Renewing Democracy: can women make a difference?

One of the most obvious and fundamental flaws in the development of democracies everywhere has been the exclusion of women. Debate on democracy proceeded as if women were not there.

Women were belatedly included only after hard-fought campaigns by the suffragists, often in the face of bitter opposition. The failure of the architects of modern (and indeed Athenian) democracies to see women as part of "the people" was a reflection of the almost universal "verity" that women were the possessions of their husbands and fathers.

The most powerful argument to extend the suffrage to women has always been one of simple justice: women should vote and be eligible to be elected to parliaments because they are entitled to equal rights as citizens. However, despite the extension of suffrage to women and their entitlement to run for Parliament, the progress towards equal representation has been glacially slow. Even now, only 22% of members and Senators are women.

Many women have pressed and continue to press their claims for greater representation because they see themselves as bringing new qualities to the political stage. It has been argued, for example, that since women’s exclusion has arisen in part from conventions that distinguish sharply between the public and private, women will necessarily bring these issues to the foreground of public debate, eg. concern for the young, sick, old and disabled, the removal of discrimination based on status and the grounding of the abstractions of economic or foreign policy in more compassionate understanding of people’s daily lives.

Some have held out the promise that women will radicalise the very practices of democracy: that they will cut through the "pomposity" of male rhetoric; subvert unnecessary hierarchies; open up decision making to those who were once the objects of policy and ensure a more responsive and open system. While there is a Utopian flavour to all this, it reflects many of the same aspirations that I hear every day from people who are said to be sceptics about the possibility of reforming our political system.

While there are good reasons to advocate reform, I doubt whether the mere presence of women will prove sufficient. We need to articulate a detailed agenda for that reform based on an analysis of the deficiencies in our system.

Can we improve our democracy?

Whatever its origin or its validity, the perception that more women will make a difference reflects a conviction that our political system needs to change; that the fundamentals of the democratic contract have been corrupted. Many Australians I talk to are disgruntled by a system that does not appear to respond to their needs, and seems increasingly to be in the hands of elites more interested in their own advancement than the general good.

Among the pessimists, this disenchantment spills over into disparagement of government action and a retreat into individual solutions to social and economic problems. This, of course, suits the neoliberal agenda but is anathema to effective joint action necessary to reduce inequality, improve broad social outcomes and to protect the environment. Fortunately, there are optimists who believe it is possible to redesign our institutions.

Whether or not the greater involvement of women in our political system will drive improvements in our political system, it is clear that they are needed.

Representation: One vote, one value?

The minimum requirement of any representative democracy is that governments should be elected and that all adults should have an equal right to vote. We might well ask what kind of accountability it is that operates only once every three or four years and which depends on assessments of performance that are inevitably based on information the government of the day chooses to make available.

That said, it is fundamental even with our circumscribed democracy that all votes should be of equal value. In broad terms this has been achieved in Australia, with universal suffrage, electorates of roughly equal size and independent electoral commissions to determine electoral boundaries and prevent gerrymandering. However, in my own state, entrenched conservative opposition in the Upper House has made it impossible to achieve one-vote-one-value and a High Court case to force the issue constitutionally did not succeed. The latest figures show that the largest metropolitan seat, Wanneroo, has 36,000 voters (42% over the quotient of 25,400) while the smallest country seat has just under 9,700.

Substantial campaign donations to the major parties by corporations and large organisations such as unions and business foundations also foster the perception (and perhaps the reality) that it is possible to buy privileged access to MPs and ministers and that this influence is in proportion to the amount of money donated. The recent disclosure that business leaders paid $10,000 per head for dinner at the Lodge indicates that not even the Prime Minister’s office is free of this practice.

Public funding of elections was supposed to reduce the parties’ reliance on private corporate and union donations: all that has happened is a blowout in both public (doubled since 1993) and private funding as parties engage in an increasingly expensive bidding war at elections. The substantive problem is the possibility that such donations can purchase influence. While I know of no comparable Australian data, surveys of major corporate donors in the U.S. (some of whom donate in Australia) show that they do so not because of charitable impulses or civic duty – they expect a return for their money.

I believe it is time to reign in the exponential growth of corporate donations and to curtail the proliferation of content-free, coercive media advertising that passes for policy debate during elections. The retention of public funding of elections should be accompanied by measures to limit the size of individual private donations to $1500, or thereabouts, and to proscribe any donations from corporations and large organisations.

Mirror or descriptive representation

Part of the growing sense of disenfranchisement about politics among Australians may lie in the obvious differences between party members and MPs and the wider community. This failure of "mirror" or "descriptive" representation is, of course, most noticeable in the relative absence of women in the senior echelons of the major parties and in the Parliament.

None of the parties in the Australian political system is a mass party with a substantial membership base: less than 1% of Australians are members of a political party. Nor are their members typical. In general, factions within the parties control the branches and manoeuvre for control of seats or regions which then become their fiefdoms – new members which they do not control are a threat. Contests for marginal and unwinnable seats are left to the naïve – or to women. This was one of the reasons we pushed to hard to change the ALP's rules to secure safe and winnable seats for women – at least up to 35%.

While I do not intend to single out my own party for criticism, it is clear that unions – honourable contributors to Labor history and policy – exercise disproportionate influence through the 60:40 rule and through their affiliated membership, many of whom have no direct connection to the party. Not only does this rob us of the active commitment and participation of union members, it also disenfranchises ordinary branch members (many of whom are women) who are active in their own right.

I believe it’s time for the ALP to embark on a massive campaign to increase active membership, particularly among young people. It is time for the party to insist on one form of membership – that of individuals who take responsibility for their own membership, including paying for it. As a first step, only individuals should be permitted to sign up as members and everyone’s vote should have the same value. I’m told that in the U.K when Thatcher moved to prohibit union affiliation fees being paid to the Labour Party, workers responded by joining in droves, providing a solid non-factional foundation for Blair’s "New Labour" as well as a surge in funds.

There is no reason why similar results couldn’t be achieved here. Members who sign up as individuals are more likely to commit energy and enthusiasm to an organisation they have chosen. Eliminating branch stacking, a process that has already begun in the ALP, may also help divert the considerable energies currently dissipated in turf wars and internal machinations to policy development, community activism and political strategy. It may also produce greater diversity of real membership.

Parliament – debates, legislation, consultation, accountability

Once elected, MPs may find that their contribution and that of the parliament is much more limited than the theories of representative government suggest. One of the more disquieting experiences in the Federal Parliament is that most speeches are delivered without an audience, into the void. Speech after carefully prepared speech disappears without a trace, having no impact on the fate of the legislation. This, in the House of Representatives, is determined in advance by the simple arithmetic of majority. Even in the Senate, where outcomes are more fluid, deals are done behind closed doors rather than fleshed out in public.

In the House of Representatives there is almost no opportunity for individual members (or even the opposition en bloc) to introduce or modify legislation. Scrutiny of the Executive is limited to the charade that is Question Time, when no questions are answered. Committees in the Lower House, while they often inquire into matters of great significance, have no capacity to quiz ministers and bureaucrats about budgets and legislation. Some of our brightest and best are effectively excluded from the tasks they were elected to perform.

Aspirations by voters for greater participation are often quashed by the claim that further democratisation/ participation is not desirable because the people are too ill informed or too irrational to be trusted with power. This at a time when the community is better educated than at any time in the past.

It is possible to do much better, to open up decision making, to involve more MPs and engage the wider community, to actually thrash out the issues in real debates. Australia was once considered the "democratic laboratory" of the world. It’s time to conduct a few new experiments to revive our body politic and embrace the principles of openness, accessibility and accountability.

As a start we could:

• As in the new Scottish Parliament, establish an all-party Business Committee to determine the business of the Parliament including the allocation of business to committees. The Committee would require regular endorsement of the Parliament for its plans.

• Amend standing orders to require that a greater proportion of parliamentary time is devoted to non-government business;

• Ensure that legislation introduced by the Executive undergoes a substantial period of pre-legislative development and consultation through the relevant committees, interest groups and the general public;

• Give committees the power to initiate legislation arising from their inquiries, especially if the government has failed to respond to major recommendations;

• Establish joint estimates and legislation committees with the power to question public servants and ministers from either House and to take submissions and commission independent research;

• Limit the number of speakers on legislation and change the standing orders to ensure that a real debate occurs with members from both sides to provide a quorum;

• Restrict Question Time to genuine questions without notice, with a majority going to the Opposition;

• Devote the second chamber to a more extensive deliberation of the bills in committee;

• Provide for private bills which allow private citizens or groups (with sufficient backing) to bring certain matters before the Parliament (probably through sponsoring MPs);

• Require that all petitions be investigated, if necessary by special hearings, of a dedicated petitions’ committee;

• Commission citizens’ juries or deliberative polls on contentious and complex issues;

• Invite expert and community representatives to address the chamber in session and engage in debate with members;

• Promote and sponsor the establishment of groups such as civic and youth forums to enable more regular and efficient consultation with the public;

• Strengthen freedom of information legislation to reduce the number of exemptions from disclosure.

As well as engaging the general public and their representatives more fully in the democratic process, I believe such initiatives could transform politics in the way that many women have dreamed about; into a more engaged and active democracy. The goals of greater participation, more civil and co-operative parliamentary conduct and an informed public debate are worth striving for. Policy development could be more widely shared and it could be a more consensual enterprise, the atmosphere of the parliament could be less reflexly adversarial and we could all become more focused on solving the problems we face as a nation. We need a project for a new democracy.