It is getting to the point where I seriously wonder why people both joining the ALP. One of the significant reasons for joining is that you get to vote in preselecting your parties candidate when a vacancy occurs. Why else give up all those Tuesday evenings?
Well increasingly it seems that you will not need to bother yourself with taking out membership if that was something you were interested in. The ALP National Executive is willing take all that responsibility off local party members and do all the work of parceling out vacant seats based on complex deals to keep all the faction leaders happy.
Whatever happened to democracy within the party that claims a special place in the struggle for democracy in Australia?
What it looks like right now is continuing hollowing out of the ALP into nothing more than a self-perpetuating institution for carving out access to the right to manage the machinery of government whenever the ALP gets its turn.
The latest shenanigans in the ACT in which it looks unlikely at the moment that there will be a local preselection to replace the retiring members for the electorates of Fraser and Canberra is really the last straw. The rumours are that overriding factor is that the allocation of candidates for these electorates is the flow on results of deals done in the Sydney metropolitan area by factions within the party.
If that happens it is my profound hope that there is an electoral revolt. It has happened before in Canberra.
If the process goes unchallenged within the ALP it simply means that another one of the limited channels for community participation in the governmental process will have been blocked up.
No comments:
Post a Comment