I want to thank Earle Page College for inviting me to give this lecture for a number of reasons.
For a start, it is a pleasure to travel to this part of Australia.
It is also a privilege to play a small part in an intellectual tradition of this College, this University and this community.
And I always value the opportunity to meet the students and young people who will be the leaders of tomorrow.
Another reason I am grateful for the invitation is that it prompted me to learn more about Earle Page.
One of the first things I learned was that his parents must have been very creative people when their fifth child was born in 1880 they gave him the impressive name Earle Christmas Grafton Page.
He was a gifted child.
He excelled at Grafton Public School and won scholarships to attend high school and then university in Sydney, where he studied medicine and became one of the best surgeons of his generation.
He returned home to start a hospital in Grafton where he combined his medical vocation with considerable business acumen.
Page was an enthusiast for technological innovation.
He acquired one of the first cars in northern New South Wales, so he could attend to patients far and wide.
He was one of the first Australian doctors to start using X-ray equipment.
And he was also an enthusiast for advocating and advancing the interests of northern New South Wales.
He became what we would call today a community activist.
He campaigned for the separation of this region from the State of New South Wales, a move which he believed would free the region from the Sydney octopus which was stunting northern growth.
This led him into national politics where he founded the Country Party and rose to become Deputy Prime Minister from 1923 to 1929, under Stanley Bruce, and again from 1934 to 1939, under Joseph Lyons.
On Lyons death in 1939, Page became Prime Minister.
It was only for 20 days, but they were 20 momentous days in the political history of this nation which saw Page fall out spectacularly with Robert Menzies.
After those events, he spent a period in the political wilderness before returning to favour and serving with distinction as Health Minister in the post-war Menzies Government.
Earle Page fought his last election while he was suffering from cancer.
He lost both the political and the health battles, passing away just before Christmas Day in 1961.
Reading about Earle Page, I was fascinated by the glimpses of his personality that come through the biographical accounts.
Physically, he was said to have the small delicate hands of a surgeon, and the brawny arms of a blacksmith.
Intellectually, he was described as a man of boundless energy, fertile in ideas.
According to one writer: He always had five ideas in his head at once.
And he had a reputation for always being impatient to get things done he was said to be like a controlled tornado in one memorable description.
Finally, in the words of the former UNE history professor Carl Bridge: The man was a doer, not a hater.
Reading about the trajectory of Pages political career, I was also struck by what it tells us about the choices for those involved in politics in a democratic system.
Page started as an advocate of a radical agenda the separation of this region from New South Wales and ambitious local infrastructure projects.
In the federal election of 1919 he stood as an independent candidate and was elected as the Member for Cowper.
In Parliament he joined ten other members to form the federal Country Party to represent the interests of farmers and rural communities.
After sitting on the cross-benches for a term, Page took a big political gamble.
He led his colleagues into coalition with the city-based Nationalist Party, so they could form government.
In government, Page and his Country Party colleagues had to make difficult compromises on significant issues for their rural constituency, such as their support for free trade.
But, in return, being in government allowed them to deliver practical outcomes for the people they represented.
The power of government also gave the Country Party the opportunity to forge a genuinely national agenda: encapsulated in the Bruce-Page Governments slogan Men, Money and Markets, a program for national development through immigration, development loans, and expansion of international trade.
Pages trajectory from local activist to leader of a party of government is still relevant in todays political debates.
It allows us to reflect on the role of political parties in our democracy.
And on the different approaches of those who campaign to advance individual causes compared to those who seek to win government and implement comprehensive reforms.
POSITIVE PARTISANSHIP: THE ROLE OF POLITICAL PARTIES
Political parties in contemporary Australia come in for a lot of criticism.
Some say political parties are too partisan that we are too negative in prosecuting our arguments and engaging with our political opponents.
I want to make the case tonight that there is an important place for positive partisanship in our democracy.
Positive partisanship is a contest of ideas and values.
It means politicians hold one another to account.
It means polices are debated and scrutinised.
And it means voters are given a choice.
Positive partisanship should be vigorous but it should also ultimately focus on the national interest.
That is what makes it different from the kind of hyper-partisanship and toxic politics that can creep into our political system.
The national interest can be advanced through the contest of ideas that is positive partisanship.
But it is almost impossible to advance the national interest when politics descends into hyper-partisanship.
Over the last two years, the Labor Party has challenged the Abbott Governments plans to cut indexation of pensions, deregulate university fees and impose extra charges on visits to the doctor.
We opposed these measures because we believe they are against the national interest.
As a result of our stance, the Government was not able to pass these Budget measures through the Senate.
That prompted some business leaders and media commentators to claim that obstructionism in the political system is hindering reforms that are in the national interest.
The trouble with this argument is that it all too often disguises value judgements and self-interested positions on the reforms in question.
Some of those claiming now that partisanship is blocking reform, were three years ago stoking scare campaigns against reforms like carbon pricing or a resources rent tax.
In an advanced economy and a diverse society one persons idea of a progressive reform will be another persons idea of a retrograde intrusion.
One groups notion of the most pressing issues for government to address will be dismissed by another group as distractions from the real concerns.
Our society comprises people and groups with a wide range of values, principles, interests and priorities.
Our political parties play a central role in forging a path through these differences.
Political parties give expression to different sets of values.
They develop policies to improve society and to reflect their principles.
They decide how much weight to put on competing priorities and choices.
They debate, dispute, organise and campaign to advance their causes.
They prosecute their cases and their arguments sometimes in ways that can look overly negative; sometimes in ways that inspire, excite and give hope.
Through these processes political parties in a democracy give voters a choice.
Then, if they are elected, they organise the business of Parliament and government so they can implement their policies.
If they are not elected, political parties scrutinise the government of the day.
In this way, they provide a check on executive power, and advance an alternative agenda.
All of these functions are fundamentally important in a democratic political system.
Political parties exist to articulate causes, to fight for the values they believe in and to represent the people who support and vote for them.
This means that politics will be, and indeed should be, adversarial.
We expect adversarial behaviour in other fields.
If you are a defendant in a criminal trial, the last thing you want is a lawyer who is into conflict-avoidance.
When scientists publish their research, the role of the peer reviewer is to rigorously scrutinise the work for short-comings.
In the economic sphere we promote competition between businesses.
So it is ironic that complaints about political competition often come from people who advocate economic competition as a force for innovation, efficiency and growth.
Important reforms are often contentious.
They need to be debated, tested and contested through our political system.
Modern democracy is not government by technocrats or elites, like the Guardians of Platos ideal Republic.
Nor can it be government by an Athenian committee of the whole.
Modern nation states with large and diverse populations, complex economies, and significant roles for government require representative democracy.
Political parties are the institutions which give life to representative democracy.
The two go hand in hand.
At its best, the democratic system should channel the range of views in a community to deliver outcomes which are acceptable to the majority and which benefit the whole society.
Political parties play a critical role in this process representing coherent sets of values and world views, offering alternative policies and programs, acting as vehicles for those who wish to participate in political life, and giving voters a choice on election day.
At their best, political parties should play this positive partisan role without descending into the kind of toxic politics which alienates the public and undermines respect for democracy.
Whether the line between positive partisanship and toxic abuse has been crossed will often be in the eye of the beholder.
I think Australia crossed that line too often during the 43^rd Parliament.
While I do not wish to re-prosecute those debates here, it should be recognised that the responsibility to avoid toxic politics is not only a responsibility of political parties.
It is a responsibility of business and other lobby groups, some of whom too often treat politics as a forum for the pursuit of self-interest rather than the national interest.
It is a responsibility of powerful institutions in our society, like the mainstream media.
And, with the rise of social media, it is also a responsibility of individual citizens.
THE CHANGING NATURE OF POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT
For many people, political parties are remote from daily concerns.
Busy lives, jobs, family and community responsibilities make their demands on peoples time.
A plethora of educational, information and entertainment options compete for peoples attention.
Greater social mobility means people are not as rooted in local communities, occupational identities or traditional loyalties.
All this means many people no longer identify with political parties.
In 1967 the political scientist Don Aitkin surveyed Australian voters and asked whether they saw themselves as Labor, Liberal or Country Party.
Just about everyone 95 per cent of respondents identified with one of the major parties.
By 2013, the proportion of voters aligning themselves with the Labor, Liberal or National parties had fallen to 73 per cent, according to the Australian Election Study.
Why are we seeing this decline in partisan identification?
Part of the phenomenon no doubt reflects the changing demands on peoples time and attention.
Part of it may also reflect disenchantment with political parties and with politics.
This disenchantment is regrettable.
I often make the point that you can choose not to be interested in politics but you cant choose not to be affected by politics.
So if youre going to be affected, you might as well be engaged.
Political scientists have also pointed out that declining partisanship also reflects greater education and sophistication in the electorate.
More people are willing to gather and evaluate information about political issues themselves rather than relying on traditional partisan loyalty in deciding how to vote.
Despite these trends, I believe political parties are fundamental to the effective functioning of democracy.
To ensure they continue to play this role, they have to remain vibrant, democratic and representative institutions themselves.
They have to work harder to maintain connections with the community.
They have to adopt forms of membership, engagement, activity and communication that make sense in peoples busy lives.
They also have to recognise that people wish to engage with issues in a range of different ways.
But while non-partisan forms of political engagement can be positive ways of making a contribution, many of them only go so far.
Not everything can be fixed by signing an online petition, liking a Facebook page, or making a donation to an interest group.
To Save Everything, Click Here is the catchy title of a recent book but it is not a sustainable model for achieving change.
Questions I would put to people interested in politics are these.
Do you see politics as a form of self-expression or as a vehicle for achieving change?
Have you translated your ideals and passions into concrete and viable policy ideas?
Have you taken into account the views of other groups in the wider community or are you working in splendid isolation?
What do you say to people who have equally-compelling interests which they insist should be given a higher priority?
If your policy needs funding, where does the money come from?
If your policy imposes costs, who will bear those costs and what impact will they have?
And how will you ensure your policies gain wide enough support in the community to be implemented?
My view is that engagement through political parties is the way of answering these questions.
It is the way of translating your values, ideals and interests into outcomes outcomes that change peoples lives; outcomes that improve society; outcomes that make a real difference.
NO REAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LABOR AND LIBERAL?
While some say political parties are too partisan, others make the opposite charge, arguing that there is no real difference between Labor and Liberal.
I must say that has not been my experience in Parliament.
It was not my experience when Labor deployed a stimulus package to keep the economy growing during the Global Financial Crisis and the Liberals voted against it.
It has not been my experience as the Abbott Government has dismantled action to tackle climate change over the last two years.
Or last year when Labor fought to stop the Abbott Government from cutting pension indexation, imposing new charges on visits to GPs and increasing university fees.
Those who portray Labor and Liberal as Tweedledum and Tweedledee do not always come to the debate as disinterested observers.
They are often pursuing their own political interests.
There are those on the extremes, ideologues of the hard Right and the hard Left.
There are populists and anti-party parties who seek to create a sense of resentment to win support for their own radical policy prescriptions.
There are single-issue activists who believe their cause ranks above all other issues.
And there are protest parties and niche parties who seek to win support by differentiating themselves from the major parties.
Niche parties focus on a subset of issues, eschew the political centre-ground, and often ignore the economic issues which mainstream parties must confront.
Pauline Hansons One Nation pursued this strategy by occupying a niche to the Right of the Liberal and National Parties and focussing on race and immigration.
The Greens Party pursues it by occupying a niche to the Left of the Labor Party and focussing on issues like the environment and treatment of asylum seekers.
The strategy of the Greens is to persuade people with progressive values to switch away from Labor this is why they like to falsely portray Labor as no different from the Liberals.
Labor is a party which seeks to win government to advance progressive causes.
The Liberals are a party which seeks to win government to prosecute a conservative agenda.
Yet the Greens treat Labor as their primary opponents, pursuing tactics aimed at dividing the progressive vote in the community.
This undermines the prospects for the election of progressive Labor Governments and improves the prospects for the election of conservative Liberal Governments.
I reject the proposition that there are no significant differences between Labor and Liberal.
Australians have Medicare, working people have superannuation and women are protected by the Sex Discrimination Act because of these differences between Labor and Liberal.
The two major parties have significantly different values on fundamental issues.
Issues like the role of the state; the balance between market forces and government regulation; the importance of equality; the need to reconcile individual liberty with collective responsibility; and the nature of a fair and tolerant society.
PARTIES OF GOVERNMENT VERSUS PARTIES OF PROTEST
There are also important differences between parties of government and parties of protest.
Parties of government have agendas for the range of social, economic, political and geopolitical issues which confront modern nation states.
Parties of government seek the support of a majority of the community so they can win elections and implement their policies.
At their best, parties of government pursue the national interest, making reforms to advance the welfare of the whole of society, even where these reforms are politically difficult.
By contrast, protest parties, niche parties, populists and independents are selective in the issues they prosecute.
They do not seek majority support.
They often put sectional interests or sometimes zealotry ahead of the national interest.
And they are rarely able to make substantial achievements because they reject the responsibilities of government.
Some minor parties and independents have made the transition from the passion of protest to the responsibility of government.
Earle Page began his career as a regional dissident and single-issue campaigner.
But after entering Parliament he had the courage to lead his colleagues from the cross benches into government.
This is something of a tradition in this region.
The former independent Member for New England, Tony Windsor, has played a critical and constructive role in two hung Parliaments offering his support to a major party in the interests of stable government, whilst maintaining his independence and pursuing the interests of his electorate.
Parties like the Greens, however, evidently prefer the purity of opposition to the difficult choices and responsibilities of government.
That stance treats politics more as an opportunity for ideological vanity than as a vehicle for achieving real change.
Its the mentality that prompted the Greens to vote with Tony Abbott to defeat Labors Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in 2009.
That vote has had disastrous consequences for Australias ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions all because the Greens did not want to help emissions-intensive industries make the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Of course they subsequently supported a greater level of industry assistance in Labors Clean Energy Package when it suited their political interests to do so.
Parties of government have deeply-held values, principles and commitments, which guide their policies and decisions.
But they also understand the need in a democracy for compromise.
It has been said that parties of government regulate rivalry and mediate deliberation.
They act to aggregate a range of views and priorities, both amongst their own supporters and in the wider community.
They seek to represent a majority of the population and to govern from the centre ground.
But we must do more than simply look for the centre. Our responsibility is to find a path through difference and bring people with us, in the national interest.
ENDURING VALUES, EVOLVING POLICIES
Parties of government are far from monolithic or static entities.
The Australian Labor Party comprises hundreds of thousands of members and supporters with a wide range of views, who engage in passionate internal debates.
Labor has a set of enduring values but our policies for implementing these values have changed over time, as society has changed and as the issues have changed.
In Earle Pages time, Labor supported tariff barriers, the nationalisation of industry and the white Australia policy.
Today we support an open economy, a strong role for government in making social investments, and a multicultural society.
These are modern Labor policies designed to implement enduring Labor values values of fairness, opportunity and growth.
Labor fights for these values today as it has done in the past.
The real contest is not with the niche parties but with the other major party of government in Australia, a party with substantially different values and policies.
Many features of Australian society which we now take for granted were forged out of this partisan contest.
Medicare is an essential part of Australias social fabric.
Yet this Labor reform was the subject of enormous controversy and partisanship when it was introduced.
Occupational superannuation is now a key pillar of our retirement incomes system.
This too was a Labor reform which the Liberal Party fought against, tooth and nail.
A decent safety net of minimum wages and conditions, and the right of workers to be represented by trade unions, are policies which directly affect the day to day lives of millions of working Australians.
Yet workplace relations remains a major point of difference between Labor and Liberal from Stanley Bruces attempt to dismantle the arbitration system in Earle Pages era, to John Howards WorkChoices laws a decade ago, to Tony Abbotts attacks on trade unions and penalty rates today.
Even on the most profound questions faced by parties of government questions of war and peace, and national security there have been differences between the two major parties.
Labor and the non-Labor parties had legitimate disagreements over Australias involvement in the Vietnam War and the second Gulf War.
What should never be acceptable is playing base politics with national security.
I was reminded of this when I was preparing for tonight by reading earlier contributions to this annual lecture series.
In 2005, Alexander Downer, who was then Foreign Minister, used this lecture to accuse Australias war-time Prime Minister John Curtin of being an appeaser of fascism and Stalinism who was not committed to the defence of Australia.
Mr Downer used this malicious slur to argue that the Labor Party could never be trusted on national security.
He claimed Labor had gone to water on the Howard Governments decision to commit Australian forces to the war in Iraq.
The folly of playing politics on national security is best illustrated by quoting what Mr Downer went on to say about the outcomes of the Iraq war.
What actually happened? Mr Downer asked, of the decision to go to war in Iraq, in his 2005 lecture.
He answered thus:
Free elections in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in the Palestinian Territories have reconfigured the political landscape. Libya has renounced the use of weapons of mass destruction. Saudi Arabia has taken a first step on the path to participatory democracy. Egypt is proposing a real contest at its next elections and the Syrian regime has beaten a humiliating retreat from Lebanon.
Anyone who has followed the war in Iraq and the events it triggered in the Middle East, would know that this triumphalist verdict has not stood the test of time.
My point is not to call out Mr Downers judgements with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight.
It is that national security is one of the most serious responsibilities of any party of government and should never be manipulated as a vehicle for partisan advantage.
No then, and not now.
CONCLUSION
Let me conclude by reiterating my argument.
Political parties, especially parties of government, are essential for democracy.
They are not perfect.
They will never please all of the people all of the time.
But they are the major vehicles for aggregating the interests of citizens, articulating them into coherent plans of action, and holding elected representatives accountable.
The American political scientist John Aldrich has written:
In a truly diverse republic, the problem is the opposite of majority tyranny. The problem is how to form any majority capable of taking action to solve pressing problems.
Parliamentary democracy cant work like iTunes.
If everyone downloads their favourite track instead of choosing a whole album, we will end up with a fragmented cacophony rather than a functioning government.
Politics can involve incremental gains and messy compromises.
It can involve defeat and disappointment.
But there are also great victories and lasting achievements to be had political, social and economic reforms that change society for the better.
As the Polish dissident Adam Michnik put it, democracy is eternal imperfection, a mixture of sinfulness, saintliness and monkey business.
Grassroots activism, pressure groups, online campaigning and even just barracking and commenting through social media are all part of a vibrant democracy.
Anything that engages people is to be welcomed at a time when apathy and alienation risk eroding the sense of collective endeavour that is at the heart of citizenship.
But the most rewarding form of political activism, I would submit, lies in joining, supporting, or campaigning for a party of government.
This form of activism is rewarding because you are part of a cause that is larger than yourself.
You work with a diverse range of people.
You engage in the contest of ideas.
You learn the importance of mutual respect and the value of compromise.
And it is ultimately rewarding because through parties of government you can translate your ideals and your values into real achievements and concrete outcomes.