Billy Hughes was an extraordinary Australian politician. His parliamentary service of 51 years is a record never beaten and unlikely to be repeated, and he is often remembered for his frequent change of party allegiances.
Hughes managed to sit in the parliament as the representative of no fewer than six political parties – from Labor to Liberal with several variations in between. He famously quipped, when asked why he had never joined the Country party, that you have to draw the line somewhere.
Hughes is one of many politicians who have switched parties in our post-federation history, often reshaping politics in their wake. While it has not been as frequent in recent decades, Lidia Thorpe’s dramatic resignation from the Greens is not an isolated event. At least 11 other senators have abandoned their party over the last 10 years.
Thorpe’s decision to leave the Greens has, however, sparked a renewed debate about whether senators should be able to switch parties or become independents and remain in the parliament.
Essentially, this comes down to what seems like a simple proposition – voters choose senators based on their party. Following this line of thinking, in Thorpe’s case, Victorian voters elected a Greens senator not her as an individual.
The chair of the Centre for Public Integrity and a former supreme court judge, Anthony Whealy, summarised these arguments when he was quoted as saying this week that “the overriding concept should be that the will of the people should prevail”. He added: “Where a particular senator simply splits from their party but wants to remain in the Senate … then I think that’s a rebuff to the democratic system.”
The solution most often proposed is an amendment to the constitution that would require a senator to vacate their seat if they resign from the party that sponsored their candidacy.
This is not a simple issue and while the case for change has some superficial merit, it would be a fundamental mistake if the parliament were to ask Australians to support constitutional change to deliver this outcome. Attempting to remedy one problem would create many others with profound significance for the way our parliament and democracy operate.
The key pillar for those arguing for change is that senators are, in most cases, elected from party lists and voters are casting a ballot for that party, its policies and values. While in reality this is probably so for a large majority of voters, our whole system of representative democracy is founded on the concept of individuals being elected to the parliament to exercise their best judgment on matters that come before it.
That’s why voters have the choice of above-the-line group voting or below-the-line individual numbering.
Yet despite all of this, the inherent principle involved in voters choosing individuals as their representatives is an important one and it is ultimately the voter’s choice as to whether they want to vote for a party group ticket or individual candidates. The extension of the argument of those seeking change is that we would not need to even have the names of candidates on the Senate ballot paper – just their parties – unless they are standing as independents.
There are two further factors that must be considered.
First, the flip side of requiring a senator or MP to vacate their seat if they resigned from their party means that if the party were to expel them they would also be forced from parliament. This would give party executives chilling powers over MPs and would be an assault on the freedoms, decisions and responsibilities of parliamentarians. I am aware of such threats being made against at least one of my Liberal colleagues during the marriage equality debate and he was rightly able to tell his party organisational leaders to go to hell (that’s the sanitised version of his response).
Second, those seeking change fail to recognise that there can be fluidity in party structures and even their existence. This is particularly so among some of the smaller parties that have secured Senate seats or are based around individuals – the Nick Xenophons, Clive Palmers or Pauline Hansons for example. More fundamentally, a parliamentarian should have the right to leave their party if they believe it is failing to represent the ideals it was elected to serve.
Senators and MPs who change allegiances will be criticised for betraying their voters and their party. Sometimes, this will be justified and they will be rightly condemned in the public arena. It’s not, however, justification for constitutional reform to force them from elected office, which would create greater threats to the institution of parliament than the problem those changes sought to address.
Trent Zimmerman is a former federal member for North Sydney
