A leadership challenge? Future strengths and present weaknesses

In the aftermath of the Gillard Coup on 24 June 2010, I wrote a piece here on Online Opinion called "We 'the people': mere powerless observers" in which I implored Australians to demand a greater say in who leads their country. I suggested Australian political parties be encouraged to adopt "leadership conventions", in which, after the resignation of a party leader, party members vote on a slate of candidates who have publicly announced their candidature some weeks in advance of the leadership convention.

Now, almost 3 years ago to the day, I write, again urging almost the same thing. This time though, I wish to emphasize the profound effect leadership conventions could add to stability and long-sighted policy decisions by increasing the difficulty of launching a leadership challenge greater and forcing the challenger to openly declare their candidature and argue their case.

Leadership conventions could take a form similar to the one the Liberal Party of Canada held in April 2013. After former leader Michael Ignatieff's resignation, the party elected 41 year old Justin Trudeau, the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, using preferential voting and an equal allocation of votes to each local branch. Alternatively, each party in Britain and Canada offers a slightly different model for choosing party leaders. In all models, these leadership conventions require the existing leader to resign voluntarily before campaigning begins. In all models, leadership candidates must nominate and campaign openly.

In all models, leadership conventions would serve to make covert challenges on a party's leadership a thing of the past. In all forms, they would empower party leaders to make long-term decisions without fear of a snap caucus rebellion in response to a few opinion polls. In all forms, leadership conventions would reduce the incentives for the media to fixate on rumors about leadership challenges and, perhaps, open up more space for reporting on policy and governance. Perhaps.

Already retrospectives about the "Rudd Resurrection" identify Julia Gillard's sagging opinion poll numbers, her performance, ALP factional wars, the media and her gender as potential causes of her downfall. All these factors may have played a part. But, ultimately, the method for choosing party leaders in Australia made these factors relevant. Leadership challenges are a cinch. They can be called at any time without much fuss. Deposing any leader of the Labor or Liberal parties is-relatively-easy-peasy. All you have to do is privately convince caucus or make a few surreptitious backroom deals.

The temptation, in the aftermath of Kevin Rudd's return, is to focus on the personalities of the players or the lack of popularity of the leader as the cause of the leadership spill. We want to say that "Rudd was too focused on 'spin', that's why Gillard challenged and caucus voted for her." Or perhaps, "Gillard couldn't connect with the people and had a funny voice, that's why she was removed."

Yet, this does not stand up to scrutiny. You might recall that Tony Blair was immensely unpopular in his last four years as Prime Minister due in a large part to the Iraq War. Blair's approval ratings hovered around 30% between 2003 and 2007-lower than Gillard's. Blair also oversaw the Labor Party's loss of 47 seats in the 2005 Election.

And yet, there were no covert coup attempts; no equivalent to our chilly Canberran winter knifings. During his tenure, Blair did not have to dedicate his time and effort fending off leadership challenges from fellow MPs. Instead, he could focus on other things (like governance). Eventually Blair announced he would resign on 10 May 2007 and did so a fortnight later.

We get a similar story if we go to Canada. Stephen Harper, Prime Minister since the Canadian Conservative Party won minority government in 2006, survived a real, deep recession-with all the vagaries that minority government brings, and during this time could focus on politics and policy rather than worrying about an attack from within. Since 2009, his approval ratings have never been above 40%, and are currently around 25 – 30%. Yet speculation about leadership changes is minimal. One recent editorial in the Globe and Mail did raise the question, but it did so in these terms:

"If Stephen Harper is to serve his party well, he has a critical decision to make within a few months. He has to let it be known whether he will lead the Conservatives into another election."

Quite a different tone than we've seen in recent Australian media reports, eh?

Increasingly Australians are tempted to point the finger at the media as the source of leadership instability. The argument is that the media should be better: The media should focus on policies; not on the personalities or destabilizing the leadership with its speculation.

Perhaps the media should be better behaved. But are the media the underlying cause for all this leadership speculation? Or are they merely taking advantage of a weakness in our system?

Are the media in the UK-similar for the pervasiveness of the Murdoch media but augmented by the existence of Page 3 girls-more restrained and responsible? I wonder if British newspapers would hesitate for a minute if they believed they could affect a change in the party leader.

Hmmmm. Perhaps not.

A better place, then, to lay responsibility for endless leadership speculation, frequent challenges and occasional knifings is in the political system itself. In particular, the mechanism by which party leaders are chosen in Australia and the ease with which challenges can be launched and won.

Coup, attempted coups and idle day-dreaming about leadership coups are not behaviours specific to the ALP. We all remember the Hawke-Keating challenges. But we ought not to forget the attempt-and success-at ousting John Gorton from the Prime Ministership, installing William McMahon, in 1971. Or that McMahon was challenged for the Liberal Party leadership and overthrown by Billy Snedden in 1972. In turn, Snedden's leadership was challenged by Fraser in 1974. Snedden was soon replaced in-you guessed it-another leadership challenge by Fraser in 1975. An unsuccessful insurrection on Fraser's Prime Ministership was, of course, launched by Andrew Peacock in 1981. The point of these examples is to demonstrate that, in both parties, there is a long tradition of party leadership challenges.

The long tradition is a product of the way leaders are chosen. Pure and simple. It is just so easy to challenge. The only thing easier that challenging for the party leadership is to speculate about a challenge.

It is easy to forget that leadership speculation is constant in Australian politics, irrespective of party. Remember Peter Costello? Costello resisted the urge to challenge John Howard for the leadership, but he so easily could have challenged. In any case, conjecture and gossip about Costello and Howard was endless and nauseating. And, just as in 2007 – 2013, it distracted us from policy issues. It also preoccupied much of both Howard and Costello's time, which likely could have been better spent thinking about other things.

The media wastes their time on speculation-but only because there is something real to speculate about. In essence, the media exploit a weakness that exists. Perhaps they shouldn't; but the weakness is there. Why not get rid of that weakness? Why not take the source of that conjecture away? Why not make it pointless to speculate about who is going to challenge this week?

Leadership conventions would achieve this. There are a whole bunch of other arguments to be made in favour of leadership conventions. They increase the legitimacy of parties; they encourage civic participation in politics and in political parties; they ensure the public knows their leaders before choosing them; they encourage identity and affiliation with the leader. For today, however, the chief argument must be that they can stop the destructive, destabilizing cycle of leadership speculation, challenges and coups.

We ought to remember that Australia was once an electoral innovator. The secret ballot is known as the "Australian ballot" around the world, precisely because of our willingness to experiment-and invent-things that made politics work better. We are clearly behind when it comes to choosing our alternative Prime Ministers. Perhaps we ought to catch up?