Proposed Nationals voting change would deny access to democracy

Because Victorian National Anne Webster had her idea of changing the voting rules in our party aired in this newspaper on Wednesday, I shall repudiate them on the same pages.

Rosie Lewis revealed that under Webster’s proposal Nationals MPs would need to vote in a two-thirds majority for there to be a leadership spill.

I am fervently opposed to the mooted change to diminish access to senators and members determining their leader. I am against it because its purpose is to curtail access to a vote, which is obviously a removal of a democratic attribute of our party. This has come out of left field and is too important for us to sit mute on. The detractors will call it self-interest and I suppose I have to live with that, though it is a shallow analysis and I believe a myopic one.

In the Nationals you are not sacked if you cross the floor. You can express your views to the extent that Kevin Hogan, the member for Page, sat on the crossbench while in the Nationals, retaining the capacity to vote and attend the partyroom. The vote last Tuesday should not be a precursor to changing our party culture.

If it is the process of other political parties then that is also wrong — they don’t value the democratic process and we should not be bound to follow them. I suppose as they sack, disendorse or expel you if you reflect in your vote or a statement a difference to the direction of the leader, we should mimic that as well? Better still, why not just join their party and save on the political livery expense?

A small section of modern society in modern history has created the greatest advancement in personal liberty with the advent of true democracy but it is a very rare bird. It is disregarded or outlawed in so many countries as it is a threat to incumbency, which the inherently enlightened justify as their entitlement.

Russia has reverted to a mere nominal tilt of the hat to testing the will of the people and China is carte blanche autocracy. This has not helped Russia’s economy and quite evidently China’s capacity to deal with a crisis such as the coronavirus epidemic.

Centralised, unquestioned power by its nature builds a superstructure of internal caveats and policing of the liberties of its citizens. Its greatest fear, fired by paranoia, masked in arrogance, is its own people. The most perverse and clearest example was the 37-year reign of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

Democracy is not removed in a fell swoop but adulterated in gradation. Sometimes it falls all the way into the incestuous morass of the clique, sometimes it hovers. Out of respect for what we have, and acknowledgment that history is proof of its tenuous nature, we must not mimic even minor forms of its demise. As an example, committees that advise government are actually usurping the power of government if the advice becomes instruction with penalties for a government minister who does not follow them.

I believe the outcry over Bridget McKenzie, because she had the temerity to follow a process with all its latitude as endorsed by the parliament of Australia, was misplaced and creates a dangerous precedent. Ministers are elected by the people — not bureaucrats and not appointed bodies. Encapsulated in a democratic process is the knowledge that those elected have the right to, among other things, distribute grants as allowed by the pertinent act of parliament

As another example parties that change the threshold of a successful vote or change the threshold for access to the test for a vote on the false premise of cohesion are merely disenfranchising people with the same excuse as is always used. It works better for Russia when Vladimir Putin does not have an election.

The process of a federal election brings to parliament a representative democracy but the primary article for the selection of leaders therein is a direct democracy. Access to direct selection should only be tempered by confidence in the leader, giving reason to the security in their tenure and meaning a spill would be quixotic. Do a good job, keep your job, do a bad job, lose your job. The test, if required, is getting a vote greater than 50 per cent.

I remember at a Nationals party conference being one of only three in a vote of a possible 500 and later being preselected by the same body for the Senate. The Nationals prided themselves on the right to your own opinion and the unremarkable presumption that you can pursue that opinion and be availed a vote. To me, it was a reflection that parodying of the Nationals as regional bucolic kitsch belied an actual sophistication and self-confidence not present in other political parties.

On Tuesday there was a spill, a vote; I lost and I respect the process and accept the outcome as that is democracy. It was not a reason for an attack on the most seminal aspect of the party, proud of the fact it stands alone in the parliament of Australia as the most democratic.

Barnaby Joyce is the member for New England.