History of spill and why Canada could use some

I like politics this much (M. Turnbull)

They are having a spill in Australian politics again, and I kind of admire it. "Spill" is what Australians call a leadership challenge. The right wing government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has (with coalition support) a narrow majority, but the even-more right wing anti-immigrant demagogue Peter Dutton has resigned from cabinet and challenged Turnbull's leadership of the Liberal Party.

“This is a fight for the heart and the soul of the Liberal party,” says one moderate MP. “These people surrounding Dutton – these people are not Liberals, they are not conservatives, they are fucking reactionaries, and I have nothing but contempt for them.”

In Auz constituencies elect (or defeat) MPs and MPs elect (and when  necessary remove) their party leaders; it would only take 43 Liberal MPs to bring on a leadership vote within the caucus. This whole notion of accountability makes most Canadian commentators flutter and go pale and talk about coups d'etat.

Canadian politics wrings its hands over Maxime Bernier's independent line on Conservative party policy -- what will Scheer do about him? what does it mean? why can't he be controlled? Serious commentators still insist that those ugly vote-buying extravaganzas we call leadership conventions are a valid way to chose leaders -- and to bestow dictatorial power on them for years on end.

Australian politics, however, accepts that in parliamentary societies, we elect caucuses, not one Great Leader. Within a caucus there will always be a diversity of views and some healthy tension.  Quite a few Conservative MPs and conservative supporters in Canada surely share Bernier's anti-immigrant and anti-diversity beliefs.  Since those beliefs are probably a political liability, it's reasonable for the party leader to avoid or at least downplay them. But why pretend does Canada intra-party differences do not exist or that the leader should be entitled to silence them instantly?

Britain currently has an odd, disfunctional mix of the Canadian system (mass membership selection of leaders, most of the time) and the Australian system of constant leadership accountability. Look at the huge policy differences that Brexit has created within the Conservative government cabinet and caucus, and in the Labour caucus too.  Better surely, to have those differences genuinely represented in caucus that to have a dictatorial leader decree that they cannot exist. )   

It is true that Australian politicians, both Labour and Liberal, have been alarmingly eager to launch leadership spills in recent decades, and their excessive use of the leadership challenge has damaged both  parties.  But before long they will learn by doing that over-use of the spill makes them look fractious, disorganized, and disloyal.

I don't know the political leanings of the major Auz papers, but the Sydney Morning Herald says that PM Turnbull (basically a moderate) sold his soul to the reactionary fringe of his party in order to gain power, and now the reactionaries want the substance of power as well as mere influence. The Australian simply says that Turnbull is ruthlessly ambitious and will do anything for power -- or for revenge if he loses it: he will bring down the government if Dutton leads it.

All sides seems to agree the whole thing is great news for Labour and a guy called Bill Shorten who currently leads it.  Of course past Labour PMs Rudd and Gillard also faced spills in the recent past, so...

Engagingly weird detail: Dutton owns a business that sells services to the government, and that may make him ineligible to be prime minister. (He says it does not.)

Update, same day:  Helen Webberley checks in from Melbourne:

Westminster democracy depends on a party being able to elect and discard its own leader, of course. And any member of the governing party can put up his hand to be selected as the new leader, if the existing leader has proved to be inept.

But most Australian citizens are centrist i.e to the right wing of the Labor Party and to the left, progressive wing of the Conservative Party. For Dutton and the extreme right of the Conservative Party to block, harm and intimidate members of the governing party is a disgrace. Dutton was the only Federal Parliamentarian in Australia to boycott the national apology to the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal Families.

Hmm, yes. But somebody must have elected the almost-half of the governing party that wants to make Dutton prime minister.

Update, August 24:  And now there is a new prime minister, Scott Morrison, who had been finance minister. The Guardian:

On Friday, incumbent Malcolm Turnbull failed in his attempt to stare down a challenge from hard right MP Peter Dutton, with insurgents in his party gathering enough signatures to call for a “spill” – or leadership contest.
That led to a three-way challenge that included Morrison, Turnbull’s treasurer, Dutton, the former home affairs minister, and Julie Bishop, the foreign minister. Turnbull himself stood aside from the contest.
Bishop was eliminated in the first round, and Morrison beat Dutton in a subsequent run-off, 45 votes to 40, suggesting the party is still deeply divided.
There appears no end in sight to the civil war consuming the ruling Liberal-led coalition government.

The new PM ain't Dutton but he is "the socially conservative architect of Australia’s hardline anti-asylum seeker policies."

Parliamentary notes from Australia and New Zealand

Australia is presently in the midst of a "postal survey" on whether Australia should allow same-sex marriage. All the usual horribleness that attends referendums (on anything) is coming out, even though the government found itself unable to have a binding referendum and the multi-million dollar survey is only "advisory." Parliament will still be able to do whatever it wants.

Most of the commentary I've seen from Australian sources seems to be mostly making cases for the  "Yes" or for the "No." The notion that it is crazy to put fundamental rights to a popular vote does not seem to have very much traction there.

It is evidence, I think, of how much the Charter has influenced perceptions in Canada. Because of the Charter, same sex marriage here was a rights question, determined by the courts, not by a popular vote. It could be argued, I think, that, even without a rights charter, the right to marry in Canada could have been put to the courts on a traditional common-law basis, requiring an interpretation of the meaning of the marriage clauses of the constitution.  But surely there would be a powerful kickback, politically as well as legally, if a government proposed a referendum on whether or not some minority should have rights or not. (I know, B.C. more or less tried that on aboriginal rights in the early 2000s -- but there was protest, and aboriginal rights law was going to prevail anyway.)

Long suffering followers of this blog will know I'm a parliamentary guy; I wish our legislatures worked better and did more. But on rights questions, I'm glad Canadians have rights, not referendums. In Australia, which does not have an equivalent of our Charter, marriage rights seem to be accepted as being a political question rather than one to be litigated.  Court challenges changed the process for the survey, but could not prevent it. The fundamental question about putting rights to a vote just doesn't get raised much, the coverage I've seen suggests. Polls suggest there is popular support for marriage equality, apparently, but it's hard to predict who will actually vote in a voluntary, non-binding postal survey. A fair amount of populist and Christianist nastiness seems to be emerging as the voting period continues.

Meanwhile, in New Zealand, a new leader for the opposition Labour Party has transformed that country's politics, suddenly giving Labour a shot at winning the current election after years out of power.

The new leader, young and female, was selected just weeks ago by the Labour Party parliamentary caucus -- it took about an hour. She's not the kind of candidate who usually prevails in Canadian-type leadership contests.  But it seems the party caucus members, with their seats at stake, had a clear idea of who the party needed and made the right choice at precisely the right moment.

It really ought to make Canadians wonder about the limitless stupidity of these endless vote-buying leaderpaloozas that have recently kept first the Conservatives and now the NDP pretty much out of political contention for more than a year, that cost fortunes, that are of dubious legitimacy -- and generally pick the wrong person at the wrong time, anyway. Canadians are as much in a bubble about leadership processes as the Australians are about about the politicization of fundamental rights.

The rush to war, 1914: Canada and Australia

There seems to be some buzz in Australian historical circles over Douglas Newton's Hell Bent: Australia's Leap into the Great War.

I don't know if Newton is being read by Canada's military and political historians. (I have not read it myself.) The mystery Newton explores -- why the political leaders of the "white dominions" were so much more eager than their British counterparts to rush into war in August 1914 -- has to my mind never been sufficiently seen in Canadian historiography as a question worth exploring.  Here's a summary of Newton:

London’s choice for war was a very close-run thing. At the height of the diplomatic crisis leading to war, it looked very much like Britain would choose neutrality. Only very late in the evening of Tuesday 4 August did a small clique in the British cabinet finally engineer a declaration of war against Germany.

Meanwhile, Australia’s political leaders, deep in the throes of a federal election campaign, competed with each other in a love-of-empire auction. They leapt ahead of events in London. At the height of the diplomatic crisis, they offered to transfer the brand-new Royal Australian Navy to the British Admiralty. Most importantly, on Monday 3 August, an inner group of the Australian cabinet, egged on by the governor-general, offered an expeditionary force of 20,000 men, to serve anywhere, for any objective, under British command, and with the whole cost to be borne by Australia — some forty hours before the British cabinet made up its mind.

Australia’s leaders thereby lost the chance to set limits, to weigh objectives, or to insist upon consultation.

I rather diffidently raised similar questions in a comment in the Canadian Historical Review's 2014 feature on the First World War, but I'm hardly a specialist in the matter.  And that piece did not provoke much response among those who are.

The subsequent issue of conscription is not raised in Newton, evidently, but Australia, like Canada, soon encountered enlistment problems, as the local-born in both countries soon proved less committed to the crusade than the British emigrant populations.  Much scope for comparative study, one would think.

Belshaw on Canada and Australia

This guy Belshaw is one of my blogpals, in the sense that he sometimes looks at mine, and I sometimes look at his (and we have absolutely no other connection). Lately he's thinking about Canada-Australia comparisons and soliciting suggestions.  Maybe you can help him out.

Image: australiatms.com.au

Drivel Watch: Simpson on Australia

Jeffrey Simpson wrote a book, The Friendly Dictator, about unaccountable leadership in Canadian politics.

From the title, you wouldn't have thought he was in favour of it.

But look at Simpson's panicky, almost hysterical column today about the Australian election that followed the removal of Kevin Rudd from the leadership of the governing Labor Party. Simpson raves about coups and knifings.

One day, a leader, even a prime minister, is running the party; the next day, he’s out..... Can you imagine how the Jean Chrétien-Paul Martin rivalry inside the Liberal Party would have played itself out under Australian political rules?

Well, yes, actually.

In reality, it's not Aussie rules at all. It's parliamentary democracy rules. When a leader loses the confidence of the majority caucus in parliament (as Australia's Kevin Rudd did, and Jean Chrétien did here), parliamentary democracy requires that he or she go. It's the fundamental principle of the constant accountability of the executive to the legislature. It happens in Britain, it happens in Ireland, it happens in Sweden and Japan and ... well, in pretty much all the parliamentary democracies of the world.

The Australian situation today -- the leadership change clearly did not help the ALP electorally, shall we say -- confirms how the system of caucus accountability has its own internal controls. Should a leadership review appear too ruthless, driven more by personal ambition than by the needs of the party or the nation, the public reacts negatively, and the new leader suffers, as Ms. Gillard has. But in most cases these removals respond to the public will by removing a failing and unpopular leader and rejuvenating the party. (Recall Mrs. Thatcher, and the re-election of the Conservative Party that removed her?) Surely having a system of leadership accountability is always better than the constipated system we suffer in Canada.

But Jeffrey Simpson -- and Canadian politics in general -- continues to find the idea of party leaders being accountable to the elected representatives of the Canadian people "almost inconceivable" (it's Simpson's phrase, though why he includes "almost" escapes me.) It's this failure of imagination that is perhaps most depressing in Canadian political analysis. Not only are we in denial about how the whole parliamentary world operates, panic seizes even our leading commentators the moment they even start to imagine parliamentary democracy working here.

"Can you imagine....?" As John Lennon says, it's easy if you try.

Two small addenda. An Ontario poll suggests Ontarians have become bored and dissatified with Premier Dalton McGuinty. Wouldn't you think it would serve the Ontario Liberal party to at least have a process available by which the party could determine whether having Premier McGuinty lead them into the next election would serve the party's (or the province's) interests? I guess not.

And where Jeffrey Simpson cannot even conceive of parliamentary accountability, an Australian commentator thinks boldly about an even greater asserting of authority by parliamentarians. The Australian electoral deadlock seems to be inspiring creative thought there. Too bad ours mostly inspires drivel.

Update: Robin Mowat comments:

You write: "When a leader loses the confidence of the majority caucus in parliament (as Australia's Kevin Rudd did, and Jean Chrétien did here), parliamentary democracy requires that he or she go." Undoubtedly true. It would be impossible for a leader to continue if he'd truly lost the confidence of his caucus.

But to my knowledge there really isn't a formal mechanism for a caucus to remove a leader in Canada and replace them with another leader. Arguably, the existence of such a formal process would quicken caucus revolts, as within political parties in the UK and Australia (See for instance the brief discussion of Margaret Thatcher's ousting in 1990).

So I believe Simpson's argument would be that if such rules existed within the Liberal Party, Jean Chretien would have been ousted by Paul Martin far sooner. And that, in general, such a formal process would be a formidable check on a Prime Minister's power (which is debatable).

An interesting comparison is the replacement of Stephane Dion with Michael Ignatieff. This was essentially a caucus decision, although backed by the party structure. Nevertheless, the decision was required to be validated by party members at the following convention.

Thanks Robin. I'd only suggest that the caucus itself is the "formal mechanism"; it may make what rules it chooses to guide the process, but it already has the authority if it chooses to use it. Or not to use it, as when the Liberal caucus allowed final authority over the Dion/Ignatieff switch to be retained by the party apparatus and the self-appointed convention.

Representative democracy and popular protest in BC and Australia

British Columbia politicians brought in laws to enable mass petitioning to produce reviews of legislation in 1995, and now they will have to live with it. It has now been certified that the anti-HST petition has enough signatures to require a legislative review. Should the review not satisfy the petitioners, recall petitions also become possible.

The Campbell government is now reaping what it sowed, both by its support for direct democracy measures and by the dishonesty of its campaign promises on the HST issue. But representative "government by discussion" is generally superior to the typically demogogic, hyperbolic mass frenzy of petitioning and referenda, and the fact that the petition success seems to have restored to influence the corrupt and incompetent ex-premier William Vander Zalm underlines the problems with direct "democracy."

That same preference for genuinely representative democracy made me approve of the abrupt removal of Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd last June when he lost the support of his parliamentary caucus. Leaders ought to be accountable -- and to whom better than the elected representatives of the people. Wish we had that process here.

But maybe Australians don't altogether agree. New PM Julia Gillard has been sliding in the polls during the leadup to the August 21 election, and disapproval of the "ruthlessness" with which Rudd was removed seems to have been a factor. 'Course rising unemployment and other economic problems might be behind it too. (Update, August 16: that Ms Gillard is an ambitious unmarried woman -- could that also be a factor, d'you think, mate?)

Auz uses a preferential vote system. Since most of the minor parties are on the progressive side, it's possible Gillard's Labor will lose in the first-preference counting but catch up when second choices of minor-party supporters are tallied up. That should be heaven for most electoral reform wonks; one wonders how the Australian voters will feel if the "losers" win.

The Australian Senate (elected, powerful, and severely gerrymandered in favour of the smaller states -- much like the US Senate) is filled by a form of proportional representation, which means it will probably be filled with "unrepresentative swill" (the memorable description of ex-PM Paul Keating) and will oppose whatever government is supported by the lower house. Coverage from The Australian here, Sydney Morning Herald here. Curiously neither seems much taken with the horse-race "who's ahead in the polls" coverage that dominated Canadian media coverage of Canadian elections.

Update, August 13: Stephen MacLean draws our attention to a G&M online debate on BC's recall/initiative laws.

Update, August 20:  For anyone trolling this far back, the blog called Crooked Timber has some interesting material on the Auz election here -- don't miss the comments.