Recent addition to the democracy ecosystem in Australia: Review of The High Performance Political Party
Peter Tait
Justin Ryan, 2023, HP3 The High Performance Political Party, Australian Progressive Media
In his monograph, Justin Ryan of the Progressive Action Lab, argues that at this juncture of Australian politics, progressively inclined people need to organise to be able to form executive government through a new type of political party, which he names the High Performance Political Party (HP3 in brief).
His reason: power rests in the executive government not the legislature in Westminster derived parliamentary systems such as Australia’s. To be able to form executive government a group has to be able to win a majority of seats in the House of Representatives and to do that one has to be a political party.
Independents and minor parties, even if holding a balance of power, cannot control the executive. Nor can they be the executive government. That is, they have influence but no power.
Our current party system is a cartel system. Counting the Liberal and National Parties as one, there is a two-party system that conspires to share executive government between themselves. He provides arguments supporting the contention that a two-party system will always emeerge because it is the most stable of parliamentary configurations. Multiparty coalition systems are inherently unstable and devolve into a two-party system. He takes this as one of his grounding assumptions.
The two methods to form executive government are: multiple interest groups forming coalitions to form government, or umbrella parties embracing multiple convergent interests presenting as one party, as does for instance the current ALP.
Since the ALP no longer effectively represents the progressive side of ‘politics’, it needs to be replaced. To do this a new progressive (umbrella) party needs to be formed to contest elections in order to achieve the power of executive government. Such a party needs to be designed for operations and values of the 21st century not the 19th.
Without going into the detail provided in the book (see chapter 6), such a party would be more a movement than what we traditionally consider a political party. People (registrants) would register interest and support the movement, like happens with US major parties and the Canadian Liberals. The focus would be on the party supporting people to participate not join.
Candidates would be selected by a complex system that includes registrants (Party Participants) and party officials, who themselves are selected by Party Participants at the electorate level. Everyone would support the candidate’s campaigns. Again, this is covered in more detail in the book.
Other factors to support this idea include: it attracts people qualified and skilled enough to provide a wide talent pool to draw on for executive government; the party would train people to be in parliament and executive government, and assess them for the job of candidate then representative.
Print copies of the book are around and a launch is planned soon. Digital versions are available on the website https://hp3.com.au/.
Progressive Action Lab is a recent addition to the democracy ecosystem in the ACT and Australia.
Disclaimer: CAPaD does not endorse or support any political party but promotes ways for people to participate in politics, in all sorts of ways.
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