BY LISA MacDONALD
SYDNEY — NSW Greens MLC Lee Rhiannon called on January 22 for the state electoral commissioner to "clean out any potential spoiler parties" that aim to contest the next election.
There is little doubt that there are bogus "environment" parties seeking NSW electoral registration under false pretenses that are in reality vehicles for right-wingers to split the Green, left and progressive vote in the next state election.
However, Rhiannon's proposal to deal with fake parties — for the state to bureaucratically eliminate them from the electoral contest — is dangerous and regressive.
Rhiannon justifies her call for a "clean out" by saying that she doesn't want to "see a repeat of the 1998 farce when 81 parties stood, the ballot paper was a metre long and parties could get elected on less than 8000 votes".
This statement implies that a large number of candidates is automatically bad, and that parliamentary representation for smaller, rather than larger, groups of people is a flaw in the democratic process.
I disagree. It is especially untrue in a society in which the number of candidates and the range of elected representatives limited principally by economic inequality and laws that are stacked in favour of the rich and powerful.
While it cannot be argued that front or "spoiler" parties enhance the democratic process by offering more choice to voters, or giving a voice to an otherwise unrepresented constituency, there is an enormous danger for democracy in empowering any capitalist bureaucracy or parliament to determine what is and is not a "spoiler" party.
If a "spoiler" party is defined simply as one that campaigns under false pretences, then you would have to include the Labor Party, which is about as far from a party that represents the interests of labour as you can get. Similarly, there is little that is liberal about the Liberal Party, or democratic about the Democrats.
Giving the state the power to ban parties from standing in elections, rather than letting voters decide for themselves what is and isn't a "spoiler" party, will almost inevitably discriminate against parties that challenge the status quo from the left.
The Socialist Alliance is painfully aware of how such restrictions can be used, having recently spent many, many hours collecting the signed membership forms of more than 900 enrolled members in NSW, and scraping together $2000, both of which are required to even apply for electoral registration in this state.
These absurdly difficult requirements for parties without an MP (which even the major parties would be hard pressed to meet) were passed in 1999 by the NSW Labor and Liberal MPs — supported in part by the Greens — ostensibly to weed out "non-genuine" parties and reduce the size of the ballot paper.
The real effect has been that the overwhelming majority of parties that have met the new requirements for registration are right-wing parties, while most of the "genuine" left parties which contested the 1998 election have been excluded from standing again.
No amount of restrictions on the registration of new political parties will stop the establishment of front or "spoiler" parties by right-wing groups or the major parties. In a system in which they reflect the interests of the economic and political establishment, they, unlike the left, will always be able to find the money and resources to get around such restrictions.
We urge the NSW Greens to drop their call for a strengthening of the state's power to decide which candidates are "genuine" and which are not, and instead to campaign to expand the mass of people's access to parliamentary politics by removing all restrictions on the registration of new parties and requiring the government to provide all voters with information from each party about its policies and preferences allocation.
Maximising the informed and active involvement of the mass of people in the electoral process is the only way to expose fake parties, and ensure they are discarded at the polls.
[Lisa Macdonald was the Socialist Alliance candidate for Reid in the November 10 federal election.]
From Green Left Weekly, January 30, 2002.
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