The present rigid control of Australian political parties over members effectively hijacks much of the decision-making process from open debate in the parliamentary chambers to behind the closed doors of party rooms, and is more coercive than in the US and UK. Why should this be permitted? (Jim Wilks)

Kevin Rudd; Aden Ridgeway; Marise Payne; Jim Wilks

Kerry Nettle: Thanks. I don’t know that I’d choose this question as the one to go first on … I think it is a shame that we don’t see more of the debate occur in the parliament and I suppose one of the things that I would say in response to this question is to encourage people to get involved in political parties, because that's a capacity to be involved in the debate, but also to ensure that political parties are involved in community debate, and are involved in social movements like the sorts of things that we’ve got going on here tonight. And to be supportive of processes both in political parties and within our parliament that allow for maximum participation of all individuals involved. And whether that’s down to a local council level where decisions are being made about planning and having genuine community consultations, or whether that’s down to the ways in which decisions are made within political parties, whether they’re made on the basis of consensus or in other ways, to be supportive of processes that allow people to be involved and to engage in the debate.

Kevin Rudd: In the town of Bergen, on the west coast of Norway, there's a tradition, I'm told, whereby each Wednesday afternoon the Mayor of Bergen, which is not a small town, it's a city, comes down and sits in the town square for the afternoon, and sits on the stump of a tree, and there the Mayor sits, and talks to the good burghers of Bergen about whatever they want to talk to the Mayor of Bergen about. And you think, well, in the twenty-first century that gets a bit tough and a bit rough, because there's so many people out there and only one Mayor ... but I raise it simply to say that, part of the reason we need to be concerned about the future policy of our democracy is that - physical access to the legislators and decision makers, at whichever level of government. So ... physician heal thyself, what do I try and do about that? About every second Saturday in my electorate, up there in the People's Democratic Republic of Queensland, (Laughter) the - they mock, don't they, they mock - shame on you - what I do, is I go in a horrendously painted yellow truck and I set up in a shopping centre, in a different suburb of the electorate, every second Saturday, and I've been doing this for about four years ... so far - I miss some when I'm out of the country - so far, I've done about 150 of these. And that means being around from about 9 in the morning to noon on a Saturday morning, when most people are out there doing their stuff.

I actually think this is quite important, in terms of two things: one, hearing directly, not in some synthetic form, what in people in their undiluted selves are thinking about what's going on in the world there sitting in their community; and secondly putting me right on the spot in terms of what I'm about. Now, I think that's healthy. If we remove ourselves behind the glass partition, let alone the parliamentary partition, or behind the celluloid partition, which is the 6 o'clock news, then I think it becomes a increasingly arrogant democratic experience for people - it's democracy by remote control - first thing I'd say.

Latham is doing, I think, something good about this: running around in his Opportunity Express, up and down the coast of New South Wales, in rural Victoria last week, over in Western Australia as well. This is - he described it as 'democracy in the raw' - and it is, because you don't know what the hell's going to happen. It's not the old Labor Party of old, where there's a meeting of 400 people and they've stacked 300 of them in, so everyone sort of nods at the right time, shakes their head at the right time - it ain't like that, and what you see is what you get, and there are some people come up and whack you - verbally, hopefully - and some people say you're doing the right thing. I actually think we should do more of that, and not less.

And, finally I'd just say in terms of the party room itself, I think there's a responsibility on all of us members of parliament - I know people criticise the party room here - to actually exercise our rights to disagree within party rooms in a very effective way.

The concluding point, and I'm sorry to bang on about this, is - you ask why can't there be disagreement on the floor of parliament? Well the dynamic with that debate is served by the media: if you [Kerry] and Bob have a radical disagreement about something, and it's all over the media the next day, then you have a problem - similarly with us, because the media set up a dynamic, which is essentially that there are winners and losers, and you're either united or divided, and if you've got a disagreement then you're divided, and therefore you're going to lose - that's the dynamic. If we can get beyond that dynamic, in terms of the maturity I think you see in British parliamentary party politics and American parliamentary party politics at a different level, greater public disagreement is tolerated before people start clanging the disunity bell, and saying the sky is about to fall in. And that needs to change.

Aden Ridgeway: I probably understand the dynamic very well. I think that certainly one of the faults with our notion of democracy is that it seems to work on a two-party-preferred basis, and I think that we need to review that in the context of the whole representation of views that Australians have, not just in the Senate but also in the House of Representatives, because I think the two-party-preferred system in every western democracy is probably now outdated and probably does need to be reviewed.

I think the other thing that also needs to be said is that people might remember, one hundred years ago, when Australia federated as a country, at least then on a two-party-preferred basis, every politician irrespective of the party they represented or the state they came from, voted according to their conscience. Now I seem to recall that our Constitution talks about the capacity of the individual as a holder of office to exercise that right. I think what’s happened since that time is convention within each of the parties to discipline and to disendorse anyone that might disagree. Whilst I take on board what Kevin says about the media and the dynamic of winners and losers - yes, that will occur, but we have to provide an opportunity, if people feel so strongly about a particular issue, they ought to exercise their conscience vote. It ought to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week every time that parliament sits.

Marise Payne: Thanks very much, Aden. Now we're on some territory I can deal with. The question of flexibility in the political process. My critics and my supporters would tell you I have it down to a fine art. I agree completely with Kevin about the question of what happens behind the closed doors of party rooms, and that is that it's up to us to disagree and to question. Indeed, that's precisely the approach I've taken since I first walked into our party room in 1997. It's not welcomed, I'm sure they're not grateful, they've never thanked me, and I'm not holding my breath until they do, but I also don't intend to change it.

I think the Australian democracy does suffer from the largely media-driven mantra of 'disunity is death'. That goes for minor parties as well as major parties. And I think that we need to - those people that are interested in being engaged in the democratic process, and in supporting an open and frank and exciting and dynamic democracy in this country, need to feed the message right back to the media: that it doesn't really matter if people within political parties want to discuss policy amongst themselves - we're not going to receive your pap that tells us that means the end is nigh. And until Australians who are interested in hearing about policy and process, and interested in engaging in the democratic process, are prepared to send that message back, then it's actually not going to change. And I actually know that to be the case from personal experience.

I have also a couple of things that I want to say about the Senate itself. WIth enormous respect to our visitor from the House of Representatives on the panel here this evening, and that is to say, if the public scrutiny of the political process spent half of a nano-second looking at what actually goes on in the Senate, and the committee process, the committee stages of bills and the way they are discussed in the Senate, and frankly the work that people like Aden and Kerry do, and the ministers as well, and the shadow ministers, in seeking amendments, in responding to questions, and providing those answers, for hours and hours and hours of pivotal pieces of legislation, that really do change the way we operate as a nation, to the most arcane pieces of legislation that four pear tree farmers in West Wyalong have some interest in, but not many others. All of those pieces of legislation - about 200 a year - get a forensical level of scrutiny from you r parliament, from your Senate representatives, that I think goes largely unheeded, and most disappointingly so.

And that doesn't just happen because people like the sound of their own voices, it happens because it's important; it happens because the legislative committee process in the Senate, for which I have one singular responsibility as the Senate leader on constitutional legislation committee, and others like it, put an enormous amount of effort in to scrutinising legislation that comes back to our chamber. We make recommendations on changes, we make recommendations on amendments ... some of you may recall, given your interest in these issues, the security legislation of 2002, which after 600 submissions, and hours and hours and hours, days in fact, of committee scrutiny, was sent back through the Senate with a whole raft of recommendations suggested from a committee which the government had a majority on, which I chaired. I actually regard that as a very robust aspect of our democracy, and I'll defend it to my political or otherwise death.

Shelley Reys: Jim, as author of that question, do you have any comments you'd like to make?

Jim Wilks: Thanks very much. Just a couple of brief comments. Firstly, I thank the panel for their comments, and I must say that I'm encouraged by the fact that they do see that there is some need for some reform to improve the democratic process in regard to the control exercised by parties. Some people I found were surprised I proposed this question, because many of them living a lifetime in Australia were not aware that it was possible to have a political party system that operated with a freer form of control over its membership; but the examples of the US and the UK show us that it is possible to have greater freedom of expression by party members, and that the sky definitely won't fall in simply as a result of that freedom. If you have a look at the voting record in some of these countries and compare them to Australia, you'll see that in Australia so many issues are decided along party lines, that they could almost just drop the voting numbers onto the Speaker's desk, rather than go through the charade of debating some of the issues. This is probably more particularly in the House of Reps than the Senate, and I accept some of the comments that have been made about the Senate.

The real problem is that when decisions are being taken behind the closed doors of the party room, the voters don't know what, if any, stance their particular representatives took on this particular issue and how then can they be accountable to their electorates. Now we have, in fact, some senior people in government suggesting that the only time we really have democracy is at three-yearly intervals when we have the opportunity to vote and pass down decisions on how well we've been represented - but if we don't know what they've said and done, and how decisions were arrived at, that opportunity is also stolen away from us.

I'd just like to finish by quoting a passage from a paper presented by Sir Garfield Barwick, a former High Court judge of Australia, not noted for his wild and off-the-wall comments on our legal system or our parliamentary system, and he said that: "If a parliamentary party is allowed by any means to compel those Members of Parliament who are also members of the party to vote according to the prescription of the executive government, the role of the Parliament and its relation to the executive as designed in parliamentary democracy is reversed." Incidentally, he also makes the comment that if people are compelled, or if there are actions taken against them as a result of the way in which they cast their vote or the way they've conducted themselves in parliament that this is in fact a breach of parliamentary privilege. And yet I'm sure we're all aware of many instances where members of a parliamentary party have crossed the floor, and they have been visited by retribution later, but no action has ever been taken in the court, the parliament to deal with it as a breach of parliamentary privilege, and maybe that's what's needed to help ginger up the reform process. And anyhow, having said that he concludes by saying that "if this control is able to be exercised, instead of the parliament in it's independent judgement controlling the executive, the executive controls the parliament, and the community has lost the democratic control of its affairs". So that to me is the crux of the issues behind this question, but I am greatly appreciative of the recognition that the panel has made of the need for some reform there, and I hope it comes sooner rather than later, because it's something that has been deteriorating over time.

If I can just say to the chairperson: I've been asked to make a quick announcement - we've received something in excess of 30 questions from the floor, were only be able to deal with at best a couple of those here tonight, so what will be done is that all of those questions will go up on the sydneypeace.com website, and we will encourage discussion of the issues raised on the web. Thank you.

Shelley Reys: So, Jim can I just confirm, will we be having any questions, or none at all? Two? - OK. Our final question from Lindsay Wood ...

© NSPD 2004. Last modified 20/05/04.