Former Queensland Democrat state leader PETER SYKES looks at the implications for small parties of a double dissolution election. Sykes admits to leaving the Democrats and joining the Greens in what he describes as "painful circumstances" after publicly criticising Cheryl Kernot over policy matters.
When the Liberals' national conference was in town, Brisbane was awash with talk of the possibility of the big "double-D". In the poshest clubs and bars, Liberal "suits" were claiming that 80% of Australians want tax reform, 100% want a slice of the Telstra sell-off, almost nobody wants native title rights to survive, and unions are gone for good.
If you really wanted to hot up the conversation, the mere mention of the Democrats was enough to get some silver-spooner to exclaim delightedly that double-D really stands for "Democrats are doomed".
Under similar circumstances in 1974, double-D spelled doom for the Democratic Labour Party, which lost all its Senate seats and consequently ceased to be a force in Australian politics.
If a double-dissolution election is held this year, the Democrats, like the DLP before them, will have only recently lost a high-profile leader and supported controversial government legislation (industrial relations), all in the face of what the polls indicate is declining voter support.
A few other factors not encountered by the DLP could also combine to test what has thus far been a Democrat knack for survival.
A key factor is the rise of small right-wing parties built around independent MHRs Pauline Hanson and Graeme Campbell. On a regional basis, these parties have built enough support to show up in the polls and pose a serious threat to the three Democrat Senate seats in Queensland and Western Australia.
According to the most recent Queensland poll, the defection of Cheryl Kernot to the ALP has helped Democrat support drop to a paltry 2%, while support for Hanson's One Nation appears to have stabilised at 7%.
Core vote
One thing I was surprised to learn during my brief stint as one of Kernot's electorate officers is that a significant portion of the Democrat core vote has traditionally come from the far right. These voters are typically characterised by a desire to vote against the major parties and an almost complete ignorance of (or indifference to) Democrat policies.
Given the option of voting for a party that has overcome past fragmentation of the right, the polls suggest, they are likely to desert the Democrats in droves. In a party six of whose seven senators were the last elected in their respective elections, this could portend disaster for the Democrats.
By their own admission, the Democrats have traditionally sought to capture the middle ground. To a certain extent, they are a Liberal breakaway party.
A look at their House of Representatives vote over the last three federal elections shows clearly that standing in the middle of the road is likely to get you run over.
The Democrats traditionally stand in almost every House of Reps seat, so it is easy to compare their performances to those of the major parties.
From 1977 to 1987, the Democrats averaged a fairly steady 6.5% of the lower house vote, while polling marginally higher in the Senate. Their vote rose to an all-time high of 11.3% in 1990, up from a close to average 6% in the 1987 double dissolution.
The 1990 figures show that voters opted to send an "on your toes" message to the Hawke government by voting for the Democrats and then directing their preferences back to the ALP.
The Coalition's proposed GST dominated the 1993 election. Voters opted for or against the tax by voting for a major party, and the Democrat vote dipped to an all-time low of 3.7%.
Going from an all-time high to an all-time low in three years quite understandably unsettled the Democrats. With five senators up for re-election, the party bounced back to capture 6.8% of the lower-house vote in 1996, largely on the wings of the popularity of Cheryl Kernot and young South Australian candidate, Natasha Stott Despoja.
Still, Kernot failed to gain an outright quota, suggesting that her inconspicuous replacement, Andrew Bartlett, is in real trouble.
These numbers show that the overall Democrat vote is extremely volatile, and the party's core vote may he virtually non-existent. A "keep the bastards honest" vote can come from just about anywhere — and can go just about anywhere.
Green-left
The non-ALP green-left, on the other hand, has a core vote of about 2-3% — perhaps higher if effectively mobilised. It is hard to tell the exact figure because of the fragmentation of the vote between various small parties and the absence of green-left options in many electorates.
If the Democrats can become a political force with hardly any core vote, in the right circumstances the green-left should he able to elect a substantial bloc of senators by capturing its fair share of the swinging vote.
Of course, the same holds true for the extreme right — but any seats won will likely come down to a tussle with the Nationals, resulting in very little real change to the right-wing content of any parliament. If there are seats to be won, the green-left will have to swipe them at the expense of the centre, to the detriment of the right.
In 1996, the best of the rest of the Democrat senators were elected on about three-quarters of a quota. The boast that "the Democrats are doomed" is no idle threat. In a double-D election, the conservatives could conceivably direct Senate preferences with a view to wiping out the Democrats.
The ALP would then be faced with a choice between directing to the Democrats, perhaps in a losing cause, or helping parties of the left to partially fill the void in the hope that ultraconservative forces can be prevented from gaining outright control of the Senate.
The bottom line for small parties on the green-left is what to do with their preferences. It would he easy to justify ideologically directing against the Democrats in favour of the best green-left alternative, but would it work?
The Greens are the strongest and most likely progressive successor to the Democrats, but credible research of voter perceptions shows that the Greens are well and truly seen to be a party of the left. Since the organised green-left has thus far been unable to gain a firm foothold anywhere in the modern political landscape, it will take a bit of doing to turn the Greens from pretenders into contenders. Difficult, but not impossible.
Without going into each senatorial race, in a double-D election the Democrats could lose as many as six of their seven senators. I am betting that they would end up with a maximum of four and, consequently, lose their status as a recognised party on the floor of parliament. Stott Despoja is their only sure bet.
The Greens could win as many as four, but are unlikely to completely fill any Democrat void until the following election at the earliest. The green-left vole in its current fragmented form may not be strong enough to sustain any significant presence in the Senate.
Choices
This does not necessarily mean that mergers are needed, but a degree of highly structured and pragmatic cooperation would seem in order. Given the current state of play, the conservatives have every chance of gaining control of the Senate under a double-D scenario — perhaps even an outright Coalition majority.
As a former Democrat and a current Green, I am faced with the same painful choice as any intelligent green-left voter: abandon the Democrats completely and risk wiping out any progressive parliamentary presence, no matter how minuscule; send them a lifeline, and expose myself to another sell-out similar to the industrial relations debacle.
In coming elections all of us on the green-left will have to take a good hard look at the cold hard facts. There will not be much room for warm fuzziness and misplaced sentimentality. We need to put our votes wherever they will serve the purpose of ecological sustainability, social justice and political freedom.
The performance of the seven Democrat senators will be critical. Any more mistakes, for whatever reason, will undoubtedly set the Democrats well and truly apart from the green-left and help put them on board the double-D express to political oblivion.