VALE THE AUSTRALIAN DEMOCRATS: ORGANISATIONAL FAILURE AND ELECTORAL DECLINE:

This paper examines the decline of the Australian Democrats as a parliamentary party in Australian national politics following its failure to win seats in both the 2004 and 2007 half-Senate elections. The paper argues that the party’s decision to support the Howard government’s GST after the 1998 election was the catalyst for the decline, but that the effect of this dispute manifested itself primarily within the party’s organisation. The paper argues that the peculiarities of the party’s rules allowed the GST controversy to reverberate over a long period and dovetail with leadership rivalry within the parliamentary wing. It argues that the party’s organisational arrangements, designed to empower the membership, exacerbated its difficulties in dealing with this matter. It was the sense of leadership crisis that emanated from organisational dysfunctionalism, rather than the GST itself, that contributed to the party’s poor showing in the 2004 and 2007 elections