While the successful push for preselection plebiscites at the New South Wales Liberals’ extraordinary convention on the weekend will be seen through the prism of the bitter moderate/right split in that branch, and the Abbott/Turnbull stoush, it’s significant for political engagement and a political system that alienates more than it encourages.
The right’s love of plebiscites reflects not some deep-seated respect for internal party democracy but a slow-burning anger that it has been outsmarted and outvoted by moderates and the centre-right in NSW for years. Undoubtedly it will, if adopted even in a modified form by the branch executive, lead to more extreme Liberal candidates. The party membership is old and very right-wing; plebiscites will produce more religious and more conservative candidates. It won’t do anything to address the ferocious branch-stacking that has damaged the party in western Sydney and served up woeful candidates.
But political disengagement is a massive challenge for the political class. It can only be addressed through greater power-sharing between party insiders and grassroots members, making the effort and time required to be an active party member worth it. That also means increasing the risk that the party membership will behave in ways that insiders don’t believe will win elections. As Jeremy Corbyn has shown in the UK, however, that insider judgement can be proven badly wrong. The next step is following Labor in allowing party members a say in the election of the parliamentary leader, an idea championed by moderate Christopher Pyne. As someone said in a different context, it’s time.
Perhaps they should get rid of the rule requiring a liberal party member to be over 60 years old, and allowing in those whipper-snappers who still have hair.
Only the liberals could have a gang called the young liberals which average older than the prevailing demographic of the nation.
Who takes a Molan Muppet to a do like that?
According to The Guardian, Abbott did nothing about this issue when he was PM.
Or any other issue.
As political parties have no standing in our Constitution, being no more than private clubs – like butterfly fanciers or philatelists – I hope that they would all be legally bound to have only their paid up members allowed to nominate a candidate.
It would be much more amusing and a signal warning about what sort of crazies are out there, wandering the streets.
Imagine a party that would nominate Molan or Erica or Pyne or… the Member for Haifa Ports or Mar’n Fer’son – sane people would never elect such a mob of maniacs.
Would they?
The red Greens are in open rebellion against centrists. The ACTU has declared for justice. Labor has begun channeling broad disaffection. And now even Liberal blue bloods are challenging established authority. It certainly does look like the neoliberal consensus is rapidly coming apart. What might replace it? A social democratic restoration of some sort hopefully, but more likely some variant of anti-democratic, militarily-mobilised despotism. The rich and powerful ever not only prosper from, but are ultimately secured by, fear, fury and war.