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Australian Journal of Political Science
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Evolving membership strategies in
Australian political parties
William Crossa & Anika Gaujab
a Carleton University
b University of Sydney
Published online: 21 Oct 2014.
To cite this article: William Cross & Anika Gauja (2014) Evolving membership strategies
in Australian political parties, Australian Journal of Political Science, 49:4, 611-625, DOI:
10.1080/10361146.2014.958979
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2014.958979
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Evolving membership strategies in Australian
political parties
WILLIAM CROSS
Carleton University
ANIKA GAUJA
University of Sydney
Like parties elsewhere, the Australian parties have witnessed a decline in
membership activism in recent years and some have suggested that near
memberless parties may become the norm. Drawing on elite interviews, party
documents and examination of recent organisational reforms, we argue that
parties continue to need members and view their involvement as essential to
achieving their objectives. In response to declining rates of activism parties
have begun to experiment with different forms of membership, such as policy
branches, and to expand the traditional notion of membership to include
‘supporters’. We show that membership is a flexible concept that is used by
parties to fulfil their institutional functions and electoral objectives, and is
defined in unique ways in each sphere of activity. We suggest that accounts of
party decline relying on formal membership numbers may be inaccurate.
Keywords: political parties; party members and functions; party activism; Australian
politics
Introduction
A significant body of research establishes a marked decline in both party membership
numbers and in levels of intra-party activism (Scarrow and Gezgor 2010; van Biezen,
Mair, and Poguntke 2012; Whiteley 2011). Among them, Katz and Mair’s(1995)
cartel party thesis highlights a changing organisational dynamic within parties as
they have become more dependent on the state, with individual members increasingly
marginalised and less important to a party’s success. And, according to van Biezen
and Poguntke, any efforts expended by parties to achieve and sustain large member-
ship organisations ‘served to validate the legitimising myth of party democracy rather
William Cross is Professor and Bell Chair in Parliamentary Democracy in the Department of Political
Science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Anika Gauja is Senior Lecturer in the Department
of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. Funding for this research
was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Australian
Research Council and the University of Sydney International Research Collaboration Scheme.
Australian Journal of Political Science, 2014
Vol. 49, No. 4, 611–625, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2014.958979
© 2014 Australian Political Studies Association
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than remain true vehicles of linkage between party elites and society at large’
(2014: 205).
Australia’s political parties have been no exception to this trend. In recent decades,
membership numbers have declined and those who do belong are ageing and less
active than in earlier periods. Yet, the formal roles of parties in Australian represen-
tative democracy have remained the same, and like political parties elsewhere, there
are few signs of deterioration in their procedural functions, such as selecting candi-
dates and contesting election campaigns (van Biezen 2014: 3).
Engaging with a growing literature that considers membership and party organis-
ational decline as something of a fait accompli, in this article, we examine the con-
temporary attitudes and approaches of Australia’s major political parties, the
Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Liberal Party, towards the utility and function
of party membership. We choose to focus exclusively on the major parties as the
problem of membership decline is arguably a more fundamental and pressing
problem for these once ‘mass party’organisations. The Greens, in contrast, have
experienced membership growth in the last decade (Jackson 2012: 599). The frame
of analysis that we present, however, can be applied to all political parties. Adopting
a top-down perspective, we start from the assumption that ‘membership’is a concept
constructed by parties and one that can be used and manipulated (in terms of who can
be a member and the rights/duties ascribed to members) as a tool to achieve a party’s
goals. We do this by examining party documents, drawing upon interviews with party
elites and ethnographic observations at party meetings and conferences, in order to
consider how the parties construct membership and empower members and suppor-
ters in key areas of party life.
The Australian parties have taken different approaches to the empowerment of
members in recent years, and because of this we are able to identify different con-
ceptions of membership and their underlying rationale. We find that despite structural
and ideological differences, for both the ALP and the Liberals, the perceived impor-
tance of having a membership organisation is similar: it lies in the roles members play
as a link between the parliamentary party and local voters as participants in policy
development, as volunteers and funders of successful electoral campaigns, and as
an asset in the recruitment and selection of personnel. We show that in response to
declining and less active memberships, these parties have responded with a series
of membership innovations, for example: online policy forums, policy rather than
geographic membership branches, community organising techniques for campaign-
ing, experiments with the inclusion of supporters in the selection of parliamentary
candidates and, in the ALP, allowing members to vote in leadership contests.
We argue that these experiments present something of a balancing exercise for
parties between preserving the value of party membership and maintaining the auth-
ority of the party ‘centre’, while also engaging interested and active citizens outside
the party in a more formalised way. Within this balance, party membership should be
viewed as a dynamic and flexible concept that has different meanings in different
functional contexts. Previous studies have examined the ‘role’of Australian party
members in specific contexts –candidate selection (Cross and Gauja 2014) and
policy development (Gauja 2013), for example –but they do not consider the
relationship between members’activity in different spheres, and how this contributes
to a broader picture of what membership means. This article advances debate by dis-
aggregating the analysis of membership into three discrete spheres of party activity
(policy development, contesting elections and personnel selection) and treating it
612 W. CROSS AND A. GAUJA
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as a constructed concept, in order to show that members still matter to Australian pol-
itical parties. Because their objectives are somewhat different in each functional area,
membership is defined and used in unique ways in each sphere of party activity. The
challenges confronting the principal Australian parties are similar to those in the
remainder of the western, democratic world, which makes them an interesting case
study of the changing nature of membership and the character of the organisational
response.
Wither party membership
The value of party membership is usually conceptualised in the scholarly literature in
terms of the core functions of political parties. Members are seen as a committed
group of activists that promulgate an ideology, a source of outreach and policy inno-
vation, as financial support or a campaigning resource, and as a source of legitimacy
and social linkage (Scarrow 1996:42–6; Ware 1996:63–4). Despite the perceived
benefits that members bring to parties, the standard argument is that parties have
evolved from the mass model, in which grassroots members were the foundation
of the party, through several other organisational iterations –cadre, electoral pro-
fessional, cartel and franchise models –where members have become increasingly
marginalised. Among the most often cited contributing factors are a centralisation
of party decision-making among the elite, an increased reliance on modern tech-
niques of mass and targeted communications (including online campaigns), the
associated professionals required to execute these electoral strategies, and an
increased reliance on public funding from the state (Farrell 2006; Katz and Mair
1995; Panebianco 1988). Arguably, all of these transformations weaken the linkages
between a party’s supporters on the ground and its central offices and operations
(Scarrow 2000).
Some observers have begun to question whether parties even want members. As
parties arguably become less reliant on members for their electoral and fundraising
capacity, Young (2013) argues that they may also view an active membership as a
liability in pursuit of their electoral objectives (Scarrow 1996:40–1). Katz (2013:
63) takes a somewhat contrarian view suggesting that the decline in membership
numbers may have little to do with the ways in which parties operate internally
and may instead reflect broader societal changes that are completely exogenous to
questions of party organisation. As a form of participation oriented towards
‘citizen duty’and institutionalised politics, party membership may no longer meet
changing social preferences for more individualised and ad hoc political engagement
(Bang 2003; Bennett 2008; Dalton 2008).
One result of these developments may be the emergence of ‘memberless’parties.
These tend to be centred on a strong, charismatic leader and include the Netherlands’
Party for Freedom led by Geert Wilders, early iterations of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza
Italia and, in Australia, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. Other parties have moved in
what seems to be the opposite direction of making membership easily accessible
and lowering barriers to participation to the point where they are essentially non-
existent. This is most obvious in parties that have broadened their categories of
affiliation in what Scarrow (2014) refers to as a multispeed model of organisation,
expanded rights to participation in internal decision-making to ‘supporters’as well
as members (Gauja 2013:98–111); and, when restricting participation to members,
eliminated any real conditions to membership so that it is more self-proclaimed
EVOLVING MEMBERSHIP STRATEGIES IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL PARTIES 613
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than a benefit bestowed by the party. Some have argued, however, that the result of
making membership extremely open and accessible (or removing it altogether as a
condition of intra-party participation) is that it becomes transitory and highly frag-
mented (Kenig and Rahat 2014). Rather than having an engaged, semi-permanent
membership that is equipped with institutional opportunities to hold leaders to
account, large numbers of casual supporters are invited to participate, with the
result that they are more easily led by the party elite and not inclined to check the
latter’s activities on an ongoing basis (Mair 1994).
We are left then with suggestions that parties may not need members to accomplish
their primary electoral goals, that in many cases they may find engaged members to
be an obstacle to achieving these, and that they find themselves situated in commu-
nities in which broader societal dynamics make membership less appealing. Most
parties and their leaders, however, continue to talk about the need for an engaged
membership. Using the example of the principal Australian parties, we argue that
parties believe they require an engaged membership to be successful and that they
are adapting norms of membership in response to the changing contextual challenges
outlined above.
The Australian case
Both the ALP and Liberals are formally membership organisations, but membership
rates have declined for decades. In addition, levels of activism have decreased,
members are generally dispirited and those who do belong tend to be older and gen-
erally unrepresentative of Australian society. As a Liberal Party report noted, ‘our
membership is ageing and declining …our branches are falling in number; many
do not meet regularly’(Liberal Party 2008: 1). Similarly, an ALP study concluded
that ‘membership has continued to fall …the Labor Party now faces a crisis in mem-
bership’, that the membership is ageing and that ‘the Party also faces a decline in par-
ticipation. Members feel alienated and disenfranchised’(ALP 2011: 9, 11).
Since the 1960s, aggregate membership has fallen from 4 per cent of the electorate
(McAllister 2002: 389–91) to less than 1 per cent (Sawer, Abjorensen, and Larkin
2009: 134–5). The Liberals’membership has fallen from 156,000 in the 1940s to
78,000 today (Liberal Party 2014). The ALP has suffered the greatest decline in
members, from approximately 370,000 in the 1940s to 44,000 in 2014, and a loss
of over 100 branches in New South Wales between 1999 and 2009 (Cavalier
2010: 187–9; Shorten 2014). Since the early 1990s, trade union membership –tra-
ditionally an important element of the ALP’s mass membership organisation –has
declined by almost half, accompanied by a distinct shift in rhetoric selectively empha-
sising individual, rather than collective, membership (ABS 2012).
1
Regardless of questions about the utility of members, the Australian parties remain
at least outwardly committed to being membership organisations. Their memberships
may be in long-term decline, but the parties continue both to bemoan this situation
and to attempt to increase their numbers. A prime example was the emphasis
given to this issue by former Prime Minister Julia Gillard. After assuming the ALP
1
Traditionally, union membership has been a requirement for joining the ALP, although branches are
now being urged to repeal these rules (Shorten 2014). At the organisational level (as distinct from the
individual level), unions are able to affiliate to the party and constitute 50 per cent of voting delegates
at party conferences (Bramble and Kuhn 2009; Cook 2012).
614 W. CROSS AND A. GAUJA
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leadership, Gillard committed to dramatically increasing membership numbers. In a
speech to the December 2011 National Conference, she talked about the need for
Labor to be ‘a Party of members’and championed ‘a recruiting challenge’of 8000
new members (Gillard 2011). During her many trips to the conference podium,
Gillard repeatedly emphasised the need to revitalise and expand the Party’s member-
ship. In the face of a widely reported decline to just below 32,000 at the time, this was
a significant call to increase membership by 25 per cent. Beyond simply growing the
membership roll, Gillard spoke about the need to empower members, by providing
them with ‘more opportunities to have a say and a direct vote in important decisions’
(Gillard 2011).
The current leader, Bill Shorten, has also emphasised the push to increase ALP
membership. In March 2014, Shorten launched an ambitious plan to double the
ALP’s 44,000 members by giving those who donate to the party the ability to ‘opt
in’to gain internal voting rights (Kenny 2014). Addressing the party’s National
Policy Forum (NPF), he argued that ‘membership processes need to match the
reality of the modern world’, that union membership should no longer be a require-
ment for party membership, that donors needed to be embraced, and that the 233,000
people on party email lists in 2013 needed to be placed on membership rolls (Shorten
2014).
Recent reports issued by party review committees in both parties also focus on this
issue. It is worth revisiting the findings and recommendations of several of these,
including the post-2010 federal election organisational reviews (authored by Peter
Reith for the Liberals and by Bracks, Faulkner and Carr for Labor). In addition,
we examine the 2002 ALP organisational report issued by Bob Hawke and Neville
Wran and the 2008 report of the Liberal’s Victorian Division’s Party Futures Com-
mittee. All of these reports, written by senior party officials, call for an increase both
in the number of members and in the roles ascribed to them. Examining these docu-
ments gives us a sense of why the parties think a decline in membership and activism
is problematic, and accordingly what advantages they perceive are offered from a
large, engaged membership. A section of the 2008 Liberal Party of Victoria report
entitled ‘The Party needs members’nicely summarises the arguments found in all
of these documents:
It is from the membership that we draw our candidates and Members of Parliament,
our key campaigners, our organisational leaders, those to whom we look for
ongoing fundraising, our understanding of the communities the Party seeks to rep-
resent, and many of the policy ideas that will address their major concerns. (Liberal
Party 2008:1)
These sentiments are consistent with those heard in formal interviews with party offi-
cials for this research.
2
It is also important to note that these documents are not gen-
erally written for public consumption. Rather, they are internal documents that
2
Interviews were conducted with nine party officials in December 2011 and July 2013. All interview
subjects held senior positions with either the ALP or the Liberal Party at the state or national level. Inter-
views were conducted in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney. Interview subjects were promised anonym-
ity and thus are not named. Those interviewed were asked to expand on material found in party
documents, to describe new initiatives relating to party membership and generally about the relationship
between party supporters on the ground and the party’s central elites. For the most part, party officials
EVOLVING MEMBERSHIP STRATEGIES IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL PARTIES 615
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sometimes are only publicly released after a lengthy period and sometimes never at
all. Thus, if the parties’real objective is simply to appear democratic and to present a
public face of desiring stronger engagement with civil society, they are not likely
vehicles for such ‘propaganda’. Our argument is that these claims are not simply
manifestations of an attempt to ‘appear’more democratic and inclusive but rather
reflect a genuine view by the parties that an active and engaged membership is
necessary for them to achieve their functional objectives.
In the following section, we briefly discuss each of the key activities the parties
identify as in jeopardy as a result of a declining membership and then examine
more fully how they currently deal with members and supporters in each of these
core functions. Using examples of contemporary innovations in each of the parties,
we articulate how membership is defined in functional terms in different spheres of
party activity. This analysis gives us a more comprehensive picture of how the
parties conceive of, and construct, membership.
Linking the parliamentary party to local voters and policy development
One of the recurring themes in party reports is that members provide an important link
between the parliamentary party and their voters. Bracks, Faulkner, and Carr write that
‘our local level organisation provides us with the eyes and ears to listen to the concerns
of everyday Australians’(2010: 9). The ALP’s Right, in its factional response, agreed
that ‘it is members who provide Labor with its most fundamental connection to the
community’(ALP 2011: 15). The 2010 Liberal Party Report came to a similar con-
clusion, arguing that: ‘the Parliamentary Party needs to hear what members say
because the views of a broadly based membership reflect public opinion. It can help
MPs [members of parliament] keep in touch with real people rather than just the
latest poll’(Reith 2011: 12). One Labor MP recounted to us how he was dependent
upon his branches’activists to be his ‘eyes and ears in the community’and that he
relied on them to let him know what issues were ‘percolating’locally.
Both parties largely protect the policy independence of their parliamentary groups,
but they acknowledge that civil society, preferably through a representative and
engaged membership, must be part of this process if their manifestos are to resonate
with voters. The Victorian Liberal Party’s Report found that ‘most existing members
of the Party are dissatisfied with their opportunity to contribute to policy discussions
in the Party’(2008: 3), and concluded that ‘it is also vital to the policy work that the
membership be broadly based so as to enhance the credibility of membership views
and opinion on policy’(2008: 28). This sentiment was echoed in the ALP’s report as
Bracks, Faulkner, and Carr argue for branch members’involvement in policy for-
mation in order to ‘find new ideas and policy innovation which should form part
of Labor’s policy development process’(2010: 19).
The lack of membership involvement in policy development is seen as a problem
for both major parties, but the formal structures in place to facilitate this participation
are markedly different. Liberal Party members may be seen as a source of public
opinion, but their formal role in policy development is far more limited (Liberal
Party 2014). In contrast, the formal role of members in the ALP is to make party
told remarkably similar stories and these have helped to inform our analysis throughout. Where a subject
used a particularly illuminating phrase or made a unique point, this is noted in the text.
616 W. CROSS AND A. GAUJA
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policy through a system of delegate democracy culminating in the National
Conference.
Irrespective of these traditions, questions have been raised within both parties as to
whether better policy initiatives may in fact come from a more inclusive process. In
his 2011 review, Reith argued that policy-making in the Liberal parliamentary party
was an area that needed to be strengthened. He noted that a constitutional clause
calling on parliamentarians to consult with party groups (including Divisions, back-
bench committees and standing committees such as the Women’s Committee) had
been routinely ignored (Reith 2011: 12). The ALP has gone further in addressing
its own concerns with the policy-making process, by undertaking organisational
reforms that grant new participatory opportunities to members.
Acknowledging some of the problems inherent in using the party conference as the
primary vehicle for members to formulate policy, the ALP established the NPF in 2011.
At its second meeting in March 2014, Labor leader Shorten described the NPF as:
... proof of our determination to listen and engage with our members... For more
than 120 years, Labor has relied on party members to provide the on-the-ground
support for our parliamentary candidates. We have also looked to them for
policy inspiration and reform... Today’s event continues that tradition. It sends
the clear message that developing policy is the work of all of us. (Shorten 2014:
n.p.)
In this forum, members participate according to a model of representative, rather than
direct participation. Of a total of 69 representatives, roughly one-third of the NPF is
elected by the rank-and-file, whereas the remainder comprises union and parliamen-
tary representatives in similar proportions (Gauja 2013:62–3). The voice of the mem-
bership is brought together with policy ‘experts’and outside interests, including
economists, academics, businesses and union leaders through a series of roundtable
discussions and policy workshops (Macklin 2014).
The ALP is keen to facilitate member involvement in policy development, but it is
not prepared to limit this process to members. In addition to the ‘conversation’
between party and non-party actors that the NPF encourages, the ALP has also
tried to systematically involve party supporters in online policy deliberations
known as ‘Think Tanks’(Gauja 2013). The Liberal Party in Victoria has
implemented a similar process, with 19 policy forums (including several that are
online) operating to give the rank-and-file a more meaningful say in policy develop-
ment, while maintaining the autonomy of the parliamentary party, as well as engaging
supporters who are not party members in this process. A senior party official
described this as ‘a tough challenge’. In this sense, the ‘legitimacy’benefit is not
based on having a large membership alone, but in structures that facilitate member
involvement, combined with incorporating the views of supporters and stakeholders.
Another initiative designed to broaden the concept of membership away from geo-
graphically based branches has been the creation in the ALP of issue branches. Known
as policy action caucuses, these branches receive financial support and resources from
the party in the same way as a geographic local branch, and are entitled to convene
meetings, policy forums and put policy motions to conference (ALP 2011:12–3).
According to a New South Wales (NSW) Labor organiser, issue branches are seen
as a way of attracting younger people and those drawn to the party for policy
reasons as opposed to wanting to engage in a local branch. In NSW, members have
EVOLVING MEMBERSHIP STRATEGIES IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL PARTIES 617
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the option of joining a Central Policy Branch rather than a local branch, which is adver-
tised as offering ‘dynamic and robust policy discussions’,featuring‘guest speakers,
interesting themes and lively question and answer sessions’.
Policy branches seek to capitalise on the relative success of issue-based groups
within the party, such as Rainbow Labor and Labor for Refugees, which have
been successful in not only changing party policy, but also in engaging interested
members within the policy process. ALP parliamentarian Sharpe describes the
success of Rainbow Labor as contingent on several factors: an outcomes-focused
organising model, engagement with extra-party groups to build community
support, no monthly meetings but rather a Facebook page to engage with
members, and an acceptance that membership of the group is fluid and people
drop in and out (Sharpe 2013). Compared with the traditional role of members in
policy development, these groups combine both policy and campaigning functions.
In Sharpe’s view, the experiences of Rainbow Labor create a model of modern mem-
bership that successfully fits within existing party structures while reaching beyond
traditional notions of formal, branch-based members.
Waging successful election campaigns
In interviews conducted for this project, when party officials –administrators and par-
liamentarians alike –were asked what they wanted from their members they most
often replied that they were needed as boots on the ground and as financial contribu-
tors for election campaigns. This may be somewhat surprising given that many cam-
paign observers have suggested that increased reliance on the Internet, political
professionals and targeted media campaigns have decreased the importance of
local, volunteer-intensive campaigning. The party professionals we interviewed gen-
erally agree with scholars who have argued that local canvassing activities still play
an important role in voter mobilisation, and perhaps persuasion (Carty and Eagles
2005; Fisher and Denver 2008; Nielsen 2012). This sentiment is also reiterated in
party reports. For example, the Victorian Liberals’report concluded that ‘our
current weaknesses are increasingly affecting our ability to fight winning election
campaigns’(Liberal Party of Australia (Victorian Division) 2008: 1). Similarly, the
Reith report found that ‘a lack of volunteers on the ground in the campaign and
beforehand is a common complaint’(2011: 28). Bracks, Faulkner, and Carr found
the same phenomenon commenting that ‘a strong, well organised branch membership
undoubtedly contributes to electoral success’(2010: 14) and that ‘today, the Labor
Party struggles to staff polling booths, even in held seats’(2010: 12).
This interest in increasing and mobilising memberships to assist in campaigning
speaks to the utility of members as campaign ‘foot soldiers’. In the campaigning
context, however, the role of members as ambassadors and disseminators of the
party message goes much deeper than this. Inspired by the success of the Obama
model of campaign organising in the USA, the ALP has placed a renewed emphasis
on the integrating role of party members:
Every member of the Labor Party is a voice for our cause. Their persuasive power
lies in the fact that they’re not some talking-head on TV, they’re a family member, a
friend, a colleague, a team-mate, a fellow commuter ... The voice of the members,
the advocacy of members is infinitely more powerful than that of any politician.
(Shorten 2014: n.p.)
618 W. CROSS AND A. GAUJA
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The party has invested significant resources in training members in a way of organ-
ising that combines one-on-one contact with voters with the collection of data on
potential supporters and the more sophisticated use of campaigning databases.
Rather than promulgating party ideology, this direct contact between member and
voter/supporter relies on the construction of personalised narratives through the
use of stories to forge connections and prompt action. Party activists are now
trained through forums such as the Chifley Research Centre Progressive Young
Leaders Program in the ‘art of storytelling’under the belief that ‘persuasion conver-
sations’are ‘most effective when held by members of local communities’(Murnain
2013).
In this model of campaign organising, the notion of membership has a more fluid
and expansive functional meaning. Those enlisted as members constitute an obvious
source of personnel for these programs, but the shortage of active members meant
that in the 2013 election, for example, the ALP had to look to others sympathetic
to the party for support through ‘neighbourhood teams’, set up by Labor members
but committed to enlisting help also from those outside the party (Murnain 2013).
Community organiser and former staffer Tim Richardson reported that in 84 days
his team secured the involvement of 250 people who were not previously part of
the Labor movement in the campaign for the federal seat of Isaacs. For Richardson,
the most important goal of community organising was not to transition ALP suppor-
ters to members, but straight from supporters to activists (Richardson 2013).
Analysing the core function of campaigning, we see that members are called on to
assist in campaigning, but formal membership is of secondary importance to action.
Reflecting the experience of political parties in the UK (Fisher, Fieldhouse, and Cutts
2014), members constitute a ‘go to’group, but donors, volunteers and ambassadors
are just as valuable to Australian political parties. A large membership base, however,
provides a useful starting point in the search for campaign volunteers.
Personnel selection
The selection of candidates to stand in general elections is at the core of what parties
do and is what separates them from other advocacy organisations. Our data suggest
that the parties view a vibrant membership as helpful both in providing a large pool of
potential candidates, who are both known to the party and socialised politically
within it, and also as a group to consult in the selection of candidates to ensure
that they have broad support at the electorate level. In listing the reasons why the
party needs members, the Victorian Liberals’Report begins with ‘it is from the mem-
bership that we draw our candidates and Members of Parliament’(2008: 1); and,
several party officials indicated that strong local branches play a key role in develop-
ing potential candidates and in their identification come election time. The Reith
Report also cites former Liberal leader John Howard as arguing that a large member-
ship that is engaged in the candidate selection process results in better candidates, as
Howard bemoaned that ‘reduced and less representative membership has made pol-
itical parties more susceptible to internal group control of the candidate selection
process’(2011: 19).
A recent examination of pre-selection methods in the Australian parties illustrates
that authority is usually shared between local members and central party elites (Cross
and Gauja 2014). This is often accomplished through a sharing of votes between the
two levels. Traditionally, the parties have seen pre-selections as a way to attract
EVOLVING MEMBERSHIP STRATEGIES IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL PARTIES 619
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members. As noted in the Victorian Liberals’Renewal Report, ‘it is clear that having
a say in the choosing [of] the individuals who will represent the Party in elections is
one of the main reasons why people join the Party’(2008: 32). Balanced against this,
however, is concern that candidates will recruit large numbers of casual members for
the sole purpose of supporting their candidacy for pre-selection.
The party gains little from the presence of these new members as they have no
ongoing commitment to the party and their membership is often transitory, ending
once the pre-selection contest ends. This was often the case in the Australian
parties in the last decades of the twentieth century. In contested pre-selections, can-
didates recruited large numbers of new members who pledged their support (Sawer,
Abjorensen, and Larkin 2009: 138–9). Bitterness and animosity among long-time
rank-and-file members was a frequent by-product of these contests, because these
supporters saw their influence wane as their numbers were often overwhelmed by
new recruits with no history in the party. The parties responded to these complaints
by tightening the rules of membership eligibility for participation in pre-selection
voting. Rules vary by state, but these typically include a length of membership
requirement of up to 24 months and, in some, a requirement of having attended
several local party meetings in the past year. This greatly reduced the number of
members eligible to participate and has ultimately resulted in complaints of
‘branch stripping’. A common criticism is that the obstacles to participation are
too high, resulting in too few party supporters being attracted to membership and a
resulting small and unrepresentative pre-selection electorate. When we analyse
these different approaches, we can see different visions of party membership at play.
On the one hand, allowing virtually anyone recruited by the candidates to vote
reflects a view that the more party members participating the better. The party benefits
from membership dues from all participants, and candidate skills in recruiting and
organising supporters are rewarded. Such a list also provides a potential pool of
future donors and campaign volunteers. There is little concern in this conception
for the quality of the members’deliberation and decision-making. The alternative
vision is one in which the party both rewards long-term and active members by
restricting participation in pre-selections to this group and trusts that these committed
members will make a ‘better’choice. ‘Better’in this context means that the delibera-
tion process will include consideration of the party’s needs and be made by those both
with a greater commitment to the party and a fuller understanding of what is required
for a candidate to be both electorally successful and a quality MP.
An alternative approach is for pre-selection by party primary (Gauja 2012;Orr
2011). At one extreme, these contests dispense with the requirement of party mem-
bership and instead allow any voter in an electorate to participate. The Reith report
suggests that the Liberals trial several primaries as they ‘can mitigate the operation
of factions, discourage branch stacking and importantly, promote active participation
in the political process’(2011: 22). Supporters also note that primaries can broaden
local exposure of the chosen candidate and build momentum for the general election.
In these cases, however, there are no special provisions made for party members, they
are invited to participate along with all other voters, and all votes have equal weight.
Given the low number of party members, their votes are almost certain to comprise a
small minority of those cast.
An intermediate approach invites participation of all interested voters while pro-
viding a privileged position for members. In this method, used in a few ALP trials
and recommended in the Bracks, Faulkner, and Carr report, the vote is shared
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between party members and supporters in the local community. For example, in the
ALP trials conducted in Sydney in March 2014 –termed ‘community pre-selections’
–members were allocated 50 per cent of the total vote while 50 per cent was reserved
for community and trade union supporters. This approach brings together different
incentives the Party has for different selectorates. Members are rewarded for their
ongoing service, and their insider perspective of what constitutes a good party candi-
date is privileged, as they control half of the vote, even though in all likelihood they
comprise a minority of those participating. Allowing supporters to participate opens
up the process and eliminates obstacles to voting, such as membership fees and acti-
vism requirements. In this way, the party attracts a broader base of voters but does not
give up ‘control’over the pre-selection to casual supporters at the expense of more
committed and dedicated members. The vote of each supporter almost certainly
counts less than that of each member, but this reflects the Party’s preference to
give more say in the pre-selection to members over other participants.
Recent ALP community pre-selections conducted in two NSW electorates illus-
trate both how few party members participate and how their votes are more
heavily weighted than are those of non-members. In the Newtown electorate, a
member’s vote was worth more than five times that of a non-member: 241 party
members voted along with 1345 non-members. In Campbelltown, a member’s vote
was worth 38 times more: 28 members voted alongside 1061 non-members (Bram-
ston 2014).
Over the course of the past two decades, parties in many other parliamentary
democracies expanded their leadership selectorates to include rank-and-file
members, yet both the ALP and the Liberals resisted this movement (Cross and
Blais 2012; Gauja 2014). Their principal justification for this was that the primary
role of the leader is to lead the parliamentary party and thus s/he must have their con-
fidence and accordingly should be chosen by them. Party officials also pointed to the
relatively short three-year electoral cycle as a reason why they could not easily adopt
the reforms implemented elsewhere (Cross and Blais 2012).
Citing a desire by party members for direct participation in this important party
decision and responding to growing concerns over internal leadership struggles
within the parliamentary party, the ALP for the first time included members in its
2013 leadership contest. Shorten was selected leader on a ballot in which votes of
party members and parliamentarians were each weighted to account for 50 per cent
of the total. Some argued for a two-year membership requirement (similar to that
often required for pre-selections), but the Party instead allowed all financial
members as of the date of the past election (just weeks earlier) to participate. The
rules allowed all members to vote but they did not provide an opportunity for candi-
dates to recruit new supporters to the Party and did not permit the participation of sup-
porters who were not current members. In this sense, voting eligibility was somewhat
more restrictive than in ‘primary’pre-selections, but less so than in those requiring
relatively lengthy branch membership. Approximately 74 per cent of the eligible
44,000 party members voted. Interestingly, Shorten was the choice of only 4-in-10
members but was successful as a result of being favoured by almost two-thirds of
his parliamentary colleagues.
In both candidate and leadership selection (at least for the ALP), we see a willing-
ness to involve party members in the process but an unwillingness to turn over full
decision-making authority to them. In both parties, there is a sharing of authority
between the rank-and-file and central party elites in candidate selection. There is
EVOLVING MEMBERSHIP STRATEGIES IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL PARTIES 621
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movement to include non-members in the process through community primaries, but
there is a privileged position for members through a weighting of votes. This reflects
both a desire to maintain an incentive to membership, a privileging of the views of
those who have been long-term members, and a desire to increase the numbers of sup-
porters participating in party decision-making.
Conclusion: Locating modern membership within traditional party functions
Declining rates of membership and decreasing levels of intra-party activism have not
escaped Australian political parties. Internal party reports acknowledge the serious-
ness of the trend, but continue to advocate for increasing membership engagement
as the solution. This may be explained by parties’reluctance to depart from the legit-
imising myth of intra-party democracy, but we argue that this prescription stems from
more functional roots. Parties in Australian representative democracy continue to
fulfil several traditional functions, and membership is a key tool that they can use
in performing these functions. In short, some scholars argue that political parties
no longer need or want members, but we find that the Australian parties believe
they need engaged supporters in order to be successful.
Our analysis has focused on the two major Australian political parties, yet our basic
argument –that membership matters and should be seen as a tool to promote engage-
ment in different spheres of party activity –travels across democracies and can be
applied to other political parties. As Scarrow (2014) has shown, parties in many
countries are experimenting with different types of membership. Rather than
giving up on engaging supporters in their activities, parties are seeking new and
different ways of attracting them. Parties in government may often become increas-
ingly hierarchical, but after electoral defeat fingers are routinely pointed at organis-
ational atrophy resulting in a dispirited, shrinking and disengaged grassroots, and
attempts are regularly made to revitalise membership as a way of reinvigorating a
party. Recent examples of this include New Zealand’s Labour Party, Canada’s Lib-
erals, the UK Labour Party and Ireland’s Fianna Fail. Within Australia, evolving
membership strategies similar to those described in this article can also be seen
within other parties: the Nationals have previously experimented with primaries in
candidate selection (Gauja 2012) and the Greens’2013 campaign for a Senate seat
in the Australian Capital Territory drew heavily on candidate Simon Sheik’s prior
experience campaigning with the progressive organisation GetUp!
Drawing on party documents and interviews with party elites, we have presented a
picture of what members mean to Australian parties and have illustrated how a flex-
ible definition allows them to tailor it to meet their needs across different functions. In
the arena of policy development and linkage, we see a shift from the formal domi-
nance of the party conference and parliamentary group to policy forums and branches
in response to party elites’request for members to provide a connection to the com-
munity as the ‘eyes and ears’of the party organisation, and an alternate source of
public opinion for the parliamentary party to draw upon. The formal role of party
members is markedly different between the parties, but there is evidence of some con-
vergence, with the ALP moving to downgrade the dominance of the unions, and the
Liberals seeking to expand policy input beyond the parliamentary party. A more
diverse notion of what it means to be a party member is evident in the establishment
of policy branches and in the experience of successful intra-party advocacy groups,
such as Rainbow Labor. In this area, parties are also responding to members’
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expressed dissatisfaction with the role they play and to the presence of competitor
groups such as advocacy organisations. The parties seek more direct methods of
rank-and-file participation in policy-making, yet they do so with the constraint of pre-
serving the sovereignty of the parliamentary party in this field.
Australian parties acknowledge the benefits of local and personalised campaigning
(McAllister 2013), but formal party membership is of least importance in the per-
formance of this function. Both parties bemoan a recent lack of campaign foot sol-
diers which, while suggesting that emphasis on technologically sophisticated
campaigning may be overstated, is not reliant on members for a fix. Rather, engage-
ment of supporters, who may simply be friends or associates of the candidate rather
than strong party adherents, may be sufficient for these purposes. The value of a
vibrant membership may be the presence of a potential pool of volunteers for a can-
didate to draw on, but these also may be interchangeable with his or her own
supporters.
In terms of candidate selection, we see the parties constantly tinkering with the
ways in which their members are involved. There is a long accepted norm that the
rank-and-file should play a role in pre-selections, yet there is real reluctance to
grant them full authority. Instead, we see the parties trying to balance the influence
of members with others. On the one hand, central party elites are unwilling to give
up authority, and thus the most common methods involve power-sharing between
an electorate association’s members and the party’s central office. On the other
hand, as a reflection of the dwindling number of members, and their often being unre-
presentative of the parties’general election supporters, there is growing interest in
allowing non-member, local supporters to participate. The parties’interest in attract-
ing new activists, in rewarding long-term members and preserving influence for the
centre are often achieved through complicated processes that seek to share influence
among these three groups.
In large part, these perceived benefits confirm the advantages of maintaining a
membership organisation that was identified in the scholarly literature almost two
decades ago. In this sense, membership still matters to political parties. Yet, analysing
the role played by members reveals a more fluid and evolving model of engagement,
which maintains the pre-eminence of financial party membership, but also seeks to
integrate non-members and non-geographic members into intra-party decision-
making. The implications of these recent developments are not yet clear. On the
one hand, they could be seen as an effective response to the increasing reluctance
of many supporters to formally join the party. NSW President Michael Lee’s asser-
tion at the 2014 ALP State Conference that membership had grown by 5000 as a
result of party reforms would support this view (Lee 2014). On the other hand, a
more open and inclusive membership might create a different set of issues for the
party, as the membership becomes more transitory and prone to fragmentation.
Inevitably, there is also a co-ordination challenge. The Australian parties clearly
want members and provide them with privileged positions in terms of personnel
selection and participation in intra-party policy-making. In part, they do this
because they believe their membership helps them perform these functions better.
Meaningful influence in these areas also serves as an incentive to membership and
the parties believe that having a large, representative membership is advantageous
in their quest for electoral success. Yet, they are not willing to cede full authority
in any area to the rank-and-file and thus what ensues is a constant tension between
the two levels for influence. The centre needs members to fulfil many of the tasks
EVOLVING MEMBERSHIP STRATEGIES IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL PARTIES 623
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that are required for it to win elections, yet it also knows that if it gives away too much
authority it risks being captive to the more ideologically extreme elements among its
supporters who are likely to be the most active (as was the case with UK Labour in the
1970s and 1980s). Formal party membership may be in decline, but the way in which
it is used by political parties for different purposes, suggests that membership still
matters for parties, and that accounts of party decline which rely on formal member-
ship alone are likely exaggerated.
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