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The Australian Democrats Andrew Bartlett* Australian Cultural History Vol. 27, No.2, October 2009, 187-193 The Australian Democrats Andrew Bartlett* The Australian Democrats had maintained a presence in the Senate since 1977, but the 2007 election threatened to end their representation for good. Their efforts to retain seats proved to be in vain. Keywords: 2007 election; Australian Democrats; Senate Following on from the 2004 election, where the Australian Democrats lost four seats (including the Democrat seat Meg Lees had taken with her when she resigned from the party in 2002), plus official parliamentary status and balance of power in the Senate, the Party faced a very difficult task in the 2007 election trying to keep its four remaining Senate seats. Right throughout John Howard's fourth term, opinion polls showed public support for the Democrats consistently scraping along rock bottom levels of 1 or 2 per cent, as they had ever since the Lees resignation and the related public implosion of Natasha Stott Despoja's leadership in 2002. Even though the removal of the Democrats from the balance of power after the 2004 poll led directly to the Coalition government gaining control of the Senate, where it frequently used its majority to stifle scrutiny and bulldoze through some controversial legislation, the Democrats were unable to use this situation to build public support for returning the Party to its traditional Senate watchdog position. The Party had avoided going into debt in its 2004 campaign, so there were sufficient funds to run a basic campaign in priority areas for the 2007 election. However, serious use of paid advertising was not feasible. The intervening years had also seen a further loss of Democrat seats at state elections in both New South Wales and South Australia. The party's poor performance at the 2006 state poll, with a total vote of less than 2 per cent in their former heartland of South Australia, was a particularly bad sign because this campaign was relatively well funded. All these factors contributed to a persistent media mantra portraying the demise of the Democrats as inevitable when the 2007 poll arrived. The Democrats' task in trying to prevent this narrative from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy was a very difficult, and ultimately unsuccessful, one. Several factors played a part in the demise of the Democrats. The fateful Goods and Services Tax (GST) decision in 1999 and the following internal and public *Email: contact(illandrewbartlett.com ISSN 0728-8433 print/ISSN 1942-5139 online © 2009 A P [ Network DOl: 10.1080/07288430903164819 http://www.informaworld.com 188 A. Bartlett turmoils-far too long and detailed a story to do justice in this paper-the fall out after Natasha Stott Despoja's resignation from the leadership and the disastrous 2004 election result all played a role in putting the Party in serious trouble. Major reviews were undertaken by the Party to consider how to reverse the situation, but it is fair to say that there was a lack of will on the part of both the active membership and the parliamentary wing to take the sort of radical actions that would have been required to give the Party a reasonable chance of electoral survival. Some changes to the Party's administrative structure and cosmetic alterations, including changes to party colours, were never going to be sufficient to reverse a public and media perception that the Democrats, as a party, were terminally damaged. There were many indicators pointing to the fact that re-election of any Democrat Senators would be very difficult. One example was the decision by Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, from what was regularly called the party's heartland of South Australia, not to recontest her seat, citing a desire to spend more time with her family. Despite the major public division and instability within the Democrats having ended and the Party's Senators doing a large amount of work on a range of traditional Democrat issues, the damage had clearly been done. This was not helped by the change in the makeup of the Senate that became effective as of 1 July 2005. With the federal coalition gaining control of the Senate for the first time in twenty­ four years, the opportunities for the Democrats to use the Senate to achieve positive change and to highlight the Party's work were sidelined to a large extent. Despite these factors, the Party did not back away from the challenge of re­ election. Enormous efforts were made by candidates and campaigners on the ground over the years leading up to the election. In hindsight, however, the final election result could well be described as the inevitable outcome of a federal party that was already seen to be in terminal electoral decline. Poor results over the years following on from a solid result in 2001 clearly indicated that the battle to keep the remaining four Democrat Senate seats in 2007 was going to be arduous. The consequences of the public's decision to remove the Democrats from the federal political landscape remains to be seen, but the vital role of genuine reviewers of legislation is yet to be fully taken on by the remaining minor parties and independents. The course of this paper will outline the way in which the Australian Democrats differentiated their campaign in the lead up to the 2007 Federal Election in an attempt to maintain parliamentary representation and what the outcome could mean for the Senate and Australian politics. State-based campaigning: election 2007 In the same way as the House of Representatives election is actually 150 separate local contests, so too the Senate is eight often quite different contests spread across the six states and two territories. The Democrats attempted to target resources and to campaign into the three states seen as having the best prospects: Queensland, South Australia and Victoria. Past Australian Democrat election campaigns had been run at a national level, with a full complement of staff, including a National Campaign Director, a nationally coordinated media and policy campaign and nationally planned and Australian Cultural History 189 negotiated Senate preference allocations. In the lead up to the 2007 election, the organisational wing of the Party was considerably weaker than in the past and, coupled with reduced resources, both financial and in parliamentary staff reductions following the Party coming off its then worst ever election result in 2004, it was decided that moving away from a formal centralised and singular campaign and concentrating on individual, specific campaigns would be the most appropriate path. Nationally, the overarching aim of the Democrats' campaigns was to highlight the need to restore the balance to the Senate that was lost with the coalition government gaining control of the chamber in July 2005. It was felt there would be more chance of success trying to carve out recognition on a state-by-state basis rather than to compete directly with the main media and public focus on the Howard versus Rudd contest. Targeted state campaigning focused on those areas offering the best hope of maintaining the seats. Each state-based division of the Democrats had been fostering, to various degrees, smaller state-based campaigns to complement the Democrats national approach to issues. To use an example in my own state of Queensland, rather than focusing on an overarching national policy to campaign on the crucial issue of water, the Queensland party campaigned heavily and locally in favour of recycling water into the drinking supply. Toowoomba's 2006 referendum provided a focus for this, but the issue had a broader application because water scarcity was also a very relevant issue for all of south-east Queensland (indeed, water recycling was eventually adopted by the state government). This local approach to water policy also linked to campaigns against the Queensland government's plan to build dams at Traveston Crossing and Wyaralong. Queensland also had a number of other key environmental and social justice issues that enabled the use of national party platforms to put a spotlight on the Democrats Queensland Senate seat, such as the scandal surrounding Gold Coast­ based Dr Mohamed Haneef, climate change impacts on the Barrier Reef and Indigenous affairs, including Palm Island, Cape York and stolen wages issues. The Queensland Democrats concentrated on fostering extensive community networks to help disseminate the Democrats' key messages and highlight the legislative work undertaken across a range of portfolio areas of interest to those groups. Focusing on Queensland-based groups made this task more achievable and such extensive community campaigning was to complement more traditional campaign strategies. This work began soon after the 2004 Federal Election and carried on through to the 2007 campaign. With freedom to focus on local issues and messages and, in the case of Victoria and Queensland, to focus on the personal strengths of the incumbent Senators at state level, the campaigns undertook alternative approaches to information dissemination, including community campaigning. Sizeable supporter databases built up over the preceding years were used to try to compensate for the lack of media interest. Queensland's campaign focused as much on my own record over a ten-year period as Senator for Queensland as it did on the party label. The 2007 campaign slogan 'Choose Common Sense' was designed to hark back to the Democrats core philosophy of reason, balance and considered action. The Queensland campaign was launched early in July 2007 with approximately 350 people in attendance in an effort to demonstrate both preparedness and a strong level of support at community level beyond just the party faithful. 190 A. Bartlett As the state's only non-major party Senator, my campaign in Queensland attempted to highlight the prospect (which became a reality) that Queensland was at risk of losing any Senate representation outside of the major parties.
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