The Kernot-Lees Ambush of the WA Democrats
http://www.nettrek.com.au/~brian/#F
I have posted on my website a long and intriguing document to help answer
questions I am often asked about the peculiar disintegration of the WA
division of the Australian Democrats following the 1993 election.
The minutes of a dramatic meeting in July 1993 record a key episode in the
history of how the Democrats' National Executive established top-down
control over a party which had practised participatory democracy since 1977
and which once boasted the watchwords "honesty, tolerance and compassion".
A generation of officers of the party's Western Australian division was
purged in two stages--by prohibiting selected persons from nominating for
party office, then by a mass expulsion (in July 1994), resulting in
detrition of the statewide membership to fewer than 50 individuals. In
essence, this was done because (in the wake of the corrupt WA Inc
Government), WA Democrats could not be relied on to support cosy preference
deals being made with Labor by the then leader Cheryl Kernot and deputy Meg
Lees (who personally took charge of the WA "problem", with a WA acolyte,
Helen Hodgson--now a State MLC--as her local deputy).
The document is a contemporary handwritten record of how WA Democrats
received the news that they were prohibited from holding their annual
officebearers election unless candidates were acceptable to the national
executive junta. As prime targets, both I and my wife Jean (a former
Democrat senator) made detailed submissions to this meeting, which I have
reproduced in full. Jean was never advised of the charges against her. She
was expelled in 1994 by the same junta and has on two occasions been refused
readmission to the party.
The turncoat party leader Cheryl Kernot formally embraced to the Labor Party
in 1998, but most of the backroom architects of the betrayal of the
Australian Democrats' founding principles are still in positions of power.
All are named in this revealing record. Keith Lees (former partner of Meg
Lees) was assigned the role of hatchet man. He handsomely projects the
unpleasant duplicity of his colleagues. Connoisseurs will also be able to
spot a few WA fifth columnists and opportunists in the room.
Brian Jenkins
(former Secretary of the WA Democrats, resigned 1993)
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