Submission to Greens - political and legislative context - in progress

Notes for submission to Greens


The Constitution does not contain much information on voting except that qualifications of electors are as in original state constitutions (subsequently modified to ensure women, and much later, Indigenous peoples, were all entitled to vote). Political parties are not discussed.

On political parties, the Parliament of Australia Info sheet 22 - political parties says: "Political parties are not formally recognised in the standing orders of the House." However, in practice, the operation of Parliament is based on political parties forming the government and opposition (plus cross benchers, minor parties and independents).

Political parties are governed by the Commonwealth Electoral Act 

(15 January 2019 continued) - and presumably similar state Acts which I haven't consulted, which set out the conditions for a party to be registered or deregistered by the Electoral Commission.

For the purposes of this discussion, the relevant requirements are that a party either has representatives in Parliament already or has at least 500 members, that it has a written constitution, and that it stands candidates for Parliament. There are other requirements regarding name, logo, etc that are not relevant here.

Generally speaking it appears that political parties are not highly regulated. An article by Anika Gauja 'The legal regulation of political parties: is there a global normative stadard?' Election Law Journal 15(1), provides an overview.
To be continued ...

Submission to the Greens - my CV

I've had a response from the State Secretary of the Victorian Greens to the concerns I raised during the state election. We've had some email discussion to and fro, which I think can be summarised as Sean (the State Secretary) trying to explain to me what the relevant Greens administrative rules are, and me trying to explain why I think they're wrong. So we are talking past each other a bit I think, and I need to focus on getting the submission together. 

I won't reproduce the emails in full but I will be drawing on the information provided by Sean. I've let him know that and am awaiting his response, so prior to discussing the process further, I'll set out some background information, this time about my work for the Greens. This is particularly in response to the claim by the Greens that the reason for refusal of membership to me was that my relationships in the party were "consistently fraught". 

I've discussed the most significant "fraught" relationship, my dispute with the then party convenor, previously. I'm not suggesting there were not other "fraught" or difficult relationships, but most of them I would say were relatively minor, and of the sort you might expect in politics, particularly if you're a feminist. The information below relates to my positive work for the Greens (I'm not exactly sure of some dates but this is accurate as I can make it).

I joined the party in 2001 and was a member until 2004. During this approximately three years, I did the following:

• Stood as a candidate for the then Province of Eumemmering for the Victorian Legislative Council in the state election in 2002, achieving an overall vote of 11%.

This was a very good result given that there hadn't been a Greens candidate for that Province before. Eumemmering (which doesn't exist now, since the electoral system for the Legislative Council was changed prior to the 2006 state election) covered the lower house Districts of Dandenong, Gembrook, Narre Warren North and Narre Warren South. As well as my own campaigning, I put a lot of effort into supporting my Greens colleagues who were standing in those seats, preparing election material, getting stories in local papers, organising how to vote cards and organising people to hand out at polling stations. Compared with the other candidates, I was more experienced, as I'd been an adviser in the Labor party prior to joining the Greens, and I was therefore able to give them support. The Greens had not stood before in most of the area (there was a Greens lower house candidate in the former district of Pakenham, which covered some of the current District of Gembrook, in 1999).

It's difficult to compare the 11% result with successive elections since there have been many changes, not just in the electoral system, but because there are many more parties contesting, particularly in the upper house. So the fact that the result hasn't been equaled since is not simply related to the efforts of me or anyone else. However I can say that in the area where I had lived until 2001, the town of Cockatoo, the upper house vote for me at 20% was a lot higher than the 1999 vote of 10.3%. I was very honoured and humbled by this, however I don't think many of my fellow members in the Moreland Branch would have known or cared about this result, as they were very focused on the Brunswick election, where Pamela Curr was the candidate.

I have also volunteered for the Greens, including variously handing out how-to-votes, campaigning, serving as a booth captain and scrutineering, at state and federal elections, and some local Council elections, right up until the 2018 state election, when I decided I could no longer ignore the problems in the party.

• Served as Convenor of the Victorian Greens Women's Network in about 2003-04.

I was invited to take on this position and elected unopposed when I agreed. This probably gives some idea of the challenges. In theory, the Greens have always been very supportive of women, and had a commitment to affirmative action where required. Certainly the Greens had a better record on standing female candidates than other parties at that time. Nevertheless, the State Executive and State Council tended to be dominated by certain men who spoke loudly and held the floor. Trying to deal with this was quite difficult, and in addition to the problems of the staff restructure (which I've discussed elsewhere) meant my job was very difficult. I don't think it's at all unusual that women in such positions are perceived as difficult, however I did the job as best I could.

• Coordinated the national health policy working group and the development of the Greens national health policy for the 2004 federal election, and supported both state and federal health spokespeople.

As well as coordinating the development of the national health policy, which involved pulling together and editing the contributions from members of the working group, and writing some sections myself, I also wrote a submission to Senate inquiry on Medicare and arranged for Richard Di Natale and myself to speak at the inquiry, and prepared material for distribution at a Medicare rally in 2004 where Kerry Nettle spoke. 

As well as these formal positions I was also a branch member and helped out with fundraising and social activities of the Moreland Branch during the time I was a member. 

I acknowledge that I had conflict with some members of the Moreland Branch at times, but to suggest that I could have achieved all these things, in the relatively short period of my Greens membership (only about three years) if I had really had "consistently fraught" relationships with everyone, as some Moreland Branch members apparently allege, is self-evidently questionable.

In the next post, I will discuss the question of whether, and how, some Greens members use processes such as consensus and complaints, in a way that is similar to factionalism and is at odds with the way those processes are intended. In doing this, I will discuss my own experiences but I will also have to refer to what happened in Darebin Branch and the former electorate of Batman in 2018. I'm trying to confine this submission mainly to my own experiences, because others are following up those issues and I don't want to confuse that process, but I need to talk about it eventually because what happened in Batman is crucial to this submission and why I decided to make it, after letting these issues go for so many years.