Abstract
Scholars of comparative parties have traditionally viewed the Australian party system as sui generis. Operating within an environment of compulsory voting, with a dazzlingly complex set of electoral arrangements embedded in a federal system of government, and with one of the major parties in permanent coalition with another, placing Australia within a comparative framework has always been difficult. These two books, The Making of the Party System and Contemporary Australian Political Party Organizations, show in different ways how complex the party system is and point to how it might evolve. While not providing any answers to the comparative problem, they update and refine our understanding of the Australian party system.
In The Making of a Party System, Zareth Ghazarian examines the evolution of the party system in the Australian Senate from 1949 to 2013. The starting date is important, since it represents the introduction of the single transferable vote method of proportional representation, which has favoured the election of minor parties. This, coupled with the Australian Senate being one of the most powerful upper houses in the world (along with the US Senate and the German Bundesrat), has given minor parties a greater degree of policy influence than is the case in any of the Anglo-American democracies. A later change in the electoral system in 1983, to single transferable vote with ticket voting, has further strengthened the minor parties and led to the government often failing to win a majority in the Senate. The effect has been that successive governments have been forced to make deals with the minor parties in order to enact their legislative programmes.
The central thesis of the book is that for most of the 1949 to 1983 period, the minor parties gaining representation in the Senate had their origins in splits from the major parties. By contrast, Ghazarian argues, in the period since 1983 and the change in the election rules, the minor parties have been the offshoots of broader social movements and mobilized voter support on specific issues. This interpretation certainly fits the first period, with the Democratic Labor Party splitting from the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Democrats splitting from the Liberals (although rank and file members were later more likely to have come from Labor). There is also evidence to support the thesis in the second period, particularly with the rise of the Greens, who have come to be the largest minor party in the Senate. However, it is more difficult to argue the case over the last decade, with numerous small parties gaining representation due to strategic manipulation of the voting rules.
This creative use of the voting rules reached its peak in the 2010 and 2013 elections, when highly organized ‘vote harvesting’ was employed, based on large numbers of minor parties directing vote preferences to one another. These parties often have names that vary only slightly from the larger parties and in the context of a large and complex ballot paper create considerable scope for voter confusion. In the 2013 Senate election, this tactic was so successful that the Australian Sports Party and the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party each elected one candidate, based on initially securing just 0.01 and 0.04 of a quota, respectively. This has led to considerable debate about how to reform the voting system to ensure that voters are aware of where their later preferences may eventually end up.
Zareth Ghazarian has written a thorough, meticulously researched corrective to the many studies that focus exclusively on the major parties that dominate the lower House of Representatives. The book will be of interest to anyone specializing in Australian politics or the politics of upper houses. One might quibble with the notion that there is a distinctive Senate party system, but it is indisputable that minor parties have flourished in the Senate while their successes in the lower House of Representatives, based on a plurality electoral system, have been meagre. It is an open question how long such parties will remain in the Senate, given the widespread concern over some of the 2010 and 2013 Senate results and cross-party agreement on the need for electoral reform.
In Contemporary Australian Political Party Organizations, no less than 17 authors examine the party system from three differing perspectives. The first section examines how the parties have responded organizationally to the multiplicity of challenges they face, from reduced funding to the centralization of power and a shrinking mass membership base. For example, the Australian Labor Party’s response has been to develop a highly organized system of factions, in effect the creation of ‘parties within a party’. The Greens, too, have been forced to modernize in order to compete with the major parties, with obvious dangers in eschewing their origins and popular appeal as a social movement. The major organizational challenge to the Liberal Party is judged to be inertia, caused by the complacency that is generated by electoral success.
The second section has eight chapters which deal with everything from candidate selection procedures and election campaign techniques to how parties should respond to the challenge of the Internet. There are particularly strong chapters on election campaigning and the Internet, and they both outline how the parties are engaging in the difficult process of adapting to disruptive technologies. In the third section, the challenges posed by evolving institutional settings are examined, in the form of parliament, the executive, federalism, and the law. The operation of parliament poses new problems for parties, particularly when no single party can command a majority, while the executive is becoming increasingly centralized and detached from the party organizations. And, not least, the increasingly complex requirements of the law present new hurdles for parties to clear.
Contemporary Australian Political Party Organizations is the first book in several decades to examine the party system in its totality. The title is something of a misnomer, since the book is less a study of organizational change than a comprehensive overview of how the party system is adapting to change. The strength of the volume lies in the breadth of the contributions, which examine parties from a diversity of perspectives. While the book could have benefited from a conclusion which brought all of these strands together and provided an overarching interpretation, the introduction is impressive in setting the scene for the chapters that follow.