Next week 400 or so faceless men (and women) of the ACT Liberal Party will determine who is to be Senator for the ACT to replace the retiring Margaret Reid.
It is not an open or broadly democratic process, despite it have the largest number of electors in any pre-selection in Australia. Usually, the major parties have smaller numbers in pre-selections for both House and Senate seats.
It is going to be a closed-door affair and the result will be the nomination of a person to represent us. Senate vacancies are filled upon the nomination of the Governor of the State (after a parliamentary vote) or on the nomination by a Territory Legislative Assembly. Before 1972 it was always the convention that the state would nominate a person of the same party as the departing senator. After the convention was flouted in 1974 and 1975, the convention was converted by referendum into a constitutional requirement.
So when Liberal Margaret Reid retires, the Constitution requires she be replaced by a Liberal. The Liberals in selecting the replacement go through the same process as they would to pre-selection a candidate for an up-coming election. The only difference this time is that the successful candidate at pre-selection goes straight to the Senate, without having to face the broad mass of voters.
With pre-selection or selection – it makes no difference – a narrow number of people make the decision and they can select from any party-member candidate who puts his or her hand up. In the case of the ACT we know quite a lot about some candidates but not very much at all about others. A few party members (rather than the broader mass of voters who usually support the party by usually voting for it) get to decide. So a candidate only has to appeal to just half of a narrow band of people.
This is in marked contrast to the United States where “primary” elections are held to determine who will be the Democrat or Republican candidate. In the US voters can register as Democrat, Republican or neither. Those who register with one or other party are entitled to vote in a primary (pre-selection) ballot. They don’t have to be paid-up members of the party, nor have to have attended a set number of branch meetings. Primaries came about in the early 20th century to overcome the power of the back-room boys – the factions and the power brokers.
The system has had a powerful effect on US politics. It allows for more dissent and floor-crossing to stick up for local interests or high principle because a dissident cannot be threatened with loss of pre-selection by a narrow group of party power-brokers. The US has a significant rump of apathetic people who do not vote – around 50 per cent. That perhaps more than the primary system draws the two major parties together in policy direction. But countries like most European countries, Canada and New Zealand have much higher voter engagement (whether voting is compulsory or not), so a primary system would not drag the parties closer together in policy terms. Rather it would allow more dissent and more diversity as candidates would have their main eye on the mass of party supporters rather than a narrow group of pre-selectors who regard conformity and loyalty as more important than local interests or principle.
In next week’s Liberal pre-selection, without a primary, it is possible that a complete unknown will get the seat – someone more closely linked to Prime Minister John Howard, the right-wing of the party, and to power-brokers within it, rather than someone well-known locally.
At least two of the front-runners are very well-known: former Chief Ministers Kate Carnell and Gary Humphries. We have seen them and either liked or disliked their approach. We know that Carnell – a pharmacist and former ACT president and national vice-president of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia — is a small-l liberal, an economic dry, someone who puts Canberra first and stands up for Canberra, but who has this unfortunate habit of allowing her enthusiasm to cut corners off due process (but at least the stadium is there for all to see, even if we disagree about the process which the public money was formally appropriated to it. We know Carnell has won two elections here and lost none.
Humphries we know to be thoughtful, earnest and well-meaning – a little more to the right than Carnell on social issues and a little less market-driven on economic issues. And he has lost one election out of one.
Other MLAs Bill Stefaniak and Steve Pratt have some profile. Stefaniak is cheerful but does not seem to grasp the subtleties of arguments and policies as well as Carnell or Humphries. He lost his seat in the second Assembly election, and then bounced back in the third. Pratt got a lot of free publicity after being locked up in Yugoslavia while working for an aid group, but the Opposition benches have not been the best place for any other talents to shine.
The other candidates are virtually unknown. We know that Gerry Wheeler works in the Prime Minister’s office. Perhaps less well-known but in the public domain is that he once thought that “much of government spending on higher education is middle-class welfare’’ (IPA review) and that the ABC and SBS should be privatised, foreign ownership limits scrapped and that he once advocated market solutions to environmental problems (Bronwyn Bishop The Honourable Member for Mackellar). He worked hard on Howard’s tough on drugs policy and before working for Howard worked for the party’s federal secretariat.
We know that David Kibbey is an army officer and central electorate branch chairman.
Belinda Barnier was a failed Liberal candidate for the seat of Canberra at the 2001 election after joining the party that year. She is a marketing and sales consultant.
Martin Dunn was a Liberal staffer at the Legislative Assembly and failed candidate. He is a frequent writer to the Letters column.
Even the ACT Liberals’ web site announcement of the nominees does not give any background or summary of the candidates or let the candidates provide one for themselves.
It is too easy to say that pre-selection and election to governing bodies of political parties are private matters. Not so. They have huge power in Australia. Next week’s pre-selection should be opened out. The party would be improved by it. As would the Labor Party.
On a wider vote Carnell would beat the party machine people and the other locals, according to the only poll on the subject done by Australian marketing and Research Services for City News. She scored 61 per cent; Humphries 29 and the others in the low single digits.
The only thing forcing pre-selectors to some democratic consideration in their selection is desire for the party to win the seat. If it is a safe seat then nothing tempers them. This is safe unless Peter Garrett stands for the Greens in the hope of wresting a seat from the Liberals and the Liberals make the same arrogant mistake that Labor did by pre-selecting political staffer and insider Sue Robinson for the seat of Namadgi after Ros Kelly resigned in 1995.
Gough Whitlam had it right in calling for Australian Electoral Commission supervision of internal party elections and widening the franchise for them. As a victim and reformer of the system of faceless men he should know.
My guess is that Carnell will lead the count to the final ballot when the 400 faceless men (and women) will go for bland safety and give us as senator the man the electorate rejected a year ago: Gary Humphries.