Democratic Accord
Principle with action
True accountability
Images by Mitchell Luo, Tom Rumble and Weiqi Xiong at Unsplash
A new politics
Current-day Australian politics seems little more than an exercise in acquiring and maintaining office. The corrupting hand of vested interest appears everywhere, with politicians complicit in its activity or powerless to resist its influence. Real power rests not with governments, but with big business and other groups having scant regard for anything but their own concerns.
Meaningful and substantial change through political action is hamstrung as issues lie unaddressed because of entrenched vested-interest opposition. Inaction, avoidance and half-measures abound. Government efforts to communicate the need for essential change — to the extent this is even attempted — are overwhelmed with propaganda. The result is an impoverished debate and an increasingly disillusioned population. All the while destructive policies are unacknowledged and pressing problems ignored.
Our resolute belief is that politics can be different. By always acting in the public interest, and by committing to genuinely open and accountable government, we see a chance to reclaim representative democracy for us all.
Our aims
We believe principled government can fundamentally improve people's lives. We refuse to accept the mounting cost of inaction in the face of our challenges and seek to urgently address our problems. We aim to advance Australia by developing policies to:
Effectively address homelessness, housing unaffordability, and poverty
Rapidly eliminate Australian contributions to global warming
Levy appropriate fees for the extraction of minerals and other non-renewable natural resources
Aggressively prosecute monopolistic and anti-competitive business practices
Comprehensively reinvigorate public education
Ensure the highest standards of excellence in public administration and government service delivery
Introduce more effective preventative health measures and an improved aged-care system
Support emerging technologies and new manufacturing industries
Encourage democracy at work initiatives and employee-owned enterprises
Emphatically address the causes of disadvantage for Aboriginal Australians
Curb domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, and other social ills
More effectively protect the natural environment and productive agricultural land
Promote regional development
Better support the arts and community participation in cultural and recreational activities
Deliver a humane refugee resettlement programme
Support a robust, independent defence strategy aimed at reducing threats to Australia
Our conduct
We pledge to communicate the best evidence for and against the policies we develop. We commit to regular review of our processes and policies, and to refine or renew them as needed.
Membership matters to us. We pledge that the contributions of ordinary members will remain central to all we do, and that member contributions to policy development — from the identification and communication of problems to ideas for their solution — will be clear to everyone. In addition, the decisions made by party office holders, and the reasons for those decisions, will always be clearly communicated.
We seek to lessen the corrupting influence of factions by:
Discouraging the formation of factional groupings
Permitting all members free votes at all times
Minimising opportunities for the cultivation of officials through forced turnover of party positions
To further guard against corruption and to ensure party renewal, we also undertake to:
Make public the voting histories of party representatives, and of candidates for office
Permit elected representatives to serve at most three terms in any assembly or parliament
Ensure paid officials and staffers cannot seek preselection for five years post paid employment
Why support ...
... Independents?
Backing independents is an understandable vote against Australia's political duopoly.
In principle, widespread support for independents can lead to minority governments with a keener focus on considered law-making and negotiated outcomes. On the other hand, backing independents can result in governments with disproportionate power falling to individual representatives. Minority governments can also see independents, each with their own agendas, pulling in different directions as they jockey for influence.
In reality, elected independents usually end up outside of government, where — without the backing of a party — they struggle to do much more than represent their electorates as best they can. A further problem tends to be the "local notable" nature of many independents, with celebrity and personal promotion central to their appeal.
Better is a vote for a mass-movement political party with a coherent and pragmatic programme for reform — Democratic Accord.
Why support ...
... Labor?
Long gone is the party of Gough Whitlam, or the reformers and thinkers from the Hawke and Keating years. Small-target incrementalism is what Labor offers today, if that — and all so that political power can be maintained.
Labor has become a principle-be-damned party of government. Its craven and indefensible support of the Aukus submarine fiasco — to say nothing of repeated failures to improve government transparency and accountability — has alienated swathes of its own membership. Without radical change, Labor's popular support can only decline further, with surely even the most rusted-on looking elsewhere.
Better is a vote for a party with a growing, enfranchised membership, not a declining one. Better is support for a party with the capacity and confidence to implement practical reforms to address the serious problems facing the country, with a diverse and regularly renewed collection of candidates for office — Democratic Accord.
Why support ...
... The Coalition?
A politics dominated by fear and an agenda which overwhelmingly benefits its corporate backers is what really characterises modern-day Coalition parties. The Coalition's cynical manipulation of community fears — fear of migrants, fear of changed realities — coupled with its own outright rejection of proper scrutiny, leads to policy incoherence and absurdity, like its "nuclear good, renewables bad" idiocy.
While Coalition parties do offer a conservatism of sorts, this isn't the kind of conservatism that seeks to preserve and strengthen the best of the public domain, and developed over decades.
Fundamentally, what's served up is a limited world view at odds with an honest accounting of the nature of the issues confronting us.
Much better is a vote for a party confident in its ability to effect meaningful change via policies grounded in the best and most compelling evidence. Better too is support for a party which won't engage in diversionary culture wars, and which won't act in support of the overridingly powerful, but rather for the common good — Democratic Accord.
Why support ...
... The Greens?
Yes, the Greens are a principled party with a membership committed to acting in the interests of ordinary people. And yet, despite their decades of grassroots organising, the Greens even now attract an overall level of electoral support less than half that of Labor.
The Greens are distinctly unappealing to a lot of people, and not just because of an unfair characterisation by much of the media and the traditional parties of government.
Sadly, the Greens frequently do exhibit a posturing and off-putting type of protest politics. Added to which the Greens' more extreme social policies are decidedly problematic for many. So, while disenchantment with Labor and the Coalition parties increases, broad community support for the Greens is likely to remain elusive. This leaves Greens' policies — many of which do attempt to address the most pressing problems facing us — very rarely realised.
In addition, the Greens are similar to Labor and the Coalition parties in key respects:
An entrenched leadership cohort within a strongly factionalised organisation
A heavy-weight party bureaucracy giving individual members limited input to policy development
Better is support for a party where members' contributions to policy development and review are on-going, where the influence of factions is suppressed, where conscience votes are routine and expected, and where party officials and elected representatives serve strictly time-limited terms — Democratic Accord.
Why support ...
... Democratic Accord?
Housing, education, work, healthcare, food for the home, recreation — in many domains, and in myriad ways, ordinary Australians now struggle to obtain what once seemed readily accessible. For many, life's struggles seem to mount year on year, like the compounding costs of the financial 'products' ever more a feature of our economy.
In large part, the broken, rigged system we inhabit works to extract from most of us far more than seems reasonable — our labour, our time, our money, our attention and our private data — all while delivering us less and less.
We believe systemic change is inevitable. How will it happen, and when might it arrive?
At Democratic Accord, we can't wait for a better, more evolved economy and system of government to spring into being. We can't wait for a people's revolution to materialise. And we certainly can't wait until truly tyrannical rule presents itself.
We need to take action now. To first build a party founded on renewed democratic practices, and to grow widespread support for our principles and policies. Then, from government, to free Australians from the worst of our struggles, and to help our people achieve better lives for themselves, their families and their communities.
Join us!
We need Australians to join Democratic Accord: to come together in our new party to address the problems facing Australia, and, at the same time, to show the established political class a better way to practise politics.
Achieving this won't be easy, or anything less than chaotic at times. But, with a committed membership, out of the chaos might emerge a party with mainstream appeal, and a practical programme for changing the nation for the better.
We need you for this experiment in a new kind of politics. If you're someone with the skills to improve our platform and tools, with expertise or interest in one or more policy areas, or with a talent for communication or community organising, join us! Whatever your talents or interests, if you share a belief that now's the time for a party like Democratic Accord, we hope you'll find your place here.
Starting early 2025, membership will cost $25 per year. Until then, express your interest in the form linked below!
Sign up
Democratic Accord needs these details to satisfy AEC requirements for its membership list and party registration. Your entered details must match your AEC enrolment record.
Member platform
Images by Donald Martinez, Melissa Askew, Nicholas Jeffries and Mitchell Luo at Unsplash