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From Australia: a reason for Clegg to be very afraid
The Australian Democrats abandoned their principles for the sake of power – and look what happened
If Nick Clegg wonders what price he will pay for abandoning several key Lib Dem policies in exchange for the back-door keys to No 10, he would do well to cast an eye Down Under and read up on the sorry fate of the Australian Democrats.
That party, which once occupied the centre ground of Australian politics and held the balance of power for more than a decade, was destroyed by what many of its supporters saw as the betrayal of its principles.
It imploded after doing a deal with a right-wing prime minister and abandoning core policies in the late 1990s, and in the space of a decade it was completely wiped out as a political force. In recent local elections it polled less than one per cent of the vote.
Clegg has been prepared to give ground to Tory leader David Cameron on issues such as Europe, immigration, Trident and, vitally, the party's cast-iron commitment to proportional representation, in order to become a junior partner in the new coalition government. Those concessions have angered many of the rank-and-file party members and their reaction will be crucial for future of the Lib Dems.
For the Australian Democrats its decision to abandon its opposition to John Howard's tax reforms in 1998 proved fatal. And the vaccuum it left behind was quickly filled by the Green party - something that could happen in Britain, now that the party has won its first seat in parliament.
The Australian Democrats were founded in 1977 after a merger between two small centrist parties and under the leadership of Don Chipp, a former government minister and member of the Liberal party (the Australian version of the Conservatives). The new movement said its aim was to "keep the bastards honest" and to strike a balance between the Liberals on the right and Labor on the left.
The party won cross-spectrum support, much like the Lib Dems have done, particularly among voters who rejected the old adversarial two-party system. It was also in favour of social justice and was an early advocate of green principles. Like the Lib Dems, many of its economic policies were to the left of the mainstream parties.
In the late 70s and early 80s it attracted around 10 per cent of the popular vote, and under the Labor governments of Bob Hawke and John Keating Australian Democrats held the balance of power in the Australian senate.
But when John Howard's right-wing Liberal Party came to power in the 1990s things began to go awry. The left of the party objected to Howard's policies, but other factions wanted to engage with the new government and bring their influence to bear in government - just like Nick Clegg intends to with David Cameron.
However, the fatal blow for the Australian Democrats came in 1998 when it compromised on one of its key principles - an opposition to goods and services tax (GST), the equivalent of VAT. During federal elections the party leader Meg Lees campaigned on an anti-GST platform but, after negotiations with Howard, eventually agreed to push through the legislation with some minor amendments.
The concession disgusted many party members, who considered it a betrayal and abandoned the party. Lees stood down as leader to be replaced by a candidate from the left of the party as in-fighting engulfed the movement.
In the 2001 Senate elections the party managed a respectable 7.3 per cent of the vote, but the damage was done. In 2007 the Australian Democrats registered just 1.3 per cent of the vote and lost their final four representatives in the Senate. The Greens won five seats and over nine per cent of the vote.
Today, the party has no members in either house of parliament and large parts of the country no longer even have an Australian Democrat presence.
As The First Post's catalogue of pre-election remarks made by members of the new Cabinet reveals, Nick Clegg used his spring conference speech in 2008 to ridicule David Cameron's suggestion of an alliance, and said he would never join the Conservatives. The lesson from Down Under is that Clegg should perhaps have stuck to his promise. ·
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Good comment Matthew. I agree with much of what you are saying. However, I believe there is still life in the Australian Democrats.
Jonathan, please realise that the Australian Democrats were not opposed to a GST.
In 1998 the Australian Democrats campaigned on supporting taxation reform and a modified but fair GST platform (among other things), opposing the GST on food and books
It was party policy balloted by the members and publicly supported by all the Senators during the 1998 election. The leadership change and internal turmoil, as alluded to by Matthew, had far more to do with the party not being newsworthy, except for it's public infighting (between Senators Stott Despoja and Lees) which led to the public becoming disengaged with the party and the media subsequently looking elsewhere for it's "Third Party" stories.
It was almost a decade ago and the Australian Democrats have moved on from those times.
The Lib-Dems have been in coalition with Labour (Scotland and Wales) and now with the Conservatives (UK nationally) proving the Australian Democrats sister party is perfectly capable of working with both of the other parties as the need arises. I wish Nick Clegg well in his time as Deputy Prime Minister.
The GST agreement is commonly cited as the blow that killed the Australian Democrats. However, if this was the case, then why didn't the Democrats' vote fall signficantly at the following federal election?
The answer is the while the GST deal was important, and it did lead to a change of Democrat leadership, it was less important than another decision, and not one of that party's doing.
It was the decision by Australian media outlets to stop getting a "third opinion" from the Democrats, and to start to do so from competing party The Greens. In the early 2000's, despite the Dems holding more seats than they'd ever had before, and the Greens barely having any parliamentary precence (and far fewer votes), the Greens began to get the lion's share of third party attention.
Whether this was a calculated move to destroy the party, or, more likely, because having become part of the establishment, the Dems had become "boring", it was this move that killed the party. The party's success ultimately killed it.