Culturally Conservative Party Model

Well, phase one of our campaign to reform the Liberal (LNP as well) Party came to an end at the State Constitutional Convention in Brisbane, when it was clear that the captured-and-curated delegate system had won the day and resisted any constitutional change at all.

Here is a humorous take of it in the Australian “Chooks” section. 

We are now starting phase two. “The beginning of the middle”.

This is where we build the model, write the constitutional structure, develop the party platform and the operational rules covering policy development, government appointments etc that a genuine member-run, mainstream, culturally conservative political party needs.

Menzies had the right idea, but he didn’t have the internet and modern technology. He had to use the imperfect, easily gameable “delegate” system to be able to communicate (which means to listen to rather than speak to) with his membership which was 1% of the then population of six million (60,000 members in 1944). Our model will simply update the Menzies model using modern technology and give Tony Abbott as Federal Liberal Party President the tools he needs to reform the party and build the membership which is barely 25,000 today to 250,000 at a minimum.

Phase three will begin as the current politicians realise that they are going to be seriously wiped out by One Nation, which is run by just two people plus Barnaby. The best defense the Liberal/LNP will have will be to actively build membership around a culturally conservative platform and policies. Tony Abbott will play a big part in this if we have built the tools for him. Will you help us?

The reforms will happen quickly when they start. Politicians move quickly when their jobs are potentially threatened. It is known as “panic”. That will not be the time to build anything. So it is crucial that when the “panic” happens we have a fully fleshed out system that will operate from day one.

We predicted phase one and had a rough idea of what we might have to do in phase two if the opposition to change was successful at the convention in July. We did not know last year when we started that Tony Abbott would likely be Party President, so there was no phase three plan. There is now.

We were always going to continue. The directors originally wanted a mainstream, culturally conservative political party as a counter to the madness of the Labor Government, who now largely represent those people who look directly or indirectly to the government/s for their living. These are the people who all know better than us and regulate our lives

The people who work to pay the taxes that support the new Labor constituency are literally up for grabs for any political party prepared to stand and fight to protect those people's values and their ability to make their living. Pauline has twigged. Will we?

The two main parts of our political party model:

There are two parts necessary for such a political party to be able to achieve that goal. Political history tells us that the party needs at least 1% of the population as members.

The Canadian Conservative Party currently has nearly 2% of the 40 million population today (700,000 plus members).

To get that many members, the membership fee must be modest, no more than $20.

But far more importantly, the members must have genuine responsibilities in choosing the representative personnel from their local ward councillor and mayoral candidates, to local state and federal member candidates, to the state senate team, and most importantly, as they do in England, New Zealand, and Canada, the party members also vote and choose the state and federal parliamentary leaders.

Party members can only vote in pre-selections for the people they are eligible to vote for in an actual government election.

On the organisational side, every member will be eligible to vote in their local government organisational executive, their state and federal local executives, their zone executive, their state president and state executive, and their federal president and the federal executive. Every vote is one vote one value.

All of these elections can be done online or by post, or a mixture of online and personal attendance at a meeting called for the purpose. So, everyone can attend and/or participate in the election or appointment of every party official and/or political representative at all levels of government relevant to them.

The tyranny of distance is thereby defeated. Every member's say is the same as every other members. There will be no delegates at any level voting on behalf of other members or other delegates. Everything is a democratic one vote one value of members.

This will result in the selection and appointment of party officials and political representatives who reflect the values of the party's members. No one would suggest that this is the situation in today's Liberal Party. The party officials and political representatives are way out of kilter with the actual member’s views.

That is why members and voters are streaming to One Nation.

In practice, under our new system, this means that the state parliamentary representatives, usually with 40,000+ voters in each electorate, will have an average of 400 to 600 members from the local community to pre-select them.

No system is perfect, and duds will occasionally emerge, but the same pre-selectors will have a chance every 4 years to correct the few mistakes they will make. The wisdom of the crowd works. The track record of “head office” candidate picks is appalling.

Compare that to the party today. For instance, the Federal President, Tony Abbott, who we admire for his support for reform, was elected by a little over 100 delegates chosen from each state and territory division.

Under our member voting franchise as above with barely 25,000 Liberal members Australia-wide every one of them could vote for the Party President online or in person. We predict Tony Abbott would still win in a landslide.

So when the party is allowed to grow to 200,000+ members, only organisational leaders who truly reflect their members' values will succeed. And if Tony Abbott is running we would be amazed if he still didn’t win.

Because the same people elect both the Party President and the parliamentary leader, a dynamic tension will ensure that the two most powerful people in the party, will have to get on because ultimately the same people will decide the future fate of each of these leaders.

The second and most important tier of a successful mainstream political party must be the policy determination.

Experience has shown that policy development is a task beyond the capability of parliamentarians in any party. The single exception to this rule, Pauline Hanson, actually proves this rule.

She is certainly on the money on cultural issues like immigration and the constitutional roles of various arms of government. But as we said, she is the exception to the rule and without her One Nation policy development would collapse.

Currently, LNP and Liberal policy ideas work their way up from branches through the organisation to the state and federal conventions, where, irrespective of whether the delegates voted in support of these issues, they are then universally ignored by the parliamentarians. Why bother? We need to look at doing it in the opposite direction back to the members.

The Labor Party policies adopted at their conventions by contrast must be adopted by the government. That however is not an example for the LNP or the Liberal Party to follow.

We would be better to send the policy ideas from wherever they emanate to the local party units not the conventions. Then have them debated online, locally, and returned to a policy chair, a policy committee, a policy wonk and/or an independent policy think tank, then curated to a more final point with just a couple of options then resent to the party units again for approval.

This is where the local politicians can then be recorded as supporting or opposing these policies. Any state and federal politicians holding contrary views to their local party members on policy will have the opportunity at the next pre-selection to explain their views to these members and why they did or didn't support them in the party room or parliament, and then let the members decide about their future. That should focus their minds.

So that is the mechanism in its generality.

But in practice, such a party should turn to the Australian Constitution for general policy implementation mechanisms.

For instance, the insane level of state and federal public servants are only the tip of the iceberg. There is also a sea of NGOs, not-for-profits, and even political charities who wastefully employ hundreds of thousands of people on innumerable tasks that would mainly be better not being done in the first place or given to private providers under tender to do the works properly.

The problem is, there is no politician in Australia who has the faintest clue of how to reform even part of the public service at any level. It's just too complicated for them.

So the only thing that's viable is an active party policy of decentralisation. The principle of subsidiarity should be followed.

The Australian Constitution was very clear to limit the federal government functions to about a dozen or so things.

It's also clear that the Federal Government’s source of revenue should be excise.

GST is an excise tax. It is quite wrongly categorised as a states tax. Does the GST get distributed to the states in the proportion in which it was collected?

Absolutely not. The Feds should keep and spend the GST.

Income tax was left for the states to do. That power should be returned to the states so both the State Governments and the Federal Government can be separately held accountable for the money they both raise and spend as our founding fathers intended? But that is not a question for us to answer.

Shouldn't the party members be asked whether this is a good idea to hold the respective levels of government to financial account and how best to do it, if it is a good idea?

Things like education, health and climate could also be simply referred to the states.

Industrial relations is the core source of the financing of the ALP through its union monopoly, literally hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

All of these functions could be given to the six states and let them compete with each other to work out the best way to deal with these things. The federal departments can then be simply closed down, and the public servants either retrenched or assigned to the respective states who may want them. Again let us ask our members.

Probably 70-80% of federal public servants with the promise of AI and delegation of function to the states in accordance with the Constitution will be “excess to needs”. There should be some good deals on cheap houses in Canberra. Again let us ask our members.

The huge federal health and education departments run no hospitals nor any schools. They basically have hundreds of thousands of people providing money to the states with expensive strings attached.

Probably a couple of hundred treasury officials could just send the money to the states and let the states work out how to deal with it.

In both cases, the state health and education departments could also be closed down, and the state treasury could be charged with funding locally autonomous hospitals and locally autonomous schools. Parents would then be free to choose which schools their children go to. You get two birds with one stone.

The point being that it is not for us to finally determine policy, but rather the members should do it through properly managed systems.

The members should be looked at as a huge set of focus groups. There are about 90 state and 150 federal electorates.

Those local members in those electorates will all know what will and won't fly in their own areas.

The politician's role is not to determine the policy per se, but to sell the policies and implement them when in government at every level.

So, in broad terms, this is the goal for an “Australian mainstream conservative political party”.

We know from the Voice that about 60% of the population are ready to vote for a party that operates this way.

Are we on the right track?

Note: Director Graeme Haycroft will be travelling to Canada in August/September, with meetings scheduled with the Conservative Party in Toronto. Newsletters will be less frequent in the coming months, but we will keep you in the loop as we build our party structure together.