I am interested in how scholars classify Francoism and whether it fits within the broader category of fascist or authoritarian movements of the interwar period.
>If you spent your time on the websites of the Bureau of Statistics, the Reserve Bank (RBA) and the ASX, you'd think things were going fine.
>Economic growth is a solid if unexciting 2.5 per cent, job growth is reasonably strong and unemployment is down. Inflation is coming down, consumer spending is growing and while the share market is not booming this year, it is holding the 33 per cent gain of 2023 to 2025.
>In fact, the economy is doing so well the Reserve Bank has been raising interest rates to slow it down.
>But consumer sentiment is rock bottom and Australians are as pessimistic about the economy and as pissed off as they have ever been, so much so they are turning to Pauline Hanson, an inhabitant of the Australian political fringe for 30 years and not someone who springs to mind as the best manager of a complex economy.
>Prime Minister Anthony Albanese office has released a statement, apologising for the PM's comments on a podcast.
>The PM was asked on a podcast with Nikki Osborne who he would "shag, marry, date" out of Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman and Rhonda Burchmore.
>He initially refused to answer the question, but when pressed on who, if his marriage broke down, he replied: "Oh, Kylie clearly."
>But this morning, the PM's office released a statement, apologising for the remarks.
I am curious in how democracies before the 21st century handled any situations where losing parties and/or leaders, whether they were incumbent or non incumbent, refused to accept electoral defeat.
What do historians say about how losers’ consent functioned in earlier democracies and what happened in cases where it broke down?
I am interested in historical examples before the 21st century where political actors, whether they were incumbent in office or not incumbent and not in office, rejected electoral defeat. How did these situations and the lack of losers consent affect the stability of their respective democratic systems at the time?
I am curious in how democracies before the 21st century handled any situations where losing parties and/or leaders, whether they were incumbent or non incumbent, refused to accept electoral defeat.
What do historians say about how losers’ consent functioned in earlier democracies and what happened in cases where it broke down?
>The web page of Australia’s newest political party features a photo of Zali Steggall and Allegra Spender standing in isolation on the forecourt of Parliament House in Canberra.
>In the far distance is a collection of other people, possibly a tour group. They are clearly incidental to the picture.
>It seems an odd choice of image for a party named Community Strong Australia, for nothing about it suggests community connection. Quite the reverse. It could be seen as illustrative of the distance between the elected and the governed.
>So could the constitution of the newly launched party.
>The term “voting members” appears 51 times in the document. A voting member is defined as “a current Parliamentary Member, or such other Member (or category of Members) as a Super Majority of Parliamentary Members determines from time to time.”
>As things currently stand, only two people – Spender and Steggall – meet the definition, and a super majority exists so long as they agree with each other.
>They had hoped the ranks of voting members would be bigger at the party’s launch last week, but none of the other currently sitting “teal” independent MPs have come on board. Nor has independent senator David Pocock, nor any others among the ranks of the parliamentary cross bench.
>There may eventually be other voting members but only if Steggall and Spender approve them.
>For now, they are not just the only voting members of Community Strong but the only members, full stop. And the constitution makes them all-powerful.
>The duumvirate will decide all party rules and governance and have “absolute discretion” over who else gets membership and the terms of that membership, including its cancellation.
>They will decide who makes up the leadership committee and who may serve as a party officer, including party treasurer.
>Also, voting members will determine how the party spends its funds and will have the final say on all decisions relating to debts, fees and levies, the scheduling of party meetings and variations to the party’s constitution and rules.
>Voting members, says the constitution, will also “develop Rules for the inclusion and role of Endorsed Candidate Members in campaign planning activities and policy development”.
>All candidates also must be approved by them.
>While the new party will establish a Community Engagement Committee (CEC) “to engage with and amplify the voices of local communities within Community Strong and be the representative committee of Local Teams”, these committee members also “must be approved by Super Majority of Voting Members”.
>The list of powers conferred on Community Strong’s voting members goes on and on. On paper, the new party seems to be the very antithesis of the movement that originally spawned it.
>Historically, the community independents movement has always been a grassroots exercise in participatory democracy. The template for its success was established back in 2013, in the Victorian regional electorate of Indi, when a group of citizens determined to rid themselves of the then federal member, Liberal Sophie Mirabella.
>They called themselves Voices for Indi, began an extensive process of community consultation and found that many people did not want to simply replace Mirabella with a candidate from another political party – they wanted someone independent. Only at the end of that process did they begin looking for a candidate – eventually agreeing on Cathy McGowan.
>In that year’s election, McGowan won.
>In 2019, she passed the baton to Helen Haines, which was the first such independent-to-independent succession. That same year, Steggall won the Sydney seat of Warringah from former prime minister Tony Abbott.
>At the 2022 election, a further six lower house seats formerly held by the Liberal Party fell to independent candidates, including Spender in Wentworth, in Sydney’s east. Pocock won an ACT Senate seat.
>At the last election, their numbers thinned as Kylea Tink’s North Sydney seat was abolished in a redistribution and Zoe Daniel lost Melbourne’s Goldstein, although Nicolette Boele picked up Bradfield on Sydney’s North Shore. While they did not increase their numbers in parliament, a number of other community independents came very close to winning.
>The independents movement is clearly no flash in the pan. It capitalised on the polity’s growing discontent with the major parties. Its appeal was that it began with, and ran on, people power. It was bottom-up. While candidates were selected on the basis of their adherence to certain values, they were not constrained by a party policy platform.
>Many also were helped by millions of dollars in funding from Climate 200, an organisation set up to aggregate and distribute donations. Despite the claims of critics, Climate 200 did not dictate policy positions to candidates, although it did direct money to those who held certain core values: commitment to action on combating climate change, greater integrity in government, gender equity and equality.
>Nor are “teal” candidates Greens in disguise, as claimed by some – most notably the right-wing disinformation machine Advance. While they have common concerns on climate, for example, they diverge from the left-wing party in other areas such as tax and industrial relations.
>More importantly, these independents are free to diverge from one another – even though their voting record shows they mostly do not. Indeed, according to some analysis, they demonstrate a degree of cohesion close to that of the established parties. They also caucus regularly and frequently front the media together to put unified positions on various issues.
>But there is an important distinction between them and the organised political parties: there exists no formal mechanism to enforce unity. While they may hold common positions, they have come to them independently.
>That has been the core of their success. The Community Independents Project, the non-profit group dedicated to getting more such people elected, specifically stipulates – in capital letters – that Community Independents “ARE NOT: members of parties” or “self-appointed”.
>So when word began to leak, over recent months, that moves were afoot to start a party of independents, it seemed like a contradiction in terms. Then the new party’s constitution, largely drafted by the barrister Steggall, came out with its long list of powers.
>The structure of Community Strong is radically different from that of other parties. For a start, its constitution provides that it will have no leader. Steggall has criticised “a media construct of always thinking about leadership and power”.
>Instead, its parliamentary members will provide collective leadership.
>Nor will the party have any detailed policy platform. Instead, the document sets out four loosely defined “pillars” to which parliamentary members must pledge themselves. They are “sensible economic management”, “climate action”, “equality” and “integrity”.
>The expectation is that Community Strong MPs will exercise their votes in accordance with those pillars, but they will ultimately be free to vote however they choose on all matters except motions of confidence and supply. On those two matters, the party’s parliamentary members will be bound by a collective decision “made by a Super Majority of Parliamentary Members”.
>Another big difference between Community Strong and other parties relates to party membership. The established parties have rank-and-file members who get a say in policy formulation and candidate selection.
>It’s true that the parliamentary parties often override the wishes of their branch members, but the system at least provides a semblance of grassroots influence.
>What use has a party with no formal policy platform for membership? As Spender tells The Saturday Paper, members are a problem.
>“Let’s look at the Liberal Party,” she says. “They’ve got a membership that drives preselection that’s not actually reflective of the community and it’s part of the reason the Liberal Party has moved so far to the right.”
>She has a point. The Liberal Party’s membership is overwhelmingly elderly, male, very right wing and decidedly undiverse.
>If a potential candidate does not reflect the narrow views of the rank and file, she says, “well, you don’t get selected”.
>The same is true, to some extent, of the other parties – the views of the membership are often more extreme than those of the community at large.
>When it is put to Spender that a party without rank-and-file members hardly seems any more democratic than the prevailing model, she demurs, pointing to the 1400 volunteers who worked to get her elected. “None of them are members. They’ve never been members,” she says.
>Furthermore, Spender says, the feedback she gets is that most of them don’t want to be constrained by membership but want the freedom to “support some things [and not] support other things. They don’t want that sort of tying of membership.”
>She accepts that it is “counterintuitive” but says that dispensing with a formal membership structure actually makes elected representatives more accountable to their communities.
>Steggall, too, is cognisant of the perception that the new party imposes a top-down structure.
>“Of course, I know in the context of only two members it seems controlling,” she says, conceding that the model may need to be refined. “It’s very hard to communicate, to consult with a blank piece of paper, and there is room for amendments, and obviously consultation…
>“This ultimately only works in good faith with the community, and Allegra and I both totally understand that if we proceed in it with an authoritarian model, a top-down model that doesn’t reflect what community wants, well, the community won’t get behind it and it won’t work. We each have over 1000 volunteers signed up, not because they’re party members, but because they respect that we will reflect their views and values and appreciate their input.”
>The peculiar thing is that in a functional sense, Community Strong isn’t a major departure from the current practice of the “teal” independents. They were elected without any formal membership behind them. They campaigned on the basis of “pillars” identical to those that are now formalised under a party constitution. They exercise free votes in parliament. They have no leader but allow that certain of their number can act as spokespeople on certain policy areas. They mostly vote as a bloc. Even if their votes are not decisive in determining what legislation is passed, they can exert considerable influence on the political agenda.
>Why replace an informal collective with a formal one? Politics has changed, says Steggall, a champion skier and Olympian.
>“My sporting background would say you’ve got to keep evolving with the field of play,” she says.
>Previously the major parties had been “fairly evenly balanced”, but Labor’s huge win at the last election, coupled with the implosion of the Coalition parties and rise of One Nation, meant there was no longer any “real rational opposition” and less incentive for Labor to negotiate with the cross bench.
>The Albanese government does not need the votes of the cross bench to get legislation through the house and needs only the support of the Greens to get it through the Senate. “So someone like David [Pocock] is sidelined,” says Steggall.
>In order to exert real influence, she says, “the community movement needs to get into the Senate”.
>To do that, she says, they must be structured as a party.
>Senator David Pocock has done that – he is registered with the Australian Electoral Commission as the “David Pocock” party. As his website explains: “Only registered political parties can get a box above the line with their name and logo. It is one of the inequalities built into a system that favours the major parties.
>“David is running as an independent but had to form a party to get ‘above the line’ on the Senate ballot paper. This is important, as at the last federal election the overwhelming majority of people in the ACT voted above the line.
>“If Senator Pocock didn’t form a party and get above the line, he would have had no chance of being elected.”
>Given the current state of politics, with polls showing Labor’s vote after preferences as strong or stronger than it was at the last election, it is likely that it will maintain total control of the lower house at the next election.
>Under this scenario, the best prospect of preventing effective one-party rule lies in the Senate and that is one powerful incentive for the formation of a party of independents.
>Another motivation is the recent reforms to electoral funding laws, which have capped both political donations and spending, and which, says Spender, “deliberately set out to make it harder for independents to run”.
>Dr Catherine Williams, an expert in democratic accountability and executive director of the Centre for Public Integrity, says the new laws “clearly incentivise the creation of parties” by giving them an enormous funding advantage over independents. A party with branches in all jurisdictions – federal, state and territory – can raise and spend up to $90 million on general party advertising. But there is a limit of $800,000 on the amount that can be spent on getting a candidate up in an individual seat.
>Community Strong has plans to set up branches across the nation.
>It’s not that Spender or Steggall need the money, says Steggall: “Both Allegra and I recognise we do have more affluent communities with more fundraising capability.”
>She recognises also that Climate 200 has provided enormous support to other campaigns in less well-to-do areas, even though its involvement has been “weaponised” by conservative opponents.
>“But look, they continue to do great work and provide great support for community independent campaigns.
>“What Community Strong offers is … breaking down some of those disadvantages around, for example, establishing a brand,” she says.
>One of the big hurdles to getting elected, she says, is simply becoming known. All too often people cast their vote on the basis of party affiliation rather than on the identity of the candidate themselves.
>“Are people voting for the party or are they voting for the actual candidate? How well do they know their candidate? By having Community Strong, we’re starting to break down some of those disadvantages.”
>It’s a matter of branding and resourcing, she adds.
>“We have got a fair amount of process established in how we mobilise our community, get support, have volunteer engagement, get feedback, communicate with the electorate, do the work.”
>Perhaps the most powerful part of Community Strong’s pitch to voters is summed up on the party’s website: “We’re about hope over hate, reason over rage, and solutions over slogans.”
>That, they hope, will resonate with the growing number of voters who feel they have no home in either of the major parties and might be attracted to the politics of grievance, as expressed by the resurgent One Nation.
>“Whether One Nation succeeds in being disciplined and organised enough to succeed with lower house seats, the jury’s out, but there’s no doubt the collective support they are gathering around states right through the polling will result in a substantial takeover of the Senate,” says Steggall.
>She knows the new party is not going to win back “core” supporters of Pauline Hanson, but the hope is that Community Strong will offer an alternative for the waverers.
>And that, surely, is reason enough to wish them well.