The Alsatia of candidate selection

It’s time to reform the preselection process, argues Brian Costar UNLIKE the United States, elections in Australia are well conducted by impartial administrators. We can be sure that this week’s mid-term congressional elections will be followed by allegations of mismanagement, partiality and all kinds of chicanery. By contrast such charges are heard in Australia only in regard to candidate preselection, but in safe seats winning the preselection ballot usually gets you into parliament. In eighteenth century London the space behind the Savoy prison was called Alsatia. It became a notorious haunt for all types of rogues and thieves, so dangerous that no law enforcers dared to enter it. Political party preselections in Australia have traditionally been every bit as unexplored and potentially dangerous. A great many electoral districts are now so safe for one major party or the other that polling day is pretty much a formality; a popular anointing of whichever candidate secured the endorsement of that party. At recent federal elections upwards of a third of districts may be classed as “safe” because the winning candidate secured more than 60 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote. Realistically, the proportion of seats is usually larger than that. In those districts the winner is effectively chosen by a small number of people behind closed doors who may or may not be electors of that district and may, in some cases, not even be Australian citizens. In the Sydney division of Wentworth prior to the 2004 general election, a couple of thousand Liberal Party members voted in the preselection instead of the usual number - a couple of hundred. Intense competition in these contests can cause extraordinary expansion in local membership as contestants recruit potential supporters for the dominant party’s ballot. “Branch-stacking” now appears as a common occurrence in both parties and raise real concerns for the democratic process. When a decision that is eventually attributed to the 80,000 voters in an electorate is actually taken by a few dozen or at best a few hundred party activists - or worse, the conscripted foot soldiers of such activists - the appearance of democratic decision-making is hard to sustain. A recent example was the 2006 Labor Party preselection for the Victorian seat of Hotham, which was decided by fewer than 300 votes when the party’s 2004 vote in the division was 40,000 electors. In the late nineteenth century some electoral jurisdictions in the United States introduced what became known as “primaries,” in which a much wider section of the electorate, those who had registered as partisans of one party or the other, selected its candidates. The intention of primaries was to protect the selection process from shadowy figures who might promote candidates willing to pass helpful legislation and prevent unhelpful measures. But primary elections have succumbed to the same ills as general elections, relying on mass media coverage, massive expenditure and large donors. The introduction of laws governing party registration in Australia has opened the door for laying down the procedures a party must use to choose the candidate(s) who display its label on their ballot papers. For example, we could require that anyone participating in the preselection process must meet the age, citizenship and residence requirements of electors. It would also be possible to require that the Australian Electoral Commission (or a state commission ) conduct preselection ballots for a party as it currently does for trade unions. But neither a commission (with its resources already stretched and the risk of becoming involved in intra-party disputes) nor a party (jealous of its autonomy) is likely to be enthusiastic about the idea. Given these problems, a more straightforward option would be to ensure that the penal provisions against inducements or threats at ordinary elections - which already apply in trade union elections - also apply to preselection ballots. It is difficult to see why unions and political parties should operate under different rules, especially when the parties benefit from substantial public funding. And there is an Australian precedent: Queensland’s Electoral and Other Acts Amendment Act 2002 introduced elements of such a regime. Registered parties must have a “complying constitution” that disqualifies anyone convicted of specified electoral offences from party membership for a period of ten years, and ensures its preselection ballots satisfy “the general principles of free and democratic elections.” The state’s electoral commission has a supervisory role over party preselection ballots, including auditing ballot papers. It’s not perfect, but it’s least a start. • Brian Costar is professor of Victorian parliamentary democracy at Swinbourne University of Technology. He is co-suthor, with Colin A. Hughes, of Limiting Democracy: The Erosion of Electoral Rights in Australia, published by UNSW Press in association with APO. Photo: Andrew Jeffre