A challenging time for Labor too

Enter the Democrats.

The Democrats are now re-examining their reason to exist. Indeed they may split with the ‘Gang of Four’ going one way, and Natasha’s people going the other way. This may be the last act of the destruction of the Democrats. Or it could reshape them into a major political power, filling the vacuum that now exists in Australia.

There is clearly a place in the Australian political spectrum that includes the so-called Liberal Wets (if many still exist) and moderate ALP members for whom social democracy as a concept is more important than a focus on collective bargaining.

Both of these groups feel let down by their parties on social grounds, but as yet have no where to jump.

Labor’s recent turmoil around the so-called 60/40 rule - the rule that determines the percentage of Union versus ‘rank and file’ membership at party conferences – masks a reality that there is still much of the party membership for whom ‘collective bargaining’ is not the leading issue.

When one removes a belief in collective bargaining as an appropriate mechanism in the industrial relations system from a political discussion, a yawning question remains: Why did the other half of the party chose the ALP over the Liberal Party or Democrats as their political voice?

What if the Natasha Democrats could take a leaf out of the British Liberal Democrats book and formulate a broad social policy? The British Liberal Democrats claim to "exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity."

Many Liberal Wets and Labor believers would feel very comfortable with this.

What if the Australian Democrats could use their recent disasters to rename and reshape our political framework?

What if they could recover the real beliefs of ‘liberalism’ – the compassion, the broad-mindedness, and notions of Millsian Utilitarianism or Benthamite tolerance?

What if Natasha could, with the assistance of disaffected Liberal and ALP members, fill the social-political vacuum?

And this is the challenge for the ALP: if their Asylum Policy is not right then many of its members could be looking for somewhere to go – and a new Australian Liberal Democrats could just be the answer.