I quite like Carrick Ryan’s take on this (apologies for FB link): facebook.com/…/pfbid02yEcgzfHPmMDv52kLe897qfcG55c…
A few days back I wrote about my discomfort at the inability of Labor MP’s and Senators to vote with their conscience. As I stated at the time, in theory every vote should be a conscience vote.
In fairness to Labor, I think it is worthwhile explaining how Labor operate under this strict discipline model, and why it isn’t necessarily as draconian as it might first sound.
In both houses of Parliament, an average of about 139 pieces of legislation are passed every year. This is spread across an average of about 70 sitting days.
In addition to legislation, there are countless “motions” that can be submitted by any member of the house which is really not much more than a statement of intent, or declaration of belief.
So how do MP’s know how to vote on each and every bill or motion that comes before them? Each party has a “Whip”, a senior member whose job it is to essentially tell everyone how the Party intends to vote on each matter. (Or if you’re an Independent, you do a LOT of reading).
How does the Whip know? Well in Labor’s case, the Party decides what its policy or stance will be through a Caucus Vote. This is a meeting of all elected MP’s and Senators from the Party in which the stance of the Party on individual issues are decided.
While the influence of senior members and factions obviously play a huge role in determining the outcome of these votes, they are held in secret and the vote of Prime Minister Albanese is worth no more than that of a back bencher.
Once the Caucus vote on a particular policy agenda, it is agreed that the whole Party will unify behind that agenda regardless on how they voted in Caucus. This is referred to as the pledge of Caucus Solidarity.
So why does Labor do this and why not let individual members vote as they please in Parliament?
The argument is that a consistent Party voting bloc means voters have a clear understanding of exactly what they are voting for when they elect a Labor candidate.
It means voters don’t have to interrogate the values of each local MP, they know what they are getting because they know what the Party stands for.
Fatima Payman had an opportunity in Caucus to convince her Party colleagues to vote in support of the Green’s motion, she evidently failed.
The moment she knew what the Labor stance towards it was, she knew she would be breaching Party rules by crossing the floor.
She breached the rule of Party solidarity, and whether or not you agreed with her stance, Albanese now has little option but to enforce the rules of the Party… otherwise the rules will be ignored.
It should be remembered that in the 2022 election, only 1,681 people voted for Payman directly. She has her seat in the Senate because she was the third placed Labor candidate for the Senate (and Labor won three Senate seats).
So while Payman should be applauded for following her convictions, it could also be reasonably argued that she has no mandate to pursue her own policy agenda in the Senate. She is in Parliament because West Australians voted for Labor, not her.
An obvious exception to this rule is when Party Leaders allow for a “conscience vote”. This is when an issue is acknowledged as deeply routed in personal ethics or societal morality, and each member is encouraged to then listen to their individual electorates and vote as they please (e.g. abortion or marriage equality).
Could Payman gave been given a conscience vote? Possibly, but allowing a conscience vote on what is essentially our national foreign policy is problematic. Having significant foreign policy being dictated by conscience votes would make us a very unpredictable ally and make it difficult to pursue long term agendas.
As is so often the case, it’s possible to believe two things.
It’s possible to believe Payman is a principled Woman who risked her political future to take a moral stand.
And, at the same time…
It’s possible to believe that Labor’s policy of Caucus solidarity has existed for almost 150 years, and she knew the rules when she joined the Party.
Whether she could have affected greater change within the Party Caucus than from her now exiled status is a debate worth having… I’m interested to hear your thoughts.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 4 months ago
Not just Leichhardt, but “at least six Labor branches have now passed motions backing Payman in the past 48 hours”. This whole thing is just proving how corrupted the Labor Party has become. They won’t stand up for their own members’ beliefs.
No1@aussie.zone 4 months ago
idk much about politics or how the ALP works, and didn’t even read the article, but unless there’s something specific about Labor branches that have voted to support Albanese’s position, it’s one sided reporting by definition …
Zagorath@aussie.zone 4 months ago
You could say it’s one-sided, but if it is that’s because the other side is too timid to speak up for their view. How many branches have actually taken a vote and come down in favour of Israel? We don’t know, because if they did, nobody’s reporting on it.
So of the available evidence, it’s a 100% pro-Palestine stance.
makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml 4 months ago
They never have. It’s always been the case that you have never been allowed to cross the floor with Labour. If you go into that party, then you know that you cannot truly speak your own mind as we see here.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 4 months ago
Is this a reply in the wrong thread? There are a lot of threads about Labor and Payman around the last couple of days, but this one specifically is about how Labor is not even standing up for their own pre-stated beliefs and how the party caucus is going against the wishes of the party’s rank-and-file members. It’s not so much about the extremist approach to caucus solidarity that caused this mess in the first place.