Labor’s Methuselah spots the digital challenge and opportunity
Party reform — but his analysis of the threats and opportunities to his
party is every bit as important.
It’s hard to conjure quite the right image for Labor Senator
John Faulkner; he’s been a prophet in the social democratic wilderness
for some time now; his longevity, as one of the last remaining links
between the current party and the Hawke years, makes him the party
Methuselah, but increasingly he appears a Cassandra, doomed not to be
heeded by his party as he warns of the need for significant change.
His speech last night
on Labor reform went further than his previous efforts, both in its
recommendations — especially for reducing union control of party
delegates from 50% to just 20%, and requiring union members to opt in to
being counted for affiliation purposes — and its analysis of the
party’s history and structure. Apart from his
tailor-made-for-a-grab-quote line that “without trust politics is a
contest of personalities, not ideas — a contest with no more relevance
than an episode of MasterChef”, Faulkner’s analysis brought
together a range of issues: the importance — and dearth — of trust in
politics, his failure (more accurately, the failure of the Coalition and
Steve Fielding, but he declines to say that) to pass laws to improve
transparency of political donations, the privileged position of
political parties and, of course, Labor’s internal structures and
processes. As he has before, he cited “the stench of corruption which
has to come to characterise the NSW Labor Party” — “the party which gave
you Eddie Obeid, Ian Macdonald and Craig Thomson, and promoted Michael
Williamson as its national president” — as demanding substantial change.
But Faulkner’s broader thesis is at least as interesting as
his proposals for reforming his own party. He has a perhaps
old-fashioned view that political parties, and the way they operate, are
important:
“[In the] contest of ideas, our
political parties are paramount. In our two-party system the selection
of candidates and the setting of policies within the major political
parties have perhaps as great an influence on Australia’s governance as
do general elections. It is therefore essential that Australia’s
political parties are open, transparent and democratic –no code-words,
no cabals, no secret handshakes.”
And they could only function effectively as reforming
entities with that transparency, he said. “Principles of integrity,
transparency, and accountability are crucially important to Labor’s
reforming agenda, because they enable that faith in the political
process, which is critically important to the consensus building that
makes reform possible.” He stressed that governments couldn’t undertake
reform without trust from voters: “On that consensus of trust rests the
operation of our government: the ability to make decisions, even where
they may not be popular; the ability to pass laws, even where they
constrain or disadvantage some members of the community; the ability to
assign what may be scarce resources to priorities, and therefore not to
other areas or interests.”
“Ultimately
Faulkner is not merely urging Labor to update its internal rules to
recognise 120 years of history, but to embrace the opportunities that
new, non-geographical communities can offer.”
For those concerned about the apparent inability of major
party politicians to undertake large-scale reforms anymore, Faulkner’s
thesis deserves consideration alongside the recent speech of former Treasury secretary Ken Henry on the failings of the “Australian mercantilist” narrative.
Faulkner’s other broad point was that Labor’s internal
structures had changed to reflect a changing Australia before, and
should continue to do so — and what was “cutting edge” in 1891 is
unlikely to be useful today. Indeed, Faulkner argued the “delegated
democracy” model on which Labor was founded was now anti-democratic:
“We now have technologies that
offer unprecedented opportunities for the direct and secure
communication of information. More importantly, they provide us with
unprecedented opportunities for interaction. And they are woven into
everyday life so inextricably that, to the younger members of our
community especially, they have become invisible. They offer a huge
potential to party organisation and for party democracy,and at the same
time fundamentally change expectations of participation, engagement and
responsiveness.”
The emergence of social media, Faulkner said, had
“profoundly changed our ideas of community and our expectations of what
community — and political — involvement looks like. Twenty-first century
democracy is very different from even 10 or 15 years ago:
self-organising, intolerant of top-down management, expecting
interactivity and immediacy.”
Such sentiments could be, and almost certainly will be,
derided as a techno-utopian pandering to the Twitterati (as unlikely as
that image is for Faulkner). But he has displayed a remarkable
astuteness in picking up that the internet and social media have changed
our concept of what communities are and how they should work — a key
understanding that clearly eludes most of his political contemporaries
either in his own party or on the other side of the chamber, and much of
the media as well. For nearly all of human history, communities were
geographically based — we associated with our families, our neighbours,
our work colleagues. Now, we can associate with whatever communities
appeal to us, no matter where on the planet they may be. And we expect
very different things in terms of interaction from those communities
than we did of geographical communities. And Labor must understand this:
“Geographically based
organisation, face-to-face meetings, complex procedures and delegated
decision-making suited an Australia without cars or telephones — even
the Australia of my student days, before faxes or answering machines,
let alone mobiles and emails. But it does not suit Australia today.”
That’s the core argument for party reform, from
Faulkner — even if you dislike his specific prescriptions, his case for
substantially, not just trivially, greater democracy within political
parties is based on the ever-growing gulf between historical
institutions propped up by their privileged position within the
political system and voters with very different expectations of civic
engagement and communities.
Ultimately Faulkner is not merely urging Labor to update its
internal rules to recognise 120 years of history, but to embrace the
opportunities that new, non-geographical communities can offer. There’s a
first-mover advantage there for the party smart enough to seize it.
Impressive coming from the party Methuselah.
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