Australian Cultural History Vol. 27, No.2, October 2009, 187-193

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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 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 '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 's leadership in 2002. Even though the removal of the Democrats from the balance of power after the 2004 poll led directly to the 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 . 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 , 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

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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: , South Australia and . 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 '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. Although this approach certainly appeared to work at a microlevel through extensive community group campaign strategy, it failed to gain any wider traction with the general public or with the mainstream media across Queensland. Indeed, despite the 2004 election result showing just how crucial the Senate contest can be, the focus on the Senate contest still came a very poor second in media terms to the battle between incumbent John Howard and Labor challenger Kevin Rudd. Media interest and coverage of the Senate race in Queensland was scant to non-existent during most of the campaign, with the partial exception of the announcement of a preference exchange with the Greens in Queensland. The Democrats' national launch did receive media attention, but more in terms of the Party's imminent demise than as a party offering an alternative vision and with a strong history as effective legislators. The Democrats tried to counter this by using what has been acknowledged as one of our strengths-the use of online campaigning. Having been known for developing a strong web presence since the late 1990s, the Party nationally and in the states used this medium to get its message out to supporters, the media and the general public. The Party used web-based campaigning extensively in the 2004 election campaign, including alternative advertising, such as mini-movies on Iraq and 'children overboard'. In 2007, the Party extended this to narrow-cast policy platforms. This was done both nationally and at a state level. The Queensland Senate campaign team produced web friendly political advertisements to accompany the official launch of election platforms. These advertisements were placed on Senator Bartlett's website, the Democrats National site and YouTube. Other minor launches and campaigns of interest that occurred during the formal campaign period were also narrow cast. The Party aimed to use the web as a one-stop shop for policy information and alternative information dissemination. The well-established Andrew Bartlett blog-one of the few maintained by a federal politician-was maintained throughout the election period as a means of demonstrating both independence and genuine engagement, something that was acknowledged a number of times in online coverage. The rise of social networking sites also gave parties like the Democrats an alternative method of publicising information, with the two incumbent on-going senators, Senator and Senator Bartlett, making use of this new campaigning tool. It is fair to say that the eventual dismal election result shows that the extensive use of blogs, networking sites and the Internet in general does not, in itself, deliver much by way of votes. Alternative media, although potentially a solid way to get an unfiltered message across, is not enough in isolation. There still needs to be a strong message delivered through traditional media, in both advertising and daily coverage. Online campaigning can reinforce key messages, but is insufficient on its own to establish that message in the mind of the general public. Although the use of the Internet and related technology is increasing all the time and sizeable numbers of people now use the Internet to access electoral and policy information, it is still insufficient for communicating the core campaign messages and themes. The vast majority of media information is still reaching the general public via the traditional means of radio, television and newspapers; media that the Democrats had been unable to use to get a strong positive message out for quite some time. Australian Cultural History 191

Polling and election result Although the Democrats had been effectively written off in successive elections­ local, state and federal-over many years and had also struggled against the endless tide of predictions of the Party's demise almost since their founding, Senate polling had usually demonstrated that Senate candidates were in with a chance. It was also true that the election of Democrat candidates almost always relied on preferences to get across the line. The 2007 election was certainly no exception. Although there had been no significant poll movement for the Democrats for quite some time, there was glimmer of hope in the state-based Senate polls. In the year leading up to the federal election, the Australian Democrats were polling between 2.5 per cent and 5.5 per cent in Roy Morgan Research Senate-based polls. I The last poll put support nationally for the Democrats at 3.5 per cent. State­ by-state the party was polling first preference votes of 3.5 per cent in Victoria, 4 per cent in South Australia, 1.5 per cent in Western Australia and 2.5 per cent in New South Wales. Successive state Senate polls also showed that the Democrats in Queensland were consistently polling at around 5 per cent, give or take a half a percentage point. In the last Morgan Senate poll, issued on 13 November 2007, the Queensland Democrats were sitting at 5.5 per cent, suggesting this was the only likely chance of electoral success for the Party, whereas a separate poll of four marginal Queensland seats a week out from polling day had more people indicating a preference for the Democrats to hold the balance of power than any other party, with the Democrats recording 34 per cent, the Greens 31 per cent, Family First at 16 per cent and Pauline Hanson at 12 per cent. 2 One has to ask the question as to whether the glimmer of hope evident across the various Senate polls was illusory or did voter support simply evaporate on polling day. It is more likely to be the former rather than the latter. But although it was no great surprise when the Party did end up losing all its seats, it was still a surprise to see the Party's vote fall even further than the lows of 2004. The result in Queensland was the best of all the states at just 1.8 per cent of the vote, whereas what had been the Party's heartland of South Australia managed a paltry 0.88 per cent of the vote­ worse even than New South Wales and despite greater resources and incumbent Members of Parliament (MPs) at both the state (Sandra Kanck) and federal (Natasha Stott Despoja) levels. The 'centre-ground' minor party vote that existed as recently as the 2001 election had basically disappeared. In the wash-up of the federal election, the Democrats lost all federal representation. The loss of Senator Bartlett's seat saw Queensland without any minor party representation, a situation that now also applies in New South Wales, where the Greens' lost her seat to Labor. Of the four Democrat seats, two (Queensland and Victoria) went to the and two went to the Greens (Western Australia and South Australia). It is reasonable to speculate that had Nick Xenophon not made his last minute decision to successfully contest a Senate seat in South Australia, thus taking big chunks out of the vote for both major parties, the Greens would also have been unsuccessful there and the Democrat seat would have also gone to Labor. This matches 2004, where only one of the four Democrat seats lost went to the Greens, with the other three going to the major parties. This rather starkly demonstrates that the assumption held in some progressive circles that the Greens would simply replace the Democrats has not been fully borne 192 A. Bartlett out. From a high of nine Democrat seats plus one Green on the cross-benches after 1998, there are now just five pro-environment voices on the Senate cross-benches. The unexpected and unprecedented result in 2004 when Family First won a Victorian Senate seat despite polling less than 2 per cent of the vote meant there was more caution among many parties during Senate preference negotiations this time. The preference allocations on the Group Voting Tickets of the minor and micro parties provided little 'cross-fertilisation' across the ideological divide, meaning that smaller parties struggled to harvest enough preferences to build a quota and preferences from right-leaning minor parties tended to flow back to the major parties before going to progressive parties-and vice versa. All of which has led to the smallest Senate cross-bench since the Senate was enlarged in 1984.

What the election result means for the future It is fair to say that the loss of Democrat seats in 2004, which gave the Coalition government control of the Senate, helped provide the fatal blow for John Howard's reign by giving him enough rope to hang himself with Work Choices, but although this played a key factor in the electorate's decision to sound the death knell for the Howard era, it did not lead to any reprieve for the Democrats. The Party's members will decide in the near future about whether the Democrats will continue as a formal party or be restructured, renamed or wound up. However, the immediate future of the Senate is clearer. As had been predicted in 2004,3 government control of the Senate meant that the function of the chamber altered drastically. Checks and balances that allowed the Democrats to closely scrutinise proposed laws and that were the hallmark of an effective and independent Senate were thrown out and we saw the emergence of severely truncated inquiries into vital pieces of legislation, the routine blocking of inquiries by the government majority and major legislation repeatedly being guillotined through the Senate without adequate consideration or amendment. How this plays out in regards to the future use of balance of power in the Senate remains to be seen, but one area where it is likely to have an impact is in regard to Senate and other Parliamentary Committees. With just seven on the cross-benches­ including two who are either Independents or in a party of one-there is simply not enough people to go around to fill all the Committee positions and ensure minor party perspectives on all the inquiries. Senate numbers from mid-2008 have the Labor government with thirty-two seats and the Coalition with thirty-seven; the Greens have five seats and there is one seat each to Independent Nick Xenophon from South Australia and the Victorian Family First Senator Steve Fielding. This new Senate makeup means that on any issue where Labor can't get Coalition support, they need all seven votes from the Green/ Xenophon/Family First cross-bench. It is hard to predict how often Labor will need this cross-bench combination to get its legislative agenda agreed to, let alone how hard it will be to get agreement across the seven cross-benchers. A lot will depend on the attitude the Coalition takes. The prospect of Labor having difficulty garnering enough support to get legislation through with sufficient ease does raise the prospect of whether a double-dissolution election could be called and what that may then do to the makeup of the Senate. However, what is evident is that the new Labor government's view of the Senate does not appear to be that much different from that of the Coalition. The Senate in Australian Cultural History 193

2008 sat for a mere fifty-two days. This is an even smaller number of days than the record lows witnessed under the Coalition regime. There is certainly some pragmatism in Labor Party scheduling just twenty-one Senate sitting days between the start of the new parliament and 30 June 2008, when the Coalition lost control of the Senate. But to schedule only thirty-one days on top of that for the rest of the year disregards the important work the senate undertakes and is further indication that the senate will be further sidelined under the new Labor government. It is not pro-Senate parochialism to state that the Senate is far more important as a legislative chamber than the House of Representatives. The Senate's power as a house of review is critical, particularly when the chamber is not under the control of anyone party. When the chamber genuinely considers proposed laws, debates amendments and makes modifications to those laws, there is a much greater chance that the legislation will be stronger, fairer and much more responsive to community needs. This has been the role the Democrats have undertaken for over thirty years and it remains to be seen whether the new cross-bench players can be as effective as legislators and whether the Democrats will ever again have any further role in the federal legislative process.

Notes I. All figures in this paragraph are from the following Morgan Senate Poll unless otherwise indicated; Morgan Senate Poll, 'Coalition Senate support up 2per cent in October" Finding No. 4241, 13 November 2007, http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2007/4241/. accessed 5 November 2009. 2. 'Poll favours Democrats for Senate', Sunday Mail (Queensland), 18 November 2007, p 9. 3. Andrew Bartlett, 'It's the Senate, stupid' in M Simms and J Warhurst (eds), Mortgage Nation: The 2004 Australian Election, API Network, Perth, 2005, p 153. Copyright of Full Text rests with the original copyright owner and, except as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, copying this copyright material is prohibited without the permission of the owner or its exclusive licensee or agent or by way of a license from Copyright Agency Limited. For information about such licences contact Copyright Agency Limited on (02) 93947600 (ph) or (02) 93947601 (fax)