MEDIA STATEMENT
Friday March 5, 1999
Too many parties?
A comment by Dick Nichols, the Democratic Socialists lead
candidate for the NSW Upper House
In the last NSW election, in 1995, there were a record 27 parties
standing for the Legislative Council, the upper house of state
parliament. This year, with 92 parties registered under state
electoral laws, a new record could be set.
The NSW Greens have called for Labor and Coalition to support
urgent State Electoral Office (SEO) and parliamentary
investigations into the "bona-fides of all political parties
being 'rush-registered' in the lead up to this election".
Conservative independent (former Labor) MLC Franca Arena and
Shooters Party MLC John Tingle have supported this call.
In response, Labor Premier Bob Carr has said he will ask the SEO
to investigate changing the law after the March 27 election to
toughen criteria for registering political parties.
The Greens say that the large number of newly registered parties
(37 in the last month ) is suspicious and that "evidence is
mounting that some of the parties may be fronts for other
political parties''.
However, while there is some evidence that about half a dozen
registered parties are "fronts" or "feeder tickets" for other
parties, this cannot account for the large rise in small, often
single-issue, parties. This development is not confined to NSW
or even to Australia and it ultimately reflects the massive
disillusionment in the traditional parties of government.
A Bulletin poll last year found that 66% of voters were unhappy
with Labor and the Coalition. And this should come as no
surprise as state and federal governments of both stripes are
widely recognised as having a common agenda of austerity and
privatisation to boost big business profits.
With these two "economic rationalist" parties entrenched in the
various lower houses, voters have sought to hold back or slow the
social vandalism of governments by voting more smaller parties
into the Senate and state upper houses, which in most cases are
elected under the more democratic proportional representation
system.
The Greens say they are worried that the major parties may be
trying to discredit the upper house and claim their call for an
investigation into new parties is an attempt to pre-empt this
attack. Certainly "upper house reform" is high on the agenda of
big business and their parties. But the Greens are naive to think
that more democracy will come out of this call. Instead,
genuine smaller parties -- and especially parties without big
business support -- will be the chief victims of tighter
eligibility for registration or higher deposits for candidates.
Until some party or alliance wins sufficient political authority
to pose a real alternative to Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee, many
new parties are going to be thrown up. Some will be single issue
parties, many will be short-lived and others will be opportunist
or something more sinister. A viable alternative will have to be
put together through the political sorting out of who stands for
what, during and after elections.
This process is going on. Parties committed to real change
persevere and don't pack up shop after elections. They campaign
for the issues they claim to stand for. This wins respect. For
instance, many of the single-issue parties that did better than
the Democratic Socialists in the 1995 NSW elections have since
disappeared or were outpolled by us in the NSW Senate election
last October 3.
Channel Nine's Footy Show and former Labor Right powerbroker
Graham Richardson have set up the What's Doing Party supposedly
to demonstrate how "ridiculously easy" it is to set up a silly
party. But so it should be. Under capitalism it will always be
easy for people with money to set up as many parties as they want
to. Toughening the registration criteria will only knock out
those with less money and power from running in elections.
Making parliamentary politics a more exclusive club than it
already is won't advance the cause of democracy, social justice
and environmental sustainability. Instead of inadvertently
feeding the big parties' campaign to further reduce our
democratic rights, the Greens should concentrate on politically
exposing of the big and small reactionary parties, not just the
handful of possible "front" parties that might have been set up
to divert a few votes.
Dick Nichols, 53, has worked in the printing industry and
on the railways, where he was the Secretary of the
Combined Unions at Eveleigh Loco railway workshops. For
many years he was involved in the struggle against the
privatisation of railway workshop work and, as a branch
councillor for the Australian Railways Union (now Public
Transport Union), also fought the anti-public transport
policies of the Wran and Unsworth Labor governments. More
recently Nichols has edited Links, the international
journal of socialist renewal. He is presently the
Democratic Socialists' national industrial convenor.
The Democratic Socialists are also standing candidates for
the seats of Auburn, Heffron, Illawarra, Lismore,
Marrickville, Newcastle, Parramatta, Port Jackson,
Strathfield and Wollongong.
For comment contact Peter Boyle 02 9690 1230
Website: http://www.peg.apc.org/~stan/ds/nswebs.htm
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