A challenging time for Labor too

Whilst some commentators have written off the Democrats, following the divisive personality ‘train wreck’ of recent times, the Democrats trouble may also put sharper focus on the deepening divisions in the ALP.

With many in the ALP uncomfortable with the party post-Tampa, one wonders if some ALP members would jump to a reinvigorated and renewed ‘Liberal Democrat’ party if they felt it served their beliefs better?

Ask an ALP member why they joined and the majority response would include a belief in compassion, tolerance, social justice, and collective bargaining in the workforce. You may get a discussion on a belief in Social Democracy or Democratic Socialism.

You may even embark members harking back to the ideals of former leaders like Doc Evatt. Of his negotiations in the lead up to creation of the UN Doc Evatt said:

Chifley’s ‘Light on the Hill’ speech is one that inspires ALP members and beseeches them to search out and assist people in need wherever they may be found.

Paul Keating’s ‘True Believers’ speech warned of the dangers of a coalition government – particularly the lack of tolerance he thought a coalition would bring – and a withdrawal from a role of helping others on the international stage.

Now many in the ALP rank and file look back on those speeches, finding it hard to recognise today’s post-Tampa ALP. Some are questioning their belief in an ALP that failed to measure up to its own historic standards over Refugee and Asylum issues.

While they question, these members remain ‘true to the cause’ – for now. They recognise the difficult political position the party was placed in at the last election by a canny Howard. Yet their steadfastness is temporary, awaiting final policy determination from the ALP.

This is Julia Gillard’s greatest test in reshaping Labor’s Asylum Policy.

She must come up with a policy that is true to the ALP’s fundamental core beliefs of compassion, tolerance and equity. One that seeks out to assist people in need - one that falls back on Evatt’s claim that it only amounts to recognising a duty of decency towards helpless people.

For, if Gillard cannot win back party member confidence within the political realities of the time, then many members may turn back to Evatt’s other comment: If the Labour Movement does not stand for that, it does not deserve to exist – or that it does not deserve their membership.

Enter the Democrats.

The Democrats are now re-examining their reason to exist. Indeed they may split with the ‘Gang of Four’ going one way, and Natasha’s people going the other way. This may be the last act of the destruction of the Democrats. Or it could reshape them into a major political power, filling the vacuum that now exists in Australia.

There is clearly a place in the Australian political spectrum that includes the so-called Liberal Wets (if many still exist) and moderate ALP members for whom social democracy as a concept is more important than a focus on collective bargaining.

Both of these groups feel let down by their parties on social grounds, but as yet have no where to jump.

Labor’s recent turmoil around the so-called 60/40 rule - the rule that determines the percentage of Union versus ‘rank and file’ membership at party conferences – masks a reality that there is still much of the party membership for whom ‘collective bargaining’ is not the leading issue.

When one removes a belief in collective bargaining as an appropriate mechanism in the industrial relations system from a political discussion, a yawning question remains: Why did the other half of the party chose the ALP over the Liberal Party or Democrats as their political voice?

What if the Natasha Democrats could take a leaf out of the British Liberal Democrats book and formulate a broad social policy? The British Liberal Democrats claim to "exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity."

Many Liberal Wets and Labor believers would feel very comfortable with this.

What if the Australian Democrats could use their recent disasters to rename and reshape our political framework?

What if they could recover the real beliefs of ‘liberalism’ – the compassion, the broad-mindedness, and notions of Millsian Utilitarianism or Benthamite tolerance?

What if Natasha could, with the assistance of disaffected Liberal and ALP members, fill the social-political vacuum?

And this is the challenge for the ALP: if their Asylum Policy is not right then many of its members could be looking for somewhere to go – and a new Australian Liberal Democrats could just be the answer.