Australian Democrats
| Australian Democrats | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Party leader | Darren Churchill |
| founding | 1977 |
| Headquarters | Black Forest , SA |
| Alignment | Left liberalism |
| Website | australian-democrats.org.au |
The Australian Democrats are an Australian party of the center-left . Founding chairman in 1977 was Don Chipp , a former parliamentarian and minister of the conservative Liberal Party of Australia , who left the Liberals after criticizing his own criticism of the lack of internal party democracy and freedom of speech. With the motto "keep the bastards honest" ("force the bastards to be honest") the party achieved notable successes over many years. The party was often the " tip of the scales " in the Australian Senate . But they never managed to win a seat in the House of Commons .
After the 2007 federal election, the party lost its last remaining federal Senate seats on June 30, 2008. Only in South Australia did the party still have a mandate holder with the little attention-getting Senator David Winderlich. However, this lost his seat in the March 2010 elections.
Historical overview
|
Senate election results
|
The party was able to achieve a double-digit result when it took part in the election for the first time and thus achieved more than one respectable success. In addition to Don Chipp, another senator represented the party in the upper house. In 1980 Chipp coined the famous phrase "keep the doglings honest" and meant by it to become strong enough in the Senate to exercise an effective control function there. In the 1980 elections, the percentage result was not quite as high as it was in 1977, but it was enough to win three more Senate seats. This also included his future successor as chairman Janine Haines from South Australia . That was the first time the goal was achieved, and there was no longer a majority in the Senate without the Democrats. Don Chipp remained the party leader until he voluntarily resigned in 1986.
The party reached its zenith under the leadership of Janine Haines. In the elections she achieved a record result of 12.6%. However, she herself ended her political career after that very election, as her attempt to secure a seat in the House of Commons was unsuccessful. His successor as party chairman was Dr. Michael Macklin . His successor was Janet Powell , who was Don Chipp's successor in the Senate. The Democrats under Powell spoke out against the Gulf War , which was generally less popular at the time. She remained unpopular and also had an affair with party and Senate colleague Sid Spindler. Her dismissal was initiated within her first year in leadership. After only 13½ months, the Queenslander John Coulter became party leader in their place, although the decision in the party was controversial and this, especially after the resignation of one of its senators as a result of the leadership crisis, presented a frayed picture. Janet Powell herself tried to found her own party at short notice, which was ultimately unsuccessful, and later became a member of the Greens .
John Coulter's focus was particularly on environmental issues. His questioning of Australian population growth was criticized from all sides. All in all, he remained a rather unloved, pale leader, and the 1993 elections suffered heavy losses, even though the seven members of the Senate were retained.
Just a month after the April 1993 election, the ambitious Cheryl Kernot took over the party leadership. She was good at dealing with the media, and she managed to get a third double-digit result for the Democrats in the next election in 1996. The trained teacher, who, as it later became known, had a private affair with the former Labor Secretary of State and then Shadow Minister Gareth Evans , finally joined the Laboratory herself, and thus the "bastards". It was speculated that she was promised a ministerial office. She also just managed to win a lower house for laboratory. The Labor Party remained in opposition and Kernot lost her seat again in the next election, which ended her political career.
Her successor Meg Lees led the party down again when she agreed to the unpopular introduction of a value added tax , albeit with qualification, i.e. the tax exemption for unprepared food. This decision caused a particular sensation, as the bill only gained the necessary majority through the votes of the Democrats. Politically, Lees did not survive the subsequent drop in the polls for long. After an interim, the young blonde Natasha Stott Despoja became the new party leader.
When she was appointed Senator to succeed John Coulter, who resigned for health reasons, at the age of 25 in 1995, Stott Despoja became the country's youngest woman MP. You managed to stabilize the party in the meantime. With the appointment of the Aboriginal descendant Aden Ridgeway as her deputy, combined with her ubiquity in television programs of all kinds, she also managed to raise the party's profile, which was again rewarded with a respectable 7.3% in the 2001 election . Within the party, however, the struggle for direction was simmering, and the more progressive Stott Despoja ultimately resigned after prolonged public debate with the conservative party currents.
After another interim, the pale Andrew Bartlett from Queensland became party leader. This made himself the mockery of the broader public when he wanted to transport a few bottles of wine under his jacket from a festivity organized by the Liberal Party, and he was also violent on another occasion when he was drunk in parliament against a Liberal MP. Inevitably, under his leadership, the Democratic polls continued to decline, leading to his replacement by the more authoritative Lyn Allison.
However, the party's image was already ruined at this point. The ability to repair would probably have required a very large dose of charisma, and the protest voters, those interested in the environment and the like were now primarily captured by the Australian Greens under the leadership of Bob Brown . After the Democrats had already lost all available Senate seats in 2004, they were ultimately completely eliminated in the 2007 federal election without a broader public aware of this. The party received just 1.3% of the vote - in its former stronghold of South Australia only 0.9%.
In 2009 the Democrats also lost their last electorate at the state level. In South Australia , the only remaining MP in the state Senate resigned from the party in October after making his stay with the Democrats conditional on the recruitment of 1,000 new members by November in July. Since then he has sat as an independent in the Senate and ultimately lost his seat in the state elections on March 20, 2010.
The total collapse has already occurred in Tasmania and in the territory of the federal capital Canberra , the ACT . There the Democrats were withdrawn from registration as a party due to a lack of minimum membership.
program
The party says it is based on tolerance, honesty and direct democracy . There are no higher-level leaders in the party who can decide beyond the will of the rest of the members. The policy includes preserving and saving the environment, working against economic rationalization, access to the health system, caring for citizens in need, animal rights and the abolition of nuclear technology and weapons. The Democrats were the first to adopt green politics at the federal level.
Democratic leader
The Democrats are known for their penchant for female leaders and representatives. Six of the ten Democratic leaders were women. Senator Aden Ridgeway , from the Aboriginal ethnic group , was deputy under Natasha Stott Despoja. Most of the party leaders came from their home area of South Australia .
- 1977-1986: Don Chipp
- 1986–1990: Janine Haines
- 1990–1990: Michael Macklin (interim)
- 1990-1991: Janet Powell
- 1991-1993: John Richard Coulter
- 1993-1997: Cheryl Kernot
- 1997-2001: Meg Lees
- 2001–2002: Natasha Stott Despoja
- 2002–2002: Brian Greig (interim)
- 2002-2004: Andrew Bartlett
- 2004-2008: Lyn Allison
Individual evidence
- ↑ Democrats History at australianpolitics.com ( Memento of the original from September 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Senate State First Preferences By Group ( Memento of February 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Australian Electoral Commission: Official Results 2007 ( Memento of February 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Chipp D and Larkin J The Third Man p. 187
