Socialists and the coming federal elections. The slogan of all the left should be Kick the Liberals Out

["Gould's Book Arcade" <ggouldsb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Socialists and the coming federal elections. The slogan of all the left
should be Kick the Liberals Out

By Bob Gould

Socialists in Australia should decide their tactics, in the run-up to the
elections to be held sometime next year, with an eye to the immediate
circumstances, and to the evolving demographics, considered in the context
of Australian electoral and demographic history.


THE AUSTRALIAN ELECTORAL SYSTEM, AND ITS HISTORY

The most striking feature of the Australian electoral set-up, is that it is
one of the most democratic bourgeois electoral systems in the world. It
evolved radical bourgeois democratic aspects earlier than most countries and
many of these aspects still don't exist in other ostensible bourgeois
democracies such as the United States.

Australia developed manhood suffrage earlier than most countries and votes
for women earlier than most countries. Preferential voting in one round of
elections was adopted in the first half of the 20th century, and it is such
an unusual feature of any electoral system, that preferential voting was for
many years known as the "Australian Ballot."

THE CURRENT AUSTRALIAN ELECTORAL SYSTEM

The third tier of government, municipal councils, have a varied electoral
system from state to state. In some states the municipal electoral system is
mainly first past the post, which is essentially undemocratic. In NSW, the
largest state, wards in municipal councils are elected by proportional
representation, usually three councilors to a ward.

In a few a municipal councils there are wards of four, with proportional
representation, which is an extremely democratic arrangement, because this
dictates a quota of one-fifth of the number of voters. This often allows
Greens as well as Laborites to be elected. Socialists should strenuously
defend this four-representatives per ward model.

At the second level of government, the six states and the two territories,
there are single-member electorates in lower houses, with one vote-one-value
in most states, although in WA there is still an undemocratic weighting in
favour of rural electorates in the lower house. An attempt by the Labor
government to introduce one-vote-one-value has just been blocked by the WA
Supreme Court because the vote in the parliament in favour of
one-vote-one-value did not get an absolute majority of parliamentarians
entitled to vote, although it got a simple majority.

The two exceptions are the state of Tasmania, where the lower house is
elected by a Hare-Clark proportional representation system, and the ACT,
which has a one-house system elected by proportional representation. The two
territories and the state of Queensland have only one-house  parliaments,
the five other states have lower houses, with individual electorates, and
upper houses, which began life as reactionary nominee relics of the British
colonial system, but have been democratised over time, largely by Labor
governments. They are now all elected by proportional representation, even
the Victorian upper house, which was the last conservative hold-out, and the
change to proportional representation there is in process now.

The Labor Party is in electoral control of all houses of all state and
territory parliaments for the first time in Australian history, although in
several states it relies on the support of independents, Democrats and
Greens to govern.

At the federal level, the Commonwealth Parliament consists of two houses,
the lower house elected on a one-vote-one-value basis, state-by-state, and
the Senate elected on proportional representation, with half the senators
retiring at each election, so that they serve eight-year terms.

The Senate has one extremely undemocratic aspect, which is that the smallest
state, Tasmania, with a population of about 500,000 has the same
representation as the largest state, NSW, with about 6.5 million.

In practice, however, this doesn't have a dramatic effect on Australian
politics because the political configurations are similar in each state,
i.e. Labor gets about 40 per cent, the conservative parties get a similar
vote, the Greens get about 10 per cent, and independents get about 10 per
cent. So, despite the imbalance in the representation of the states, the net
pattern of voting in the Senate, still reflects the general political trend
in the country at large.

In addition to this, the proportional representation aspect of voting for
the Senate leaves the way open for some minority representation, including
radical minorities, and the main feature of the Senate in recent times has
been the rise of the Greens on the left to the magic 10 per cent, which
usually ensures at least one Senator in each state in each round of
elections, and the rise on the right of the xenophobic One Nation party.

The net effect of proportional representation in the Senate is that the
reactionary Howard Liberal government, elected in the lower house,
chronically lacks a majority in the Senate for much of its reactionary
legislation and this has led the Howard Government to flag the idea of
"reforming" the Senate, to give reactionary governments greater power.

It goes without saying that socialists should strenuously oppose such
"reforms". Australia's evolved Senate set-up is useful, in immediate
circumstances, from a socialist point of view. (Introducing proportional
representation in the Senate, which was the personal baby of later Labor
leader Arthur Calwell, was the last act of the Chifley Labor Government
before its
electoral defeat in 1949.)

It has to be stressed that the institution of preferential voting (the
"Australian Ballot") is central to the electoral system at all levels.
Minority parties and independents call for a vote for themselves and then
express a numerical preferences, although in some houses, in some states,
this is optional. Unsuccessful candidates are eliminated from the bottom up,
and their preferences are distributed according to the voters' indication.

This is an excellent system for radicals who want to challenge the less
radical in elections but don't want to support the most conservative
candidates. It eliminates the agonising choice faced by voters in the US,
Britain and France, for instance, who in choosing to vote for radical
candidates often take votes from moderate candidates, with the result that
the worst reactionaries are elected.

In practice, the combination of preferential voting and single seats in
lower houses, which tends to accentuate the broad class division between
Liberal and Labor, and the combined preferential proportional representation
system in upper houses, which allows scope for radical minorities, is a
quite useful electoral system from the point of view of socialists, which
should be used strategically, from a Marxist point of view.

THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF AUSTRALIAN VOTING

Australians become entitled to vote on turning 18. This is the one area in
which the Australian electoral office, which is a pretty useful and
effective institution overall, hasn't quite got it together yet. It takes a
while for people turning 18 to be picked up by the electoral office, and in
practice people turning 18 are the only cohort of Australian voters whose
registration to vote tends to be slightly lower than average.

In every other aspect, the federal and state electoral offices are very
effective democratic mechanisms. They do systematic sweeps everywhere,
spaced over time to ensure that everyone eligible is on the roll, and this
is very effective, although obviously people who for one reason or another
wish to evade the system still do so.

Australia is an immigrant country, and these days nudging 50 per cent of the
population have some non-English-speaking background. Recent NESB migrants
are a high proportion of the population. Recent immigration to Australia has
been extremely rapid and a very high proportion of migrants take up
Australian citizenship as soon as it's available, after two years permanent
residency. (The only exception seems to be British migrants, who have a
somewhat lower take-up of Australian citizenship.)

The net result of all this is that about 90 per cent of Australian residents
older than 18 are on the electoral roll, which is, for instance,
dramatically more democratic than the situation in the USA.

To cap all the other other features, Australia is one of the few countries
where voting is compulsory. When this was introduced in the late 1920s, the
proportion voting rose dramatically from about 65 per cent to about 95
percent.

The fine for not voting is nominal and rarely enforced, but the
psychological impact of the legal requirement produces a 90-95 percent
return in all elections.

Polls in Australia are almost always held on a Saturday from 8am to 6pm.

In other countries, such as the US and Britain, the energies of parties
contesting elections are largely thrown into the process of getting out the
vote. In Australia, this is replaced by a process of campaigning for
people's votes, with the general assumption that most people will vote. This
throws the electoral focus partly into intense campaigning at the booth on
election day.

I have discussed other aspects of the evolution and demographics of
Australian politics in three articles which are available on Ozleft: The
Republic Referendum, a View from the Left
http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/Referendum.html, The Real Story
About the "New Class": Three Cheers for the Australian Bureau of Census and
Statistics http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/Newclass.html and The
People's Choice: Electoral Politics in 20th Century NSW
http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/Peopleschoice.html

TROTSKYISTS, COMMUNISTS AND AUSTRALIAN ELECTIONS

Australian Trotskyists mainly adopted an open party tactic from their
emergence in 1932, up to 1940. In 1941 they entered the Labor Party and
conducted much of their activity in that framework until the early 1970s.
For the old Australian Trotskyists, from the 1940s to the 1970s the
electoral framework was pretty simple, working hard, from within the ALP for
the election of Labor candidates, preferably left-wingers.

The Communist Party had a more complex relationship with Laborism. It went
through a few spasms of 'Third Periodism', when it denounced Labor
politicians, and Labor supporters, and all their works, but it recovered
rapidly from these sectarian episodes. For most of its existence it ran in
elections under its own banner in some seats, but it generally practised a
united front electoral strategy, epitomised by the slogan the CP often used,
"kick the Liberals out", accompanied by a call to vote for CP candidates and
give second preferences to Labor. During the Second World War, some
Communist candidates got large votes, and one Communist, Fred Paterson, was
elected as a state Member of Parliament, for a North Queensland seat. A
number of Communists were elected to municipal councils. Jim Healy, the
charismatic wharfies leader, got over 100,000 votes for the Senate one year,
and twenty years later, the similarly charismatic leader of the Builder's
Laborers Federation, both in NSW.

The CP went through various episodes of more agressively trying to "show the
face of the party" in elections, in which it ran quite a lot of candidates,
but this was usually in the framework of "kick the Liberal out".

This was particularly the position adopted by the CPA in elections at
moments of crisis in the country in the Labor movement, the split elections
in the 1950s, the 1966 and 1969 elections dominated by the Vietnam crisis,
the 1972 and the 1975 elections, the latter dominated by the removal of the
Whitlam government. This "kick the Liberals out" slogan has the capital
value that it intersects with the mood of the overwhelming majority of the
class-conscious working class, and sections of the radical middle class, who
tend to close ranks around Labor, as the alternative party of government to
the reactionary Liberals, at moments of social crisis.

At such moments of crisis, class-conscious workers and radical middle-class
people generally don't respond at all well to simple-minded exposure of
Laborism. They're generally more preoccupied with getting rid of the
Liberals.

The Trotskyist organisation, the Socialist Labour League, adopted a similar
"kick the Liberals out" strategy when it was of some significance in the
1970s and the early 1980s, as also did the DSP up to the time of its
eccentric turning away from the united front with Labor in 1984-85.

The coming federal elections are clearly going to be crisis elections of the
highest order. The reactionary Liberals are clearly going to attempt to
unleash every primitive, reactionary, racist passion that they can arouse
for electoral purposes. In this they will have the vociferous support of the
reactionary wing of the media, particularly the Murdoch media, and we are
getting a foretaste of this reactionary blizzard from the Murdoch press in
the past few days on the Kurdish asylum seekers, and the conflict in the ALP
over tax cuts. The venom express by Boyle and Co towards Carmen Lawrence, is
only matched anywhere by the venom of the Murdoch press towards Lawrence,
and the danger she possibly represents from the point of view of the
bourgeoisie.

In these conditions, a dopey, hysterical exposure strategy of the sort that
is currently being directed at the Laborites, particularly by the DSP
leadership, is the opposite of what is required. The electoral strategy
adopted by socialists in the run-up to these elections should be the old
leftist slogan, particularly crafted by the CPA in its saner moments, "kick
the Liberals out".

For Marxists and other serious socialists, elections, although they are
important parts of political life, aren't the real centre of politics. For
socialists the centre of political life is mass agitation in working class
communities, trade unions, etc.

Nevertheless, elections are important, because the political consciousness
of the masses is heightened and sharpened during elections. Slogans directed
at the masses during elections should be consistent with the overall
activity of socialists in society at large.

Socialists operating in the Labor Party have, in my view, the following
responsibilities in elections. They should campaign very hard inside the ALP
for the following preference arrangements, second preferences to the Greens,
third preference to socialist groups, fourth preference to any progressive
independents and fifth preference to the Democrats. Socialists in the ALP
should also fight to put all the reactionary parties last. It goes almost
without saying that socialists in the ALP should work hard for Labor on the
booths on election day. A reasonable days work on the booths for the ALP,
makes up for a variety of other sins, committed by socialists in the course
of their necessary political agitation, in the community at large and in the
ALP.

A small but important current issue for socialists in the ALP is that they
should vigorously oppose the vindictive move to reduce the number of
aldermen from four to three in each ward in the Marrickville municipality.
This move is directed, clearly, at the Greens. It's an essentially
undemocratic proposition, and it's pretty dangerous for the ALP nationally
at this time, when all the skills of the ALP parliamentary operators should
be directed at making the necessary preference deals with the Greens.

Socialists operating in the Greens should fight hard, obviously, for second
preferences to Labor, third preference to socialist groups, fourth
preference to progressive independents and fifth preference to the
Democrats, again putting the reactionary parties last.

Socialists operating in the small socialist groups running in the elections,
such as the Socialist Alliance, the Socialist Party and the Progressive
Labour Party, should campaign for second or third preference to the Greens
or Labor, fourth preference progressive independents and fifth preference to
the Democrats, with the reactionary parties last.

There are obviously all kinds of difficulties in the path of such a united
front electoral strategy by socialists in the coming elections.

For a start, there's an unpleasant tradition in the ALP of Machiavellian
behaviour in relation to preferences, and not preferencing radicals such as
the Greens.

Despite this past Labor behaviour, however, the Greens have broken through
both in the Senate electoral process (towards the magic 10 per cent), and
even to the lower house in Cunningham. Unless Labor preferences the Greens
in the Senate, there is a real danger of handing Senate control to the
Liberals, which apart from matters of general principle, is a powerful
reason for the ALP electoral managers to make the appropriate Senate
preference deal with the Greens, and even in realpolitik terms this flows
over into making a sensible deal with the Greens in lower house seats.

The same principle applies to preference arrangements with the small
socialist groups, although they are of vastly less practical importance
because of the tiny votes they will get.

The problem for socialists operating in the Greens is a certain Green
sectarianism arising from the bad behaviour of Labor on many important
political questions and a perception in Green circles that the Greens on the
way up and they may stand to gain by not preferencing Labor.

Nevertheless, the overriding consideration that should be stressed by
socialists in the Green camp is the absolute necessity of removing the
Liberal government in these elections, as a step towards achieving the
progressive reforms that the Greens favour.

When you get to the small socialist groups, two of them - the DSP leadership
and the leadership of the much smaller Socialist Party in Victoria, have
been engaged in a politically eccentric 'Third Period', 'Expose Labor'
strategy and rhetoric for some years.

Persistence with this strategy and rhetoric in these elections will isolate
those socialists even further from the overwhelming majority of the
organised working class, migrant communities and progressive forces in the
new social layers, who vote Labor and Green in a defensive way in crisis
elections.

That the small socialist groups like the DSP, and the socialist party should
adopt a sane, united front strategy toward Labor in these elections is much
more an issue for their own political training and the political health of
their memberships, than it is an issue that has much to do with the outcome
of the election (Peter Boyle's self-styled 'gnats' be warned).

Those socialists who spend election day - the moment of greatest political
interest - in simple -minded exposure of the Laborites, and to a lesser
extent the Greens, will deepen their isolation and their appearance of
bloody-minded eccentricity. If these socialist groups could find it in their
minds and hearts to make a turn to a united front strategy in these
elections, they would increase their audience in the working class and the
radicalised middle class.

What is required most of all by socialists campaigning in this election
situation, whatever their tactical orientation is, to the ALP, the Greens or
to independent socialist electoral activity, is a sense of proportion.

The central slogan for serious socialists in these coming crisis elections
must be "kick the Liberals out", with the necessary tactical adaptations
that flow from this slogan.

In presenting the electoral tasks in this way, I look back to other crisis
elections in which socialists subordinated their other differences to this
kind of slogan, and working on that basis in those elections was an
exhilarating experience because it intersected in a real way with the
political consciousness with the leftist side of Australian society.

Gould's Book Arcade
32 King St, Newtown, NSW
Ph: 9519-8947
Fax: 9550-5924
Email: bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: www.gouldsbooks.com.au



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