Australia Day is generally a slow news day, so it’s not surprising that Race Mathews, former federal Labor MP and former Victorian minister, got good coverage for what The Age calls a “reform-or-die call to arms” for the ALP.
According to Mathews, the parlous state of ALP membership is “a recipe for extinction”. He says that when the party returns to opposition, its “predicament at that point in the absence of a numerous and active rank and file will be truly pitiful”.
The Age article at least mentions the fact that the Victorian Liberal Party studied the same problem last year, when an internal discussion paper pointed to a crisis in membership and recommended a package of reforms to address it, which were adopted at a special state council meeting in October.
A comparison of the two diagnoses suggests that the parties are in similar shape. Victorian Liberal membership had fallen from one voter in 30 in 1950 to about one in 257. If the figures in The Age are correct, Labor has gone (these are national figures, not state) from something like one in 13 to one in 273.
Mathews says the average age of party members is about 50, but that compares favorably with the Victorian Liberals, who admitted to a median age of 62. It’s also generally accepted that Labor’s membership does not have quite the extreme geographical skew of its rival’s. But, as Mathews points out, at least the Liberals are taking their problems seriously.
Individual membership has always been a doubtful guide to Labor’s fortunes, since so much of its strength comes from the unions. As the Liberal Party discussion paper put it, “The voluntary character of the Liberal Party distinguishes us from our major political opponents … The ALP relies on the trade union movement to provide paid campaigners and receive [sic] significant funding from levies on trade union members.”
But since trade union membership has also been in a steep long-term decline (with a slight uptick for the WorkChoices campaign), that just means Labor has been the victim of a double whammy.
At least from the media reports, we don’t know what remedies Mathews is proposing. But again a comparison with the Liberals is interesting. The reform package that the Victorian Liberals endorsed last year included rank-and-file preselection plebiscites, proportional representation for internal elections, and greater emphasis on electorate-level structures.
But those are all things that the ALP already has. If they haven’t worked there, then they’re probably not a magic bullet for the Liberals either. And if both parties, despite their different structures, have similar problems, then it’s a fair bet that those problems run deeper than anything that structural tinkering is likely to fix.
More likely, the malaise in our political parties has underlying social causes that neither of them is yet willing to face up to.
The question that always enters my mind when I read aritcles like Charles Richardson’s is why the author seems to think it’s the political parties that need to face up to the problem of declining membership. Surely it should be a concern for everyone. It doesn’t matter if either major party’s membership ratio reaches 1:1000 or worse, unless there’s a third party that could truly knock them off as the government or opposition, they’ll keep kicking. Our system demands and supports it. Regular internal party reviews aside (post-bad election loss or after years in opposition), there’s no real impetus for either party to undertake any radical change that starts attracting members by the truckload. Sooner or later they’ll gain government again (we voters will make sure of that) and then corporate donors will help heal any financial dire straits for a while. Remember the cries about a Federal Labor party facing doom and opposition for all eternity? Change the leader, win an election, and all is sweet. Not that there’s been any change within the party though. Declining political engagement is resulting in an ever smaller number of influencers controlling political outcomes. If you’re elitist, that’s probably OK (although you might want to meet some of the dross first, it’s not like they are all Philosopher Kings). If you’re not, you might want to get worried. But then, hey, this is Australia after all and we don’t get ansty until it’s too late and staring us in the face (or more accurately, punched us in the eye). And if you’re a Greens supporter and salivate at the opportunity to truly become a potential party of government, you’ll need to face up to a change in name, leader, and find a rich backer or six that can fund a full suite of candidates and associated party workers for at least 3 federal and state election cycles by which time you’ll know whether the experiment is going to be at all successful. For the rest of us, we’ll sit back and wait for the black eye.
It is little wonder Labor membership has dropped off when you consider that the Labor Party no longer stands for anything of substance! Anyone who has ever attended a Labor Branch meeting would know that it is pure torture. The branch members who like the sound of their own voice do all the talking, about their own personal gripes. Teachers will talk length about education, even when most of the room are over 80. The waterfront resident will have a lot to say about big boats causing splashing over the breakwall. My flippant suggestion to ‘just shoot’ the offenders went over their heads. The meetings would last for a few hours as Local Government, State & Federal Members gave their reports, all the while stroking their own egos as they boasted about perceived achievements. God its good to be free of all that!