February 2008

Good afternoon and thank you for joining us at this month’s Friday Lunch Forum.

Who would have guessed that, on a beautiful day in Sydney, people would come along to a Parliament House lunch to discuss Liberal Party Reform? A sexy topic it is not.

Well might you ask, why the devil are we discussing Liberal Party reform? Why is it topical?

Well, after the Federal election loss, our federal colleagues resorted to the time-honoured, post-election, political diversion of calling for party reform - as though organisational structure and rules could somehow explain the federal election loss - they don’t.

The Federal Government lost the election because of the community’s perception of Workchoices and because after eleven years, our federal colleagues were behaving and talking like a decade-old Government.

Nevertheless, party reform became topical again – that is, at least it’s topical WITHIN the Liberal Party as members wonder where it will all lead.

I think the reform agenda is one of those very important but totally unsexy issues which can nevertheless have a profound impact on the culture of the Liberal Party.

Meanwhile, as the Iemma Government goes through one of its regular and widespread melt-downs, we must ruthlessly hold them to account for their failures but, we also need to remember we won’t cruise into Government solely on the back of Labor failures.

We must be a strong alternative. We must stand for something and we must have a strong party organisation.

This week of turmoil in NSW Labor represents another opportunity to attract further support to the Liberal Party as people turn their backs on Labor.

To embrace any groundswell, the Liberal Party has to reach out to the community and the next few months reform debate really is another chance to make changes which minimise internal bickering and maximise our community focus on the march to the state election in 2011.

Today I’ll suggest a few changes to reclaim our party from apparatchiks of the left and the right and give it back to the community.

Over the last two years, we have reformed some of the NSW Party’s rules and we want further change for the better – but not change for the sake of change.

From an internal point of view, reform can address the integrity, productivity and administrative cost of our party structures and functions and, with an eye to the external (or media) point of view, we can also through reform reduce the frequency and intensity of newsworthy internal disputes.

We need to remember however that internal party politics is NOT the main game for the community or voters, despite the media’s understandable hunger for any angle on internal bickering.

Very few people in New South Wales are interested in party reform.

Mostly they’re focused on living their lives and ensuring their families are insulated from the intrusion and incompetence of government.

Thankfully now about half the NSW community are also interested in seeing the back of this hopeless state government.

But still – reform is important and a Party’s willingness to pursue fairness and transparency in their internal affairs is an indicator of the Party’s likely priorities in the management of Government. So the media and some of the community do watch how we behave amongst ourselves.

My aim today is to encourage debate about reform so the outcome will be influenced by average members not determined by those on the left, or those on the right, or by a few party officials.

This year, we do have a window of opportunity for further reform.

While we have local government elections in September, it is now probably eighteen months to the next federal election and it is three years to the state election.

If you look at the Liberal Party’s Constitution, you’ll see 213 pages written by lawyers for the activists on the left and the right in our Party.

Yes, our broad church includes apparatchiks.

Apparatchiks - originally used to describe communist party functionaries but now a good description for those party activists who see their prime role as fighting the internal “cold war” – the battle between left and right – usually not a philosophical battle but rather simply manoeuvring to claim the spoils of Opposition.

The Liberal Party thankfully doesn’t have formalised factions.

But hey surprise, surprise, we do have a number of groups of party members with supposedly similar interests. We have some party members organised on the left, we have some on the right, we have some party members associated with former regimes, we have some from various regions and then importantly we have the rest of us.

That is, about 70% of party members who simply don’t care who is on the left, who is on the right, who is on the coast or who is from the past.

What we do care about is who represents the future.

We especially care about having a healthy Liberal family, not one that at times has the appearance of a dysfunctional, bickering brotherhood.

How about this year we set a few ground rules, which work for the rest of us – for the average members of our Liberal family - not simply for the left or the right.

We have the next few months to consider reforms, which simplify party structures, encourage branches, promote inclusiveness, attract and retain members, reduce bickering and encourage policy debate.

A few changes can widen not narrow the sharing of power ensuring consensus is the priority not a winner-takes-all autocracy.

The alternative is the slow burnout – the slow but steady entrenching of power brokers in a steadily shrinking Liberal Party.

None of us can afford that and our democracy would not be well served by a small party run by apparatchiks.

As this year’s reform wagon rolls across the state, a kaleidoscope of options will be discussed.

* More branches or less?

* Bigger or smaller branches?

* Branches by function not by geography, as Michael Kroger suggests.

* Pre-selection by the thousands or the introduction of pre-selection vetoes.

But to me, the most critical reform question - the starting point if you like - is simply:

“Do we want more members, or less, involved in the Liberal Party?”

And if we do want more members, do we also genuinely want to involve them in the affairs of the Party?

I hope the answer is Yes and Yes – that we want more members and we also want to engage them in all aspects of the Party.

Let’s remember the basics.

Political parties exist to put people in parliament and to win public policy debate.

Parties aim to maximise their number of parliamentarians by winning more seats and they aim to win public policy debates by shaping and promoting good policies, which also represent good politics.

To win more seats and be in touch, we can’t afford an exclusive party of bickering activists from the left and the right.

We need an inclusive party representative of the wider community with branches in as many locations as possible.

We need more members – thousands and thousands more.

More Members

While we need more members, today the Liberal Party unfortunately still maintains barriers to entry.

Apparently some of our branches don’t like some of our community.

For years, the NSW Liberal Party has maintained an embarrassing little clause, which allows gatekeepers to lock some people out of “their” branches.

It is Clause 2.4.4 (4) of our constitution, which allows branches to reject people they don’t like.

It’s the local veto rule. Local branches can veto new members.

No wonder we have less and less people in the Party.

It has to stop.

We need more and more people in the party - not just our family and friends, not just ideological warriors, not just the ambitious, not just vested interests.

How about we open to everyone in our local communities to join their local branch?

At various times, for various reasons, a lot of people do want to join our party.

Why don’t we welcome them instead of slamming the door in their face?

Last year, just under half the state election voters (47.7% or just under two million voters) wanted us to form the State Government.

But at the same time, the NSW Liberal Party membership had just peaked at about 12,000. That is our members were only a little over half of one percent of OUR voters.

And about a third of NSW party members, that is about 4,000, were in my local branches thanks to some galactic scale membership drives by two of my federal colleagues.

Why is it that only a newsworthy pre-selection will result in a significant increase in Liberal Party membership?

I think the answer is simple.

That dramatic increase in membership was the only time enthusiastic members of the community combined with enthusiastic harvesting by the gatekeepers.

Why can’t we dramatically increase membership again and again!

Because you know frequently, a lot of people do actually want to get on board the Liberal Party.

But gee we make it tough.

The gatekeepers are ruthless in protecting their vested interests.

Whether it is the latest outrage with Labor or maybe it is when we hit a nerve with good policy and good politics, people every now and then are VERY motivated to join our Liberal Party.

In some cases, they are immigrants who have experienced socialism overseas and want to work to prevent it taking hold here in Australia.
 
In other cases, small business families threatened by Labor's relentless economic vandalism want to work with us to protect their family’s future.
 
Some people are motivated by the latest Labor outrage – remember the number of Liberal Party members created by Gough Whitlam’s policies.

For many people in NSW, Morris Iemma is now reaching Gough’s status as an incompetent icon.
 
We must embrace those people.
 
Last weekend’s Sun-Herald survey said 70% of people had lost confidence in Morris Iemma’s government.

We need to attract those people not only to vote for us but we need to harness their motivation to get rid of Labor by getting them to join and work with our party.

People Power
 
You know one of the very real satisfactions from my time in the leadership of the Party and especially in the months running up to the state election was seeing and feeling the on-street enthusiasm of people across the state.

People who love this state as much as I do and wanted to change things.

In community meetings, on the streets, at the Dapto dogs, at football games, in shopping centres, in clubs and pubs from Albury to Tweed and from Bondi to Broken Hill, people wanted to talk about changing state government for the better.

There was a groundswell of enthusiasm as people rose to exercise their democratic right to vote.

One of the strengths of last year’s election campaign was that we were able to harness that surge of enthusiasm on the streets as people volunteered to help our Liberal candidates get elected. It was great.

We always knew it would be a very tough campaign, with little chance of an outright win given the enormous margins we had to overcome.

But we also found out early on that the vibes on the street were good and indicated we would get a swing.

The community enthusiasm was infectious and in each electorate hundreds and sometimes thousands of people assisted our campaigns.

For the first time in nineteen years and five state elections, we turned the tide against the Labor Party across the state, increased our vote significantly, won three seats from Labor, won back another three from Independents and turned many safe Labor seats into marginal targets for 2011.

Thousands of campaign helpers across New South Wales rightly shared our sense of achievement.

Many of those campaign helpers were not Liberal Party members and, after the election, many of them wanted to join our Party.

You can imagine their sense of betrayal when after putting blood, sweat and tears into our election campaign, some of their membership applications were rejected.

Some branches didn’t want them because they were a threat to the local power brokers.

That was and remains today just plain stupid.

But it is the way some branches controlled by apparatchiks have operated for years.

We can stop that abuse with two rule changes.

Firstly, get rid of the local branch veto over new members and secondly require all NEW members and transferring members to join the suburban branch determined by their address on the electoral roll.

If there is currently no branch in their suburb, the State Director can determine the closest branch for allocation of their membership.

(Existing members would stay in their current branch but if they wanted to transfer, they could only transfer to their local suburban branch.)

Young Liberals would be the exception with one Young Liberal branch per electorate.

Party members could still involve themselves in the activities or functions of any other branch to which they were invited but their voting rights would stay in their “enrolled” branch.

Let’s form new branches in suburbs and regions and say to every branch across the state “Go forth and multiply!”

And do it early and often.

To borrow from Sir Robert Menzies - Populate or Perish.

I can see the easy headline now: “Debnam encourages branch-stackers”.

Branch-stacker is used as a derogatory term.

I want a party of salesmen and women who are proud to sign into their branch as many of their local neighbours as time and energy permits.

Let’s make every branch president a sales manager.

One of our assets is that we have among our members and supporters some of the best marketing people in Australia who can help prepare and implement a real growth strategy for the NSW Party.

An important part of that membership growth strategy must be continuing the political momentum we built up in the year before the state election.

As last year’s results showed, we turned the tide against Labor. Now we need to keep them in retreat.

The next five years should see the Australian political cycle elect the Coalition to office in the states.

The community will continue to gravitate towards the Liberal Party if we work aggressively to take government in 2011.

We need thousands of new members and not just to attend boring branch meetings or just to man booths in March 2011. We need also to engage them in the day-to-day issues of the party including pre-selections and policy debate.

Pre-selections

Given pre-selections are usually key targets of power brokers, we should empower party members by dispersing the pre-selection power.

But I don’t believe a plebiscite of all members in the conference is sensible.

The simple logistics are difficult today and you can imagine the pre-selection logistics when we add thousands of new members in each electorate.

Currently, pre-selectors are drawn from branches, conferences, state council and state executive.

In the case of branches, pre-selectors are effectively chosen by whoever controls the numbers in the branch.

Democracy would be better served if the branch executive were entitled to the first five pre-selector spots but any further preselectors required were chosen by random computer selection of branch members, as is currently done for state council pre-selectors.

There might also be discussion in the next few months of giving party leadership a final say on candidates or a veto power. If that were to happen, you will end up with the Labor model of centralised power where a few individuals can override the whole party membership.

Party leaders already have some veto power in the Nomination Review Process and I would counsel against further centralisation.

If Party Leaders have a point of view on candidates then they should argue it in the preselection process.

In the run-up to the last state election, we collectively chose the person we saw as the best candidate in every one of the ninety three lower house seats.

In those pre-selection contests, I openly used the weight of the Party Leader’s position to convince pre-selectors to vote for the best candidate.

In a number of cases I incurred the private and public wrath of local powerbrokers and subsequently paid the price in the party room after the election. But I was happy we went to the election with the best people in the best spots and for the first time in five elections, we increased our vote.

The important point was that without any greater power than my one vote and persistent persuasion, along with other members of the party we were able to turn the tables on some pre-selection contests.

Up until the vote, many of those preselections had been locked away by local powerbrokers and the best candidate was simply not going to win.

That intervention gave us at least four of our new MPs.

It also retained four other well-respected sitting MPs who were being undermined by the left in some cases and by the right in other cases with the possible result that the Liberal Party would lose those seats at the election.

In the end, we got the best candidate in each electorate but as Party Leader I had to put my job on the line to get that result.

That is the way it should be.

Party Leaders don’t need super vote powers or vetoes.

We need a field of good candidates and Leaders need the courage of their convictions - as some say - they need ticker.
 
Policy Debate

In relation to policy, the Liberal Party has a separation of powers so members of parliament cannot be directed to vote for a particular policy by the Party’s organisation.

Even the Labor Party has steadily tried to move away from their old policy straightjacket, which requires that policy is approved by faceless Labor machine men.

But because Labor still has the policy straightjacket, any move to change policy is extensively debated publicly. That is a good thing.

The Liberal Party’s separation of powers does however result in an historic reluctance to openly debate new policy and that is to our disadvantage.

We must have the confidence to aggressively debate policy changes within the Party and publicly.

The challenge is to create effective forums for policy debate but to date we haven’t succeeded.

That challenge is the responsibility of the Parliamentary Party and our frontbench must find ways to engage the wider party membership in each portfolio.

We don’t have to hide our policy development process from public view.

There will always be some policies held back for impact during the campaign and they need to be well researched and supported.

But the vast bulk of our policy positions can be debated openly throughout a parliamentary term.

We need to create policy discussion forums and have the confidence to utilise all channels of party communication to promote policy debate. If the debate gets a little hot occasionally, so be it.

Bigger or Smaller branches

On another chestnut, there is always debate about what should be the minimum size of branches.

To most it is a boring topic, but it’s critical to our success because branches are the arms and legs of the Liberal Party and stalwart party members are also often the heart and soul of the Party.

They man street stalls, man polling booths, letterbox drop, fundraise, identify and discuss local and wider issues. They spread our message to local communities and they act as a corporate memory.

Sometimes branches of ten are as effective as branches of one hundred. Sometimes large branches are asleep.

We need to encourage branches not just for election campaigns but also to reach out to local communities. And to do that we need an extensive branch network which is actively engaged.

Don’t cut back on branches. Don’t raise the minimum membership numbers.

Encourage more branches – but under new rules i.e. branches of locals.

Then give those branches every encouragement to attract as many members from their local communities as possible and to actively engage them in the Party’s affairs.

So, what is the bottom line?

Let’s have a good debate about Party reform but then let’s get on with the changes by midyear. Don’t let it drag on.

As I said at the outset, reform isn’t sexy but it IS critical to best position us for success in 2011. And that electoral success should be our total focus in everything we do for the next three years.

In summary, my suggestions are:

· Remove the branch veto of new members;
· New members or transferring members to join their suburban (electoral roll) branch;
· Extend the branch network;
· Implement an aggressive membership growth strategy;
· Random selection of each branch’s pre-selectors when more than five are required;
· One Young Liberals branch per electorate with all members to be from that electorate; and
· Create ongoing policy debate forums for party members and chaired by Frontbench MPs.

These are changes we must make by July this year if we are serious about refocusing the Party towards the community.

I look forward to your comments and questions and then please extend the debate throughout the Party.

Thank you for joining us today.