'Broad church' political parties need common ground to stop factional gridlock

It doesn't advance the discussion very far at all yet this description is often trotted out to defend our major political parties. This is the case currently with the Liberals and the Greens, especially since it was once most commonly associated with Labor.

All that the concept "broad church" conveys is that within any organisation, including political parties, there exists a wide range of views about its vision and how best to achieve it. Those holding such varied views may become groups and factions or just be a collection of individuals. This "broad church" appellation can apply not just to democratic parties but also to an authoritarian organisation whether it is a church or a political party.

Factions may assist efficient internal operations within large parties because like-minded individuals are attracted to working together. They can facilitate healthy internal discussion around competing values like liberalism and conservatism, socialism and social democracy, radical environmentalism and moderate conservationism. They can provide internal education and training for members aspiring to higher office and are often linked to friendly think tanks, trade unions and/or business groups.

Some of their activities, including exclusive social functions, are relatively harmless but they do have a much darker side if they primarily become vehicles for personal promotion to the exclusion of anyone, regardless of merit, who belongs to an opposing faction. They then become destructive of the common purpose of the larger organisation.

What essentially matters is not breadth of views, which is inevitable within any large organisation unless the members are all brain-washed, but how internal power and authority are exercised and how the members with diverse views relate to one another.

Positive values like respect and tolerance should prevail in an ideal world, whereas in practice within many broad churches it is more common to find disrespect, contempt and sometimes even hatred for others of a different factional persuasion. While contempt is sometimes expressed between competing political parties during election campaigns it frequently also emerges from factional opponents within the same party. There have been many examples of this recently in leadership contests on both sides of major party politics.

On policy matters a broad church is only a positive environment in which to work if there is enough common ground for a negotiated consensus or agreement to emerge among the diversity. Once common ground ceases to exist on contentious issues then policy-making becomes fraught.

The same is true of contests for positions of influence and reward like party office-bearers and parliamentary representative positions. If some members are continually frozen out by a dominant faction and if there is no alternation of power or power-sharing between competing groups, then unrelenting civil war ensues.

This is the context for understanding the manifestations of factional warfare today within the Liberal Party. The same is true of the Greens. Factions within Labor and the Nationals are more submerged currently but they remain strong.

One of the most dramatic developments in Australian politics over the past fifty years has been the emergence of the Liberals as the most ideologically divided of the Australian parties.

They have taken this unwanted mantle from Labor, a party historically riven by ideological divisions which solidified into factions and repeatedly caused serious splits and breakaway parties. The consequence for Labor was often years out of office.

Factions are still an essential element of Labor culture. They have driven leaders like Mark Latham and Kevin Rudd to distraction and they are the bread and butter of factional operators like Bill Shorten. But while there are still deep differences between Labor factions over economic and social policy they now have become more like a means of competing teams dividing the spoils rather than battles to ideological death. This is not to deny that such divisions are still dysfunctional for the wider party and a barrier to merit getting its just rewards.

However even the Rudd-Gillard leadership challenges were more about personality, rank ambition and electoral success than deep-seated ideological divisions between the two leaders and the factions supporting them. The same cannot be said for the Turnbull-Abbott imbroglio.

There have been many leadership battles within the Liberal Party over the past forty years: Fraser and Peacock, Howard and Peacock, Howard and Costello. These divisions were associated with ideological tendencies between wets and dries and social and economic liberals and conservatives.

But none of these contests were as highly charged with ideology as the current Turnbull-Abbott scrap. The present wrestling match contains new, more highly-charged elements that go beyond any similarities either to these previous Liberal contests or even to Kevin Rudd stalking Julia Gillard.

Several additional ingredients have been injected into this elevated ideological contest that cannot be explained by pointing to healthy diversity of views within a broad church. These components include the bitter contest between secularism and the religious right culminating in the stalemate over same-sex marriage and the prevalence of ecologically-influenced environmental attitudes feeding into the gridlock with sceptics over climate change.

These increasingly ideological divisions are further encouraged by the media cheer-squad and by associated entities like the Institute of Public Affairs and the Centre for Independent Studies on economic matters and the Australian Christian Lobby on religious morality matters.

The Liberal Party is now moving in ideologically-charged uncharted territory. While it is premature to say that the future of the party is at stake the dysfunctional nature of this particular broad church is clear.

John Warhurst is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University