Karen Ehrmann was gaoled for electoral fraud in very special circumstances. She wanted to win Labor Party endorsement. It was a fraud on a political party. The preliminary investigation by the Criminal Justice Commission of allegations by Ehrmann of further fraud will presumably only look at public offences, such as falsifying electoral enrolments or forging signatures of party members. It will not investigate party matters such as paying for memberships or collecting ballot papers. Political parties are associations of private individuals, but they play a very public role. Democracy would be the poorer without them. But can they be relied on to be the first defence against electoral fraud? Do they permit fraud on themselves with poor rules and procedures?
Public confidence in political parties and politicians has been declining across the advanced democracies since the 1960's. The Karen Ehrmann's are the ugly side of a deeper issue. Why is the electorate so apparently grumpy with our politicians and parties?
Citizens are more confident and more assertive. This is especially true of previously silent groups, women, greens, gays and so on. With this confidence and concentration on identity come new forms of political organisation and activism. Non-government organisations are competing with political parties for influence and members, and the NGOs are winning. Parties as vehicles for activism are not fashionable.
Citizens are also better informed than was once the case, the media have played a critical role here. Public demands on government are greater and more divergent. It is difficult for parties in government to satisfy these demands responsibly. Parties are lumbered with the burden of governing, non-party activists are not.
Parties are basically electoral colleges, their job is to elect candidates for public office. They have won this privilege through a century or more of organising elections and maintaining loyalties based on class, religion and ideology. These divisions are now much weaker, old loyalties can no longer be relied on. Jim Soorley addressed a party rally at the last election, boasting about downsizing the Council staff, but bagging the Liberals as "economic rationalists"! Parties do not make policy, politicians do, often at the behest of interest groups and experts, and always with an eye to the electorate. The parties barely exist without public funding and politicians and their staff.
The test of party integrity comes when parties fail to detect and/or respond to fraud or breaches of party rules, or when the rules or the dispute hearings are inadequate. If the parties can't mind their own business, who should? The Democrats argue that the Australian Electoral Commission should conduct internal ballots, as they do for unions and employer associations. Will this destroy the parties, or make them stronger? Will it transfer power from the leaders to the members? Would that be wise given the need for discipline in parties?
It depends on what benefits parties bring to politics. Only parties can create a broad set of policies and implement them on gaining a majority. That's the peculiar part of electoral politics. The contrary interests of the electorate can cancel out rather than add up. Parties' know that operating collectively, with discipline, is more likely to deliver policy and the rewards of government. Parties have to broker the internal competition for these rewards in a way that keeps "humpty dumpty" together. The reward for the voter is responsible government.
Competition for the party label is fierce, but should it be fair and, if so, who is to judge? What if preselectors are people recruited the day before the ballot, or have their tickets paid for by a sponsor? What if party records are tampered to prove eligibility, or ballot papers are collected, even with the consent of the voter? Collectively, the standards of behaviour and their scrutiny are central to the continued health of the party system.
Democracy needs activists, but do some cheat and others turn a blind eye to questionable practices? What is a questionable practice? Noel Crichton-Browne, former Liberal Senator in Western Australia, claims to have signed 10,000 members to the party over 15 years, and did not pay for one of them. I believe him. His competitors in the Liberal Party have accused him of all kinds of tricks. His claim is that he was a better recruiter than anyone else! So is Michael Johnston in Ryan. The fact that he recruits outside Ryan and almost exclusively in the Chinese community is not illegal or against party rules. He tells me that he has been heavied to back off recruiting, but that is tough competition, not wrongful behaviour.
On Australia Day 1999, 2,000 people joined the South Australian branch of the ALP. Their memberships were paid for at a cost of $42,000. One estimate suggests that the entire party could have been purchased for $100,000! The Supreme Court found that the party had not abided by the rules in accepting the members. It did not find that it was wrong to pay for the memberships because the rules did not forbid it. Almost all parties around Australia condone the buying of memberships. The ALP National Conference last month endorsed a rule, "it is an abuse of Party rules ... to fund Party membership for other[s] ... who would otherwise be unwilling to pay their own subscriptions". Does this mean that it would be okay to pay for someone who claimed they were willing to pay?
The courts may supervise the rules of the parties and ensure that they have proper dispute and appeal processes, they cannot establish rules for the parties. Therein lie two problems. Some party rules are inadequate, and enforcement of the current rules is sometimes inadequate.
Parties have a virtual monopoly over the election of members of parliament. They are the gatekeepers. They could reprivatise, go back to traditional sources of funding and support, and remain master of their own destinies, or they could acknowledge that they are public property and run their organisations according to public rules. They must ensure the integrity of their membership and processes. If they don't, then someone will do it for them.
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