Talking Point: Sign up and shut up in the toxic world of party politics

We need to encourage more courageous candidates to stand for parliament, rather than just accept the parties’ puppets and cardboard cutouts, writes Greg Barns.

ELECTIONS in Australia are dull affairs. The political parties have a toxic, vice-like grip over the candidates who are forced to mouth absurd, vacuous platitudes and slogans which they are fed from the bevy of spin doctors, marketing whizzes, and so-called strategists who occupy the campaign headquarters.

But here in Tasmania one hopes a revolution has begun. Candidates who do not agree with all that their party offers, and who have the courage and, let’s face it, the intelligence to say it.

Labor candidate in Franklin Fabiano Cangelosi comes to mind, but so does the real liberal and Clark independent Sue Hickey. These are individuals who offer hope and lead by example.

Mr Cangelosi is a colleague and friend of this columnist who has encouraged him to run in Franklin for Labor because one, he is highly intelligent, and two, he stands for liberal values such as a commitment to the rule of law, reform of the justice system, and importantly a winding back of the oppressive authoritarianism which is the hallmark of the Premier Mr Gutwein and the Liberal Party.

Labor candidate for Franklin Fabiano Cangelosi has publicly admitted he disagrees with Labor’s position on poker machines.

What Mr Cangelosi did last week was articulate that while he is a Labor candidate he is not a cardboard cutout or a puppet who will blindly swallow every proposition and policy that his party publishes or utters.

How refreshing. A candidate for political office with a mind of their own.

The response to Mr Cangelosi by the ALP and the media says much about how rotten party politics is and what it has done to destroy real democracy.

Labor leader Rebecca White was mortified that one of her candidates should state the obvious, which is essentially only the most blinkered or foolish member of a political party would agree with every policy.

What she could and should have said is that the ALP welcomes members who think for themselves and that of course there are differences on policies such as grubby backflips on gaming and stupid populist proposals such as an anti-protest offence of “aggravated trespass”.

She might also have pointed out the Liberal Party has no such tolerance for diversity of views with the Premier jettisoning Dean Ewington, the erstwhile candidate for Franklin, because the latter, rightly in the eyes of many, criticised the draconian use of state power in the COVID-19 crisis.

Ms White missed the opportunity to restore some faith in the party system.

Labor leader Rebecca White with Labor candidate Dean Winter. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

Similarly, the Premier’s response to the liberal Ms Hickey was as depressingly juvenile. She was not going to be preselected for the Liberals because she had dared to disagree with the party and the government, and worse still had exercised the right every member of parliament has, to run for the speakership.

Ms Hickey proved, as did this columnist back in 2002 when disendorsed as a Liberal candidate for Denison because of criticism of the Howard government’s inhumane policies towards asylum-seekers, that there is no freedom of speech or movement in political parties in Australia. You sign up and shut up.

Unfortunately though, the media portrays Mr Cangelosi and Ms Hickey as troublemakers or mavericks. And they see the gestures and actions of those two candidates as evidence of division in the ALP and the Liberals.
Federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese was asked last week about “divisions” in the party. This is simply reinforcing the awful paradigm that the public airing of differences over philosophical directions and policies is somehow corrosive of the party’s standing in the community.

Sue Hickey takes her place in the Speaker’s chair on the first day of parliament after the 2018 election. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

The contrast between the refreshing honesty and intellectual integrity of Mr Cangelosi and Ms Hickey on the one hand and that of the party machines’ treatment of Mr Ewington and the newly minted Labor candidate and Kingborough Mayor Dean Winter is compelling.

In the cases of Mr Ewington and Mr Winter, controlling, cynical and power-hungry machines were evident. At least in the case of Mr Winter, Ms White stood up against this cancerous culture whereas of course Mr Gutwein was happy to kill off Mr Ewington.

If political parties want to attract more than zealots, drones and shallow ambitious types, then they have to embrace the Cangelosis and the Hickeys of the world.

They need to allow alternative points of view to flourish. They ought to encourage the right to disagree with party policy and to vote against it in the parliament. That after all is the essence of democracy.

Moving away from the model where political parties stifle freedom of thought and speech is not only desirable but critical if we are to undermine the manipulation and dishonesty that are features of Australian politics today.

As a last word, and in the interests of transparency, this columnist can advise you he will vote for Ms Hickey in Clark and if he were in Franklin he would vote for Mr Cangelosi.

Reckless promises replace urgent reforms

ONLY one week into this Tasmanian election campaign – forced early on the community to suit the self-interest of the Premier Peter Gutwein – and the depressing reality of politics as nothing more than a sport for opportunists and populists is confirmed again.

The big-picture seismic reforms so desperately needed if this economy and society is to survive and prosper in the longer term appear missing.

Instead there are daily stunts and reckless promises. The parties prove yet again why most people steer clear of them and organised politics.

How to explain why the ALP would not select as a candidate a smart, policy-oriented thinker like Dean Winter, the Mayor of Kingborough.

Just as the Liberal Party in Tasmania is in the thrall of the hard Right and religious zealots, and has no room for the genuinely liberal and hardworking Sue Hickey who forced the Hodgman and Gutwein governments to focus on the scandal of lack of housing for the low-income earners and marginalised in our community.

Labor’s cancerous factionalism and the Liberal Party’s refusal to live up to its name but instead be an authoritarian conservative force means they both value blind loyalty and mediocrity over policy excellence.

Premier Peter Gutwein during a visit to Incat. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

Of course there are the occasional exceptions. Fabiano Cangelosi, a colleague and friend of this columnist, and an ALP candidate in Franklin (not, by the way, a patsy of the Left faction as the mythology would have it) is one.

Laughably, the Liberals last week called him a “hard Left” lawyer. It tells you how deeply hostile the Liberal Party is to justice and the rule of the law these days when it labels a barrister who stands firmly behind the idea of an independent judiciary, liberal values and the idea that justice must be accessible to everyone, as “hard Left.” We need more MPs who understand abuses of executive government power when they see it.

ALP candidate for Franklin Fabiano Cangelosi.

And it is absurd for the Liberals to throw stones at the ALP for its preselections when it welcomed with open arms a person whom this columnist has long called a de facto Liberal, Madeleine Ogilvie.

Ms Ogilvie is known for little except voting against the voluntary assisted dying legislation and ensuring roadworks on Davey St in Hobart are a priority for the transport department.

But what really matters is that elections are a contest of philosophies and ideas. This used to be the case in Australia. Remember the 1993 federal election when Paul Keating as Labor leader and prime minister and John Hewson as Liberal leader argued over the big picture and serious micro and macro-economic reform?

But going by the first week of this election campaign it appears there will be nothing but populist promises and buying off interest groups. Mr Gutwein is not only Premier, but Treasurer of the state, a role he has held since 2014. He has not one piece of economic reform under his belt. He has been lucky because he took office when the impact of the GFC was ebbing.

Former ALP-turned-independent Madeleine Ogilvie will now run for the Liberals. Picture: Rob Burnett

As economist Saul Eslake has observed time and again, tax reform is essential and urgently needed in Tasmania. But his plea has fallen on deaf ears. As has the requirement to stop propping up government businesses like power companies, ports and other enterprises, which put their hand out for taxpayer largesse regularly.

The budget is, as analyst John Lawrence has observed on these pages, a work of accounting fiction and the reality is Tasmania is heading for fiscal doom.

But the dire state of Tasmania’s financial position and inefficient tax system do not attract the eye of either the ALP or the Liberals. There is no sense in which you get the impression the government and opposition get it.

Instead last week we had the dangerous and extraordinary spectacle of Mr Gutwein using $100m of taxpayer funds “to finance, on an interest-free basis for three years, the construction of a 120-metre high-speed vessel” by a local shipbuilder, Incat.

The boat will be built and Incat says it will find an owner or charterer. This initiative is called picking winners. It is a deeply flawed policy which governments should not pursue given it is putting at risk taxpayer funds as those who can remember the disasters of the Victorian, South Australian and West Australian governments in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which sent their states broke with similar madcap schemes.

If Incat wants to build a boat let it compete for funds in the market. Since when was it part of government business to be a banker for the corporate sector?

Labor leader Rebecca White. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

Do not think Labor is any purer on fiscal and economic reform. It has, in its post Hawke and Keating years, reverted to a belief in government intervention and cutting deals with business and unions.

Depressing, huh?

Hobart barrister Greg Barns SC is a former adviser for state and federal Liberal governments. His latest book is Rise of the Right: The War on Australia’s liberal values (Hardie Grant).