Excerpts of Christopher Pyne’s Speech
5th April 2008
I am absolutely passionate about the Liberal Party. I joined the Liberal party when I was seventeen.
Over those twenty-three years, the one constant is that the Liberal Party remains the most important vehicle in Australia for our ideas whether they’re liberal ideas or conservative ideas, or in fact for people still forming their ideas. There is no better vehicle.
I won’t raise the proposed merger with the National Party today, but it does raise issues about the character of the vehicle that is the Liberal Party.
I want to talk more importantly about reforming our party.
You’re all Young Liberals, myself and Senator Fifield are only forty, so we’re on the younger side of the Liberal party organisation.
If you ever go to any senior party branch meetings, you would almost always be some of the youngest people there.
When I turned up to my first branch meeting at the age of 21, in what was the biggest branch in the state in South Australia, the Burnside Branch, which is a bit like the Toorak Branch in my electorate of Sturt, before I was a member of Parliament, the President was a man called John McDonough, who was 88. They had seven members present, which was a quorum, and they had 240 members on the books who could have been there if they had chosen to be. I was made President on the spot.
That was 19 years ago, and most of those present have since passed away, tragically, and many of the other people in the branch have since died, or become incapacitated or simply lost interest in the Party. It’s still the biggest branch in my electorate, and it’s still the biggest branch in South Australia, but it now has about 100 members. I tell you this because our party is withering on the vine and if we don’t do something about the Liberal Party, then there won’t be a party for your generation, and there won’t be a party for Senator Fifield and my generation.
The age demographic of our party is completely unbalanced and totally out of whack with the community.
So we have to do something about that.
There are some people in the Liberal Party who’re arguing today that things are really not that bad, we should sit back, we are a great party, with a huge future, all we have to do is remain united and everything will be fine for the next federal election or state election.
I’ve heard these arguments for the last ten years. The federal party, because we were in government, could afford to ignore our problems because reform was seen to be too troublesome.
Now we’ve lost the federal election and we are worse off today than when the United Australia Party in 1943.
We have no government in the country, state or territory or federal.
At least in 1943 we were actually in government in a number of the states, we now have no government at all in the country, which is the worst situation the non-labor side of politics has been in, in 107 years.
Our membership is older on average than the rest of the community and not getting any younger. Our structure was built for 40 or 50 years ago, not for the 21st century. We have few ways of raising money, and the Labor Party are planning on making it harder in the future. The likelihood is the Labor Party will make it almost impossible for the non-labor side of politics to raise money.
We need to completely reform and change our party.
Some people are saying there will be a natural swing back to us at the next election, because subsequently in every election following a change of government since 1949 there has been a swing back to the Opposition and without fail that has happened. It has been as small as 0.7 per cent or as large as 4.6 per cent as it was in 1998, but there has always been a swing.
So some people will say to you, the swing at the next election is going to be back to the Liberal Party so don’t rock the boat. We’ll keep on going with what we’re doing now.
Unfortunately at a state level, that has not been the case since 1999.
In every state election since 1999, in the subsequent election after we have lost government, there has been a swing to the Labor Party, and we have lost seats in all but one state.
In Western Australia the swing was to the Labor party but we happened to keep the same number of seats because we won a few seats from independents. So universally we have done worse at the subsequent election since 1999.
We’ve lost the last 22 state and territory elections, we’ve just lost the last federal election.
In 1996 we had 256 state and federal Members of Parliament who were Liberals, that’s not counting the Nationals or Country Liberal Party and today we have about 150 so we’ve lost about 40% of our territory. Winning those seats back is going to be very hard without the resources of staff we used to have in those offices, without the fundraising capacity. You must have all seen examples of where seats have been lost at the state level and at the federal level, without a member of parliament sharpening the saw, looking after the branches, and raising the money we have gone backwards and the seats have become almost unwinnable. The seat of Adelaide in South Australia is a very good example at the federal level.
So I have proposed some ideas to change that, and the first one of those is to give every party member a vote for the party leadership.
It will achieve one thing overnight. It will give every one of you, and everyone you approach to join the Liberal Party, a reason to be a member of the Liberal Party, or the Young Liberal Movement. It will give every one of those people a sense of having a say – some skin in the game – some reason to think that the Liberal Party is taking their views seriously because we think they’re smart enough and sensible enough to make an assessment about who would be the best leader for the Liberal Party and for our country as Prime Minister.
The whole world has moved in this direction. Australia is about the last bastion where this doesn’t happen on the conservative side of politics or the non-labor side of politics.
The French conservative party, the UK Conservative party, the Canadian Conservative Party, the Israeli Likud, the Democrats and the Republicans in America are all doing this, (the Democrats and Republicans since the 1850’s but all the others in the last ten years). New Zealand and Australia are the only two that haven’t moved in this direction, one of the reasons being because of the stability of the federal Liberal Government. Opposition is the time to seize the initiative and do something different to garner interest in our party.
There are some Liberal Party divisions in this country that appear more focussed in internal party machinations and more intent on winning internal elections than they are in winning state and federal elections. We have to change the culture of our party, and the only way is increasing our membership with the same ‘forgotten’ people who helped found the party, and who, over the years, have been alienated. We need to rebuild a political movement on the non-labor side of politics that can win elections in the future and govern. Now is the time to change, or there won’t be a future.
If our sister parties across the world have made this move, then I don’t see any reason why we aren’t capable of doing it. My proposal is the same as the UK Conservative model, where the parliamentary party chooses the candidates and the membership chooses between those two candidates. It is a much more foolproof scheme than the Australian Democrats had which allowed the membership to spill the leadership. In the UK Conservative Party, only the Parliamentary members can spill the leadership or the leader can resign or retire, and the parliamentary party has its own ballot to choose two candidates. Those two candidates are then offered to the party membership.
In the UK David Cameron was elected in this fashion, and currently enjoys a lead in the polls over Gordon Brown.
My second proposal is for proportional representation in the Liberal Party organisation, which would give every grouping of like-minded individuals a place at the Liberal Party table.
What we don’t want is for people who can make a significant contribution within the Liberal Party or in Australia, missing out on that opportunity.
Proportional representation gives us the opportunity to have the best talent in the party from all groupings in the party.
Proportional representation would mean that people wouldn’t need to disguise their true positions on issues in order to get ahead, but rather stand up for what they really believe in. It will allow all the good ideas to come forward that might otherwise have been lost.
Proportional representation is in keeping with the recognition by our forefathers that within the Liberal Party there are important interest groups that deserve recognition. Our forefathers established the Young Liberals, Rural Council, and Women’s Council, and gave them all votes, and some divisions require that where possible at least one man and one woman be elected to positions. Proportional representation is the natural evolution of this idea. It takes into account natural philosophical differences. It ends the “winner takes all” outcomes, which have in the past meant that we don’t necessarily always have the best and the brightest, but have to sometimes settle for second best.
So proportional representation gives us a chance to end the winner takes all cycle.
It gives us a chance to all be fighting the Labor Party, with everyone having a place at the table.
It doesn’t mean that there still won’t be arguments in the party, but it will mean that no one will be able to say that there is no place for me in the Liberal Party without having to resort to guerrilla warfare.
So if we lead the way in Victoria and South Australia – South Australia is entering the reform process at the moment, which I think will be successful – if we lead the way then the rest of the country will follow and it will mean the winner takes all philosophy will be consigned to the dust bin. We can have the best and the brightest, and an influx of new members and we will be a political force again on the non-labor side of politics, and it will give us a chance to govern and govern for a long time.
We’ve done this before in the Liberal Party.
It’s not alien for us to be able to reform ourselves. We don’t need to ditch the Liberal Party, or our brand, but we do need to remake the Liberal Party.
We’ve governed federally for two thirds of the last sixty years, because we’re the best party of government. Right now we’re not offering ourselves as the best alternative. With a bit of change we can do that in three years time and we can win again.
Question from audience regarding the introduction of election of the Party Leader by the party membership and how this relates to plebiscites for the preselection of candidates.
Pyne:
We already have plebiscites in South Australia so I didn’t mention that, but yes I think there is a natural corollary with plebiscites for candidates and for the party leader.
Obviously a plebiscite for party leader would re-invigorate people’s interest in the preselection process as it has in the plebiscite for candidates in South Australia. We used it in the last round of Federal Preselections, and will be using it in the upcoming round of state elections.
None of the parliamentary parties have embraced this idea yet – who would wanrt to give away their power? But it will come as it has around the world.
I would rather make the reforms now, than have to give this speech again in 2010. The Leader of the Opposition has put it on the Agenda for Federal Council, and I think we will have a debate there on it and I’ve asked for it to be placed on the agenda for the party room and the shadow ministry.
Ends.
Media Contact:Adam Howard
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