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The inaugural address of The Light on the Hill Society

- sponsored by Revesby Workers Club

STRICTLY EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY (7pm)

Senator John Faulkner: Public Pessimism, Political Complacency: Restoring
Trust, Reforming Labor.

I have always believed that politics is worthwhile.
This is not, nowadays, a popular view.
Important issues are, we are told, above politics because politics, by
implication and expectation, are the province of the low road.
No more damaging charge can be made than to say someone is playing
politics with an issue because, by implication and expectation, politics is a game
played for personal gain and for entertainment.
But politics is one of the ways the chief way any democracy works out
solutions to its problems. Politics is a way to manage substantial disagreements
within a society or a community, and to bring about real change for the better. Our
politics is the expression of our values, our beliefs, and our policy priorities. Politics
is about the public good - not private interest.
Widespread contempt for the practice of politics is not because Australians
have lost faith in what politics really is. It is because too many Australians have
come to see our parliaments, our governments, our political parties, and our
politicians, as practising not politics but its opposite: a values-free competition for
office and the spoils it can deliver.


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Individuals who transgress recent examples being Peter Slipper and Craig
Thomson are seen by many as representatives of the rest. There is no doubt that the
seemingly unending parade of current and former politicians from both major
parties through NSWs ICAC has been the icing on the cake as far as that view is
concerned.
But these individual symptoms would not have as much impact if there were
not a deeper disease in our democracy a deficit of that trust on which democracies
depend.
That trust is not or is not necessarily trust of any particular individual
involved in the political process, but trust in the political process itself. Trust that
elections are conducted fairly and that they produce legitimate governments, even if
they are not the government of our preference; trust that in the balance between the
executive government, the parliament and the courts, each fulfils a specific and
necessary role; trust that even where we disagree with policy, it is shaped and
delivered by our representatives, and that those representatives make informed
judgments based on sound advice.
On that consensus of trust rests the operation of our government: the ability
to make decisions, even where they may not be popular; the ability to pass laws,
even where they constrain or disadvantage some members of the community; the
ability to assign what may be scarce resources to priorities, and therefore not to other
areas or interests.
On that consensus of trust has been built some of humanity's most
courageous efforts to transform the world in which we live.
Without that trust politics is a contest of personalities, not ideas a contest
with no more relevance than an episode of Masterchef, for without trust in the
political process how can any of us believe that the votes we cast influence the future
direction of our country?


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Our trust in our democratic institutions such as parliament and our political
partieshas been undermined by how theyre portrayed and perceived, but also by
the very real flaws in our democracy.
Spiralling costs of electioneering have created a campaigning arms race
heightening the danger that fundraising pressures on political parties and
candidates will open the door to donations that might attempt to buy access and
influence.
In Australia, as in other democracies around the world, the potential for large
and undisclosed sums of money in election and campaign financing has become
more and more a matter of concern to the public. These perceptions of possible
influence need not be only concerns about potential undue influence in the narrow
sense of how government decisions are made, but in a broader sense: concerns that
parties and politicians dependent on large donors will be if not compliant, then at
least receptive, or that large donors and fundraisers may get access that others do
not.
The perception of undue influence can be as damaging to democracy as
undue influence itself. It undermines confidence in our processes of government,
making it difficult to untangle the motivation behind policy decisions. Electors are
left wondering if decisions have been made on their merits.
I have argued long and hard about the need for reform of our electoral
funding laws at the federal level. Unfortunately, I was not persuasive enough,
particularly when I was the Special Minister of State, to convince the Senate in 2008
and 2009 that reform was desperately needed. My attempts to make our system
more transparent and freer from corruption and improper influence failed.
Political parties have a privileged position in our electoral system. Any
Australian can run for public office, but a registered political party can be formally
recognised on the ballot paper, nominate multiple candidates, and receive public
funding for its election costs if its endorsed candidates receive at least 4 percent of
the vote.
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In the past four Federal elections, over $180m of public funding has been
dispersed, with over 80 percent of that funding going to the two major parties.
Political parties also have privileged access to the Electoral Roll, and are
exempted from most of the provisions of the Privacy Act in their use of the Roll, as
long as that use is for electoral purposes.
I believe these privileges bestowed by legislation should entail strict
conditions and obligations for those political parties which qualify for them.
Party members and the public at large are entitled to know that standards
exist, that these standards are open to public discussion and public assessment, and
that they must be met.
Principles of integrity, transparency, and accountability are crucially
important to Labors reforming agenda, because they enable that faith in the political
process which is critically important to the consensus building that makes reform
possible. And those principles are equally important to Labors historic values of
fairness and equality, because they safeguard our movement against vested
interests, self-interest and unfair advantage.
The stench of corruption which has come to characterise the NSW Labor Party
must be eliminated. Failing to act is not an option. The Party which gave you Eddie
Obeid, Ian Macdonald and Craig Thomson, and promoted Michael Williamson as its
National President must now be open to scrutiny and its processes subject to the rule
of law. In fact, I believe that the rules and decisions of all political parties should be
justiciable, and that State and Federal Governments should consider making a
partys eligibility for public funding contingent upon it.
All party tribunals must be impartial, independent and conducted fairly. The
party must insist on a binding code of conduct for its candidates, parliamentarians
and officials. The recent NSW Annual Conference adopted my proposed rule change
to include this in the NSW Rules. All state and territory Conferences, and National
Conference, should do so as well.

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The practice of factions, affiliates or interest groups binding parliamentarians
in Caucus votes or ballots must be banned. Factional binding is inherently
undemocratic. It allows a group with 51% of a subfaction, which then makes up 51%
of a faction, which in turn has 51% of the Caucus numbers, to force the entire Caucus
to their position. This Russian doll of nested factions is profoundly undemocratic
and, as we have seen in NSW, wide open to manipulation.
The reforms I proposed as Special Minister of State included significant
measures:
to reduce the donations disclosure threshold from its current level of
$12,800 to $1,000 and remove indexation;
prohibit foreign and anonymous donations;
limit the potential for 'donation splitting' across branches, divisions or
different units of parties;
require faster and more regular disclosure of donations; and
introduce new offences and significantly increase penalties for the
breach of electoral law.
These reforms would have enhanced the transparency and accountability of
political donations, and I would like to think they would have had at least some
dampening effect on the behaviour that is being exposed at ICAC. It is quite clear
that much more needs to be done in this area. The recent events in New South Wales
should motivate all Australian political parties to work together for far-reaching and
long-overdue reform of our electoral donations, funding and expenditure laws. This
is a real and urgent challenge for all political leaders.
Elections must be a contest of ideas, not a battle of bank-balances.
And in that contest of ideas, our political parties are paramount. In our two-
Party system the selection of candidates and the setting of policies within the major
political parties have perhaps as great an influence on Australias governance as do
general elections. It is therefore essential that Australias political parties are open,
transparent and democratic no code-words, no cabals, no secret handshakes.
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Labor at its best would take the lead in fixing this problem.
The best way for Labor to demonstrate that we are genuine in pursuing
reform is to reform ourselves.
Labor is dedicated to the basic principle that any community or country is
stronger when all of us are involved in our democracy. That no government can find
the best solutions to the challenges facing us, without drawing on the abilities of all of
us the experience, the knowledge, the skills, the judgement of the whole
community, and not just a section of it.
Our Party was formed with the conviction that working men and women
could not get fair representation without participation: that no government would
consider the needs, or could reflect the priorities, of those with no seat at the table.
When we talk about Labors commitment to democracy our long history of
broadening and defending the franchise, of striving to safeguard the fairness of the
electoral system we are talking about policies that reflect those central, original
understandings. No-one speaks for us who does not accept our right to speak for
ourselves; and no policy solution can be considered complete if the list of those
contributing to it is partial.
Labors original structures, although they varied from colony to colony, all
reflected that basic belief in democratic participation. As the Party grew, the sheer
practical difficulties of a mass party in a nation the size of the continent were
resolved with models based on delegation.
Labors model of delegated democracy was cutting edge in 1891.
A hundred years ago, the difficulty of travel and communication around our
huge continent made party members direct participation in the ALPs organisation
impractical. The solution was for local members to delegate their democratic rights.
Today, the problem and the solution are out-of-date. Today, the abuse of those
structures too often smothers Party democracy. Today, we can and we must do
better.

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We now have technologies that offer unprecedented opportunities for the
direct and secure communication of information. More importantly, they provide us
with unprecedented opportunities for interaction. And they are woven into
everyday life so inextricably that, to the younger members of our community
especially, they have become invisible.
They offer a huge potential to party organisation and for party democracy,
and at the same time fundamentally change expectations of participation,
engagement and responsiveness.
Labors structures and organisation must be based on the way people today
organise, communicate and participate not, as our current structures are, on the
ways that their grandparents did.
Australian political parties have begun, perhaps more slowly than in other
countries, to engage with social media as a campaigning tool. Even I am now on
Facebook. But the internet email, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, Google Plus
are not merely broadcast mediums with the potential to reach many more people for
much less effort and expense than mail-outs or television advertisements. They are
immediate, interactive, tools for community activism. Their prevalence and for
more and more Australians, their pervasiveness has, I believe, profoundly changed
our ideas of community and our expectations of what community and political
involvement looks like.
Twenty-first century democracy is very different from even ten or fifteen
years ago: self-organising, intolerant of top-down management, expecting
interactivity and immediacy.
Geographically based organisation, face-to-face meetings, complex
procedures and delegated decision-making suited an Australia without cars or
telephones even the Australia of my student days, before faxes or answering
machines, let alone mobiles and emails. But it does not suit Australia today.


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Structures which were once the cutting-of edge delegated democracy are now
used as a way to prevent democracy, to prevent open debate, and to consolidate the
power of the powerful in the Labor Party. As a Party, we should be true to our
heritage and embrace real reform and an opening-up of the Partys decision-making
processes. We should to the maximum extent possible adhere to the fundamental
principle of one person, one vote.
Labors recent leadership ballot was an important first step. But promising
first steps should not be confused with the journeys end.
There are many more steps on the road to increased participation of voting
members.
Our branch members have been the lifeblood of our Party, but branch
attendance is no longer the only way to measure activism and commitment, and
voting in our internal ballots ought not to be regarded as a reward earned only by
those able to negotiate arcane rules.
Preselections ought to be the opportunity to determine who is best suited to
campaign for Labor values in the community and legislate for them in Parliament.
They must have wide participation from Labor members and supporters.
I support the community preselections trialled in NSW with weighted votes
from Party members equalling declared supporters, and I believe they should
become the rule, rather than the exception.
I continue to argue for a full, statewide ballot of all Party members to
preselect candidates for upper houses again, to test their abilities to persuade and
represent their statewide constituency.
I proposed this rules change at the recent NSW Annual Conference and it was
defeated. I do not pretend to think that this reform or others, are or will become
more popular with factional managers and powerbrokers.
There are very few voices among those with formal or informal power within
our Party who are willing to contemplate, let alone advocate change - despite the
increasingly loud calls for reform from members and branches.
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I may be beating my head against a brick wall, and of course I will be
criticised for what I am saying tonight, but I cannot in good conscience cease to
argue for a cause I believe is both right, and necessary, and in the Labor interest.
Labors State and National Conferences should also become more
representative and democratic. Conferences must begin to include a component of
directly elected delegates. Every eligible member of the party should have the
opportunity to vote for these Conference delegates, through direct member ballots.
Proportionate regional zones could ensure broad geographical representation.
The existing and widening chasm between Labors commitment to democracy
and our internal practice of it, between our focus on the future and our antiquated
organisation, undermines our policy agenda and casts doubt on its authenticity.
And I say to those who resist the opening up of our structures to more
participation and more democracy, because they see their control over managed and
pre-negotiated outcomes slipping away stop clinging to the wheel. You are
steering us straight for the rocks.
Those anxious about reform should remember that Labors history has been,
first and foremost, a story of reform.
Reform of the laws covering Australians in the workplace and the unions that
represent them, to ensure fair pay, bargaining power and decent conditions. Reform
of the economy whether the creation of the Commonwealth Bank at the beginning
of the last century or the floating of the dollar at its end. Reform in health care, from
the PBS to Medibank to Medicare. Reform in social policies, from the old age pension
to equal pay for women. And let us not forget, Labors history of reform is also the
story of reforming ourselves.
These are all aspects of the same single story a story that has changed and
evolved over twelve decades, but one where the hopes and aspirations, as well as
the flaws and struggles, echo and repeat.


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Previous generations of Labor activists, parliamentarians, and Party officials
took on the, at times, difficult and thankless task of reforming the Party and its
policy. One lesson that Labors history has for us is that we cannot expect to repeat
past successes if we shirk similar burdens.
The other lesson our history has is that the decisions of our predecessors were
shaped by circumstance, rather than being timeless and immutable expressions of
Labors spirit.
Our debates over the best path into the future have always involved attempts
to lay claim to our past. Each generation of Labor members and activists chooses
their own icons and their own history, to become their guide and justification a
weapon of choice in battles against foes within and without the party.
But mistaking history for immutable truth obscures not only the reality of the
present but the opportunities of the future.
While Labors structures and rules have always been the expression of the
best efforts of the men, and later men and women, of the time, they have also been
the expression of their blind spots and assumptions, and like our policies
require regular revision to meet the challenges of a changing world.
We need a clear-eyed appreciation of our past to take a hard look at our
future direction.
Although it was once accepted wisdom that Australia rode on the sheeps
back and it is now often said that we ride the wave of demand for our mineral
wealth, the truth is and always has been that Australias prosperity has been carried
on the backs and built from the labours of the working men and women of our
nation.
The labour of their hands has built our countrys wealth; the labour of their
hearts and minds have built our countrys strength, the great social contract that
underpins the fundamental egalitarianism which has set Australia apart.
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Through collective action and mutual support, these men and women strove
in the 19
th
century to build better lives, better working conditions, better
opportunities, for each other and for those who came after.
By the 1890s, their efforts were directed both through the union movement
and through the Australian Labor Party, and that commitment to a better and a
fairer future was directed not only to those who shared a workplace or an industry.
It had become a broader commitment to all: a commitment that could only be
realised through government action and through legislation. The Australian Labor
Party was born from that desire to make and unmake social conditions: one of only
seven parties with formal, organisational ties to the union movement, in the world.
These ties are the defining characteristic of a labour party.
For twelve decades those ties have strengthened us, and challenged us. They
have been a constant of our history and I believe will be a constant of our future.
But the form and structure of those ties has changed many, many times.
Labor was founded 123 years ago and in the decades since, Australia,
Australias workplaces, and Australias union movement have changed, in ways
unimaginable to our founders.
And the Labor Party has changed with them. Indeed, the history of Labor is
the history of these changes sometimes dramatic, sometimes subtle, reforms to the
relationship between the Party and the movement, to the formal rules that govern
our interaction.
It is only in recent generations that Labor has ceased to constantly re-evaluate
and re-assess that relationship
It is only in recent years that the rules we have, which are a product of the
power struggles of the past and the accidents of history, have come to be seen as the
holy grail of Labor organisation by some members of the Labor Party and the labour
movement who are, it must be said, advantaged in internal party power
distribution by the way things are today.
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But we do not become less a Labor Party because we scrutinise ourselves.
Any more than we are less a Labor Party because of the reforms instituted by
McKell or Whitlam.
The Partys relationship with affiliated trade unions should no longer be just
about direct control through 50:50 rules and the like, but about greater consultation
and involvement. We have to make the relationship more meaningful and mutually
beneficial.
Trade unions are, and will remain, important for Labor. They are a social
force, albeit a declining social force, but in an age where collective identity and
endeavour is fracturing, union membership is a connection to shared efforts and
progressive ideas: to economic justice, to solidarity, to co-operation.
We will not meet the urgent challenges of this new century without those
values, and unions, and union membership, build and strengthen those values in
our community.
But all too often unions are viewed and behave in the Labor Party as just
institutions: large, faceless institutions controlled by union secretaries, who are in
turn obedient to factional cartels. And right now, that is how union engagement with
the Labor Party works.
I would like to see our Party actually engaging union members: giving them a
voice, giving them a vote. They should have a direct say, just as Party members
should have a direct say, not have their opinions filtered through layers of
delegation.
Influence over ALP policy should depend on the strength of your case and the
quality of your argument, not on the number of members you claim belong to your
union a claim which, as we have seen recently, does not always accord with reality.
If union secretaries fear they will make no impact on Labor without the bully
pulpit of the 50:50 rule, they should ask themselves how they expect the Labor Party
to persuade the community to support policies and candidates which union leaders
cannot even persuade ALP members to endorse.
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To deepen and strengthen the relationship between the labour movement and
the Labor Party, rank and file unionists, working people, must represent their unions
in our Labor Party. If we are to be a Party representing a movement, then we need to
ensure that working people are present and playing a role in key decision making
forums.
Australia is changing, and the Party and unions have to change with it. We
need to rebuild Labor from the grassroots not the top down.
We have to democratise our Party and reach out to union members and
involve them directly in the Partys decision making processes.
This should lead to a deeper relationship with organised labour as a
fundamental part of our Labor community.
To achieve this, the Party should encourage members of affiliated unions to
join the Party and participate directly in Party decisions and deliberations.
For the purpose of determining union affiliation numbers, unions should only
be able to count members who have agreed to their membership being counted
towards that affiliation in an opt-in system.
All union delegates to Party Conferences should be elected through a ballot of
union members, conducted under the principle of proportional representation, and
should not be appointed without election. Unions should be required to amend their
own rules, to fulfil this objective.
Our current State Conference structures provide 50% representation to
affiliated unions which represent only a portion of the 17% of working people who
belong to a union at all. This must change.
The component of conference delegates directly elected by party members,
which I spoke of earlier, should increase over time, while the percentage of both the
delegates elected by Electorate Councils, and those elected by unions, should reduce
in tandem. I would hope to see a structure with 60% of Delegates elected by the
membership, 20% by the Affiliated Unions and 20% elected by Electorate Councils,
reached in stages over the next three National Conferences.
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Even then, there would still be a positive disparity or over representation of
union proportionality to unionisation of the workforce. There would also be an
incentive for union members to have a direct relationship with the Party as well as
participating through their union. Indeed, being active in both Party and union
would provide additional opportunities to participate activism would be
rewarded.
Democratic, representative, transparent systems ought to be the goal of all
political parties, but most especially the Australian Labor Party, which was founded
on the belief in the value of the participation and representation of everyone in our
democracy.
This belief, deep in the bedrock of our Party, gives us both an unique
advantage and an unique responsibility in facing the challenges that now confront
our Australian democracy, which remains, however flawed, not only the best but the
only way for our country to work together to face the challenges of this new century.
Labor has at our core the values which can revitalise our political system and
restore faith and confidence in the power of democratic government to resolve our
differences and surmount our difficulties.
Having those values, we cannot turn our back on the problems our
democracy now faces. It is our challenge, and our duty, to take the lead in restoring
trust.
We must start by reforming ourselves.