The immediate question upon the resignation of Cheryl Kernot from the Democrats to join the Labor Party is: Who is to keep The Bastards who Keep the Bastards Honest honest?
Kernot’s action could be seen as a defection or even betrayal. On its face she has betrayed the slogan “”keeping the bastards honest” by joining the bastards. She has, on its face, also surrendered a claim to honesty.
All this would be true except for one thing. Kernot, unlike so many who swap allegiance, has resigned her seat as well as resigning from her party.
So many who swap allegiance, including the Democrats first leader Don Chipp, keep their seat in Parliament until the next election. Not Kernot.
She will subject herself to the cleansing legitimisation of re-election under the new banner before sitting in Parliament as a member of the Labor Party.
Without that step, the transition would be hopelessly tainted as opportunist and illegitimate. As it is, those charges will be made anyway, but at least there is a response.
Kernot’s dilemma was not a new one. Politics is often a choice between protest and power, or between ideals and practicalities.
In the Labor Party, the resolution of the dilemma has been through a fusion of idealism and practicalities through the simple device of saying that sticking together is a high ideal, therefore toeing the line is a high ideal, therefore renouncing principle to stick together is a high ideal.
In the Liberal Party, the resolution of the dilemma has been through allowing the odd protest or floor-crossing on the grounds of conscience (at least in the days before small l liberalism was virtually rooted out of the party).
But the dilemma for the Democrats of the choice between protest or power, or between ideals and practicalities remains hopelessly unresolved.
Kernot alluded to it herself in her speech to the Democrats’ annual conference in Canberra earlier this year.
“”While we may not be an alternative government, we are an alternative opposition,” she said. And we are an alternative opposition because we have consistently articulated a credible — if not always fashionable — alternative vision.”
Therein lies the difficulty. At best, the Democrats can be a highly principled opposition. They cannot instigate policy menu items; they can only change the occasional ingredient or condiment.
Perhaps the irony of the Democrats’ position hit Kernot home at the time. Here was a party dedicated to keeping the bastards honest by being a model alternative opposition. But the more they succeeded in that role, the more they saved the major parties from their own folly, ignorance, excesses, ideological blindness and selfishness, and the more they saved the major parties from huge voter backlash. But that was the very backlash that the Democrats needed to enable them to increase their support so that one day they would take over the role of a major party and become a major party themselves. The Democrats were damned by their own success and reasonableness.
Every time they exercised the balance of power to inject some moderation or good sense into policy the less appalling their major-party opponents looked. The workplace-relations law was just the latest example.
The other irony comes in the timing. Kernot is leaving the Democrats at the height of their success. At the last federal election they got five long-term senators. Their representation in Australian Parliaments is at a high. At the weekend in the South Australian election they scored one of the largest swings to them and one of the largest primary votes that the Democrats have every had.
But the success in South Australia underscored the Democrats’ impotence. At a time when the Liberals were in disunited disarray and Labor was still on the nose for losing the state bank and other economic incompetencies, the Democrats got 16 per cent of the vote, but not a single lower-house seat.
It showed that nearly three-quarters of the Australian population will give the major parties their first preference, on virtually every occasion.
With this ingrained vote for the majors, Kernot has now recognised where the real balance of power lies. It does not lie in the few Senate seats on the cross-benches. After all, for those seats to wield power they must join with a major party. No; the real balance of power in Australia lies in the political leadership of a major party that can successfully add more votes to its 35 per cent hell-or-high-water vote than its opponent.
It is capturing the powerful middle ground.
To date Kernot has been very good at that, but in the wrong place — on the Senate cross-benches. She took the Democrats from their worst result under John “”Pixies-at-the-end-of-the-Garden” Coulter in 1993 to their second-best result in 1996 with five long-term senators.
As a Democrat, Kernot could only capture the middle ground, but without any base ground. She now recognises that she needs the base ground as well, in the form of an immutable 35 per cent of the voters who will put Labor first even if the candidate is a white rabbit.
Therein lies power.
The power of the immutable 35 per cent was experienced in 1990 by the then Democrats’ leader Janine Haines. She resigned her Senate seat and contested a seat in the House of Representatives in the best possible circumstances for the Democrats. They attained their highest vote that year when the odour from the two major parties was at its zenith. Haines was a nationally known and respected figure. Her Labor opponent, Gordon Bilney, had not especially distinguished himself as a local member or minister. And still Haines could not win.
Her loss and her leaving politics exposed another weakness of the Democrats: they are only as good as their leader. Under Chipp, Haines and Kernot they did reasonably well, averaging one senator a state. Under Janet Powell and John Coulter their performance was very poor.
Chipp only ever wanted a watchdog (principle and protest) role. Both Haines and Kernot wanted more. Haines tried it under the Democrat banner and failed. Kernot has now recognised that if you want to be a policy instigator, exerciser of power and more than an alternative opposition you have to be in one of the two major parties.
After 20 years of existence, there is no way the Democrats can supplant a major party in the way that British Labour supplanted the Liberals as one of the two major forces earlier this century. Indeed, many Democrats do not want to. They see a crucial, legitimate role for a third force.
So now comes the test, for both Kernot and the Labor Party.
To date Kernot has earned a huge amount of respect, even if it has not translated into votes for the Democrats. Will Labor recognise the asset? And if she leads Labor (and why else would she join?), will she be able to change Labor more than Labor changes her?
Or will the Labor Party chop her down as a tall poppy, and retain the tribalism, factionalism and looking after mates that has cost it power?
In her speech yesterday, Kernot displayed some characteristic charm and humility. None the less, as so often in human conduct there must be mixed motives here. She wants to be Prime Minister, to save the country from the Coalition, for herself, to implement policies with a vision for Australia.
Cheryl Kernot cannot be Prime Minister as leader of the Democrats. Nor can mid-range, sensible policies be implemented otherwise than by a major party.
Kernot has decided that keeping the bastards honest is not enough. It is better to join and reform a major party so they are not full of bastards in the first place.
It is an immense, if not impossible, task.