#ausdems

Running where: Qld, Vic, and WA for the Senate, plus the Dvision of Banks (NSW) in the House of Representatives

Prior reviews: federal 2013, federal 2016, federal 2019, federal 2022

What I said before: “Overall, this is quite centre-left stuff, but it’s not immediately clear why you would support the Democrats instead of, say, the Greens. There is little here that is actually distinctive, and they lack charismatic candidates to make you believe that they will be able to deliver on the platform they spend so much time trying to explain.” (federal 2022)

What I think this year: My first reaction was “oh god really?” It’s genuinely befuddling that this party is still alive. A strange and over-optimistic band of true believers persist in maintaining registration and contesting elections, despite the fact the party’s death knell was clearly in 2007 and even some of its former elected representatives now promote other groups such as the Greens.

The Democrats were indeed the third force in Australian politics from the late 1970s to the early 2000s, but they stumbled badly during the big debate over introducing a GST in the late 1990s at the same time as the Greens were eroding their vote—and a mooted “Green Democrats” merger never eventuated. The Democrats' last senators left office in 2008 after failing to retain their seats at the 2007 election, their final state MP quit the party in 2009 (David Winterlich in the SA upper house), and a few years later different factions fought for control of what remained of the party. I did my best as an outsider to try to piece together what was going on in my 2013 and 2016 reviews linked above. By 2019, however, they managed to largely get things back together, originally on a bland centrist platform and then with a more centre-left skew in 2022. Their national director since 2019 has been Lyn Allison, their Senator for Victoria in 1996–2008.

Not much has changed in the Democrats' platform since 2022. They offer to be “the people’s watchdog in the Senate” and they maintain a “Rorts Watch” on their website as a nod to their tradition of holding the balance of power in the Senate to “keep the bastards honest”. Some policies have been updated during the current term of parliament and in response to world events: their liberal-feminist-informed foreign affairs policy, for instance, criticises Donald Trump's misogynistic behaviour as a contrast to the party's focus on the need for women’s leadership on the international stage and on the safety and liberation of women in patriarchal societies and crisis zones.

Drawing on the quote at the start of this entry from my 2022 review, I’m just not sure what the Democrats are offering to win votes from near rivals with similar platforms. If you are a Greens or Animal Justice voter, a supporter of Fatima Payman's new party Australia's Voice, or if you’re on the Labor Left and have made your peace with not always getting your way over the Right factions, there isn’t much here to make you do more than put the Democrats third or so. Without eloquent and attention-grabbing candidates to inspire voters and get media coverage, the Democrats are wasting their time, not to mention their money on deposits with the AEC, which are only returned if you achieve 4% or more of the vote. In 2022, all they could manage was 65,532 votes, 0.44% of the national tally, from standing candidates across five states (their best proportionate performance was in Victoria, where they got 0.75% of the statewide total). As a comparison, David Pocock stood in just the ACT and won 60,406 (21.18%) first preferences and got into parliament.

I’ve no major problems with the Democrats’ platform; I just don’t see the point. I'm not sure what noteworthy gap on the political spectrum they fill, or why there’s still fire in the belly to run for office. There’s nothing here to make me say “hey if you care about x then consider the Democrats rather than other left-leaning options”, and nothing to prompt me to do anything but put them in a decent enough spot after parties that evoke a stronger positive response. Maybe they’ll speak more to you?

Recommendation: Give the Australian Democrats a decent to good preference.