Australians recently went to the polls and elected a Liberal government. Unfortunately, Down Under the Liberal Party is a conservative body firmly fixed on the centre right of Aussie politics who with their allies the Nationals (previously known as the Country Party) have been in power for the majority of the country’s history. If it isn’t them in office, it’s Labor.
So what is the current state of our particular brand of liberalism in this part of the Commonwealth? Australia uses AV for the lower houses of its Federal and State parliaments while Upper Houses or Senates use STV, and the latter results in a large number of parties contesting those elections, given the increased chance of gaining a seat via a PR system.
There is a party called the Liberal Democrats, and they have secured the election of a senator and representatives in a couple of state bodies but they are a classical liberal bunch, more right libertarian than social liberal.
The only parties that can be described as centrist or social liberal are the Centre Alliance and the Democrats. The former, founded in 2013 as the Nick Xenophon team, currently have one seat in the Federal House of Representatives and two in the Senate. A presence in the Senate is important because it gives a party some clout, due to the fact that all legislation has to be agreed by it prior to becoming law. Given that it is elected using the aforementioned STV, the cross bench senators nearly always holds the balance of power.
It was that situation that caused problems for the Democrats, a party formed in 1977 with the stated intention of ‘Keeping the B*stards honest’. They built a following that gave them a solid group of senators between 1980 and 2004 before their support for a controversial tax proposed by the Liberal government of John Howard resulted in electoral meltdown. They are still plugging away and stood candidates in this years Federal election but judging by their results it is going to be a hard road ahead.
So Aussie politics is pretty polarised with right and left grouped in two big parties with the Greens very much the third force. It begs the question as to why the forces of social liberalism are so weak. Is it due to the demographics of this great nation or is it something else?
I would love to hear the opinions of other British Liberals.
* David is a member of Horsham and Crawley Liberal Democrats