the Party appropriately.
Eric clearly misunderstands the point about letting people do their jobs, while you don’t buy a dog and bark yourself, by the same token you don’t give out blank cheques. I believe we need to develop a document that clarifies and determines the purpose, aims and objectives of the Party. It needs to express our values, vision and mission and it needs to have a motto that encapsulate what the ALP believes in and what it is all about. It would be this document that all Party Officials, employees and Members would be held accountable to.
We have been changing rules for forty years, it is time we changed the Party.
Stephen Paul