The democrats seem to get a pretty good run around the blogsphere. Their fate seems to be of much interest to many for reasons I don’t really understand. Moreover the Greens don’t seem to get nearly the “coverage”.
So I’ve had a few thoughts on the Dems floating around my head for a while now but haven’t pulled them together enough to post on them. But I thought it was about to I give it a go and see what happens.
Firstly, while I don’t have a great grasp of the history of it, it strikes me the Democrats are probably quite different now to the party that Don Chipp created when he defected from the Liberal party. While I hold Chipp in fairly high regard because of his integrity and ability to ‘keep the bastards honest’, he was a Liberal none-the-less.
I think it then stems from this (and please correct me if I’m wrong) that when your purpose is to ‘keep the bastards honest’ you obviously lack any definable agenda. So you suffer the fate of a neutral state in times of war. If you don’t take a position on Nazi Germany you become morally bankrupt because in some senses you’re endorsing them by not speaking out against them (perhaps Howard’s defence of Handson is a better example of not taking a position being morally bankrupt). This is not to say that the Dems lack principle.
Lees’ position on the GST reeked of this lack of a definable agenda. What were the Dems trying to achieve in these negotiations? In my mind, and I’d suggest in the mind of many Democrats supporters, the GST is a discriminatory tax – one we should never have used. However (and I don’t fully understand Lees’ personal position on this matter) it appears that she attempted to keep the bastards honest by putting in place some concessions and safeguards on the GST legislation. But at the end of the day you still pay GST on Tampons which is simply unacceptable.
The final and closely related point I wish to make is that the Dems have a commitment to a certain tactical method that I believe leaves them in a difficult position if they are to represent the leftish views that they have come to be known for. They have a close to government approach. It is very pragmatic but this pragmatism often dilutes or compromises principle as again, the GST deal is testament to. This is a key reason I give my support to the Greens instead of the Dems. The Greens will always take the principled position so act more like an opposition party in that it provides policy alternatives that it advocates for. Where as the Dems act like a minor party in a coalition, trying to win minor concessions for their constituency. That’s not to say that the tactical position of the Greens doesn’t have its problems, they can often be accused of being ineffective because of their reluctance to hop in bed with the government, but at least they can always take the moral higher ground which is very important. It is also not to say that the Dems don’t have policies, they clearly do and they advocate for them, it’s just a case of the way they act during these negotiations.
Sadly I question whether the Dems will ever recover from the disaster that left us with a GST and the Dems with an ongoing and problematic leadership battle. I say sadly because I hold Andrew Bartlett and Natasha Stott-Despoja in very high regard. They are both highly intelligent and principled people. Dare I suggest they switch to the Greens?
