The case for integrity

But Zepps had a point to make

Well, Trump is the lion by the mud pool, Tony, who points out the flailing animals and says, "Why do we even have the mud pool anyway? Look at all these losers who are flailing around in there. Why do we have these rules and consensus? Why can't we just say what we want to say, do what we want to do?

The question underlying this anecdote, which links Donald Trump's success to Australian politics, is whether this institutional dishonesty is where the rot begins. It was, however, the end of the program and was left to hang in the air while the audience filed out. It will remain there until political theorists and commentators are ready to question the doctrine of party unity. Anyone who heard the debate on Senate reform would appreciate the mud bath analogy - most would be dismayed by Labor's response and depressed by the artificial conformity of opinion.

How then to answer Zepp's question, given that any answer must begin by acknowledging the case for party unity, since no government is likely to achieve its aims unless members work as a team? It needs the numbers to implement policies. And where these policies are part of its platform there is a duty to keep its promises. These propositions are so obvious they blur the case for a more reflective approach to unity, one which also fits with a defensible theory of political duty.

When we look for such a theory we find only homilies and catchphrases, often misleading. In a recent Radio National Late Night Live program, human rights lawyer Julian Burnside told listeners that democracy means the majority will should prevail, except on 'big moral questions'. But this ignores the fact that representative democracy is designed to ensure that majority opinion does not prevail; it prevails only where it is the view of those who lead the party in power.

This disconnect between popular theory and constitutional practice should be more obvious given the continuing debate over a plebiscite on gay marriage, because the question at issue is whether this hugely expensive appeal to public opinion is a genuine exception to standard practice (a 'big moral issue') or is really inconsistent with that practice.

To maintain clarity on such questions we need to sharpen our sense of what democratic theory says. In its simplest, bare bones formulation it says only that the representatives of the majority have a better claim to make the rules than any other person or group; it does not say the majority is free to make whatever rules it likes - which would give it the right to outlaw minority parties, execute its leaders and confiscate their property, as has occurred in Egypt in recent years.

In common parlance this bare bones version is likely to be enhanced by a 'rich' concept of democracy which includes laws, practices and institutions to prevent the abuse of power by a 'tyranny of the majority'. Accordingly, those brought up in a healthy system take it for granted that government must respect free speech, a free press, free association, the right to a fair trial and other constraints on majority will. Such rights defend 'individualist' values of fairness and dignity against 'collectivist' goals which aim to increase the common good.

Whether such constraints should figure in a bill of rights or be left to the moral sense of the community is a matter on which politicians and nations disagree, but the fact that they are taken seriously must refute any claim that the majority will should prevail as a basic principle. Rights are intrinsically anti-majoritarian claims, just as much as they are anti-utilitarian.

If this brief and crude sketch makes sense we need to look more closely at the distinction between values which impose constraints on goals (and for that reason figure in bills of rights to prevent the abuse of political power) and a commitment to serve the community by the pursuit of public goals. Because such values, including freedom, fairness and dignity, are discussed in terms of the principles they justify, we need a distinction between arguments of public policy - which pursue goals - and arguments of principle, which appeal to the standards governing this pursuit.

The distinction suggests an answer to Josh Zepp's question which would also accommodate Julian Burnside's sense that there are 'moral questions' which limit the right of the majority to impose its will on citizens. In simple terms the answer argues for a duty of party unity on matters of policy, as described above, but a right (and indeed a duty) to act on conscience on issues of principle. Any full defence of this claim would, however, require a much more comprehensive treatment.