Australian Democrats exit Senate stage left

Three of the four outgoing Democrat senators made their farewell speeches in the Australian Senate last night. Andrew Bartlett, Natasha Stott Despoja and party leader Lyn Allison all gave their valedictory addresses to the parliament (the fourth, Andrew Murray, made his final contribution (pdf) the night before) before their term of office expires on 30 June. Allison and Bartlett failed in their bid to be re-elected in last November’s federal election. Murray and Stott Despoja both retired and their successors also lost in what was a dismal electoral failure for the Democrats.

The foursome’s departure marks the end of over 30 years of Democrat representation in Canberra. Most of the media attention centred on the departure of the charismatic 38 year old former leader Natasha Stott Despoja. She announced her retirement in 2006 to spend more time with her husband and children. Her final message to parliament was that Australia needed to do more to encourage women to enter politics. "It's 106 years since women gained the right to vote and stand for parliament and yet look at the numbers,” she said. “Women comprise less than a third of the federal parliament."

Andrew Bartlett used his farewell speech to reflect on his own career and extol the Democrat influence on parliament. Bartlett lamented the fact Queensland (like NSW) now had no representation from the minor parties. He said this loss of diversity was a problem that would mean that some issues may not get on the political agenda. He praised Democrat efforts in bring attention to the gap in life expectancy between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals, calls for disarmament, a focus on renewable energies and its pro-independence stance on East Timor. He said the Democrats kept a crucial focus on issues that didn't fit into the dominant political narratives. “Our role in speaking out on issues that are not popular is one that is crucial to a democracy,” he said.

Party leader Lyn Allison finished the round of Democrat valedictory speeches (pdf). She said the Senate’s strength was its encouragement of collaboration and negotiation particularly when neither major party had the numbers to control it. She thanked her three party colleagues for giving her “a smooth ride” in the party leadership and like Stott Despoja, called for more attention to be paid to working women. She criticised “dangerously repressive family planning guidelines [which] are still intact thanks to religious zealotry” and the fact spending on family planning has dropped to one-sixth of what it was 12 years ago. She also berated the lack of action on climate change. “It seems that neither major party has the guts to tell people that high petrol prices are here to stay,” she said. “The inevitable pricing of carbon will push them even further, much less encourage alternatives.”

Allison’s was probably the last ever speech the parliament will hear from her party. Bernard Keane, writing in Crikey today, called it “the death of the Democrats” and said their farewell was testimony to how important getting the right leader was. He cited a number of factors in their demise including Cheryl Kernot’s defection and the party’s “idiotic failure” to get behind the leadership of Stott Despoja. But it was then-party leader Meg Lees decision to support the GST that did the most damage. “That Lees later ran off and failed miserably to start her own party revealed just how badly out of touch she was,” said Keane.

The only seats the party subsequently won was under Stott Despoja’s leadership in 2001. But the rot had already set in. Andrew Bartlett agrees the party was in crisis by then and split into pro- and anti- Lees factions. He told parliament yesterday that the catchcry ‘keep the bastards honest’ turned out to be as much a curse as a blessing for the Democrats. While it was probably the most memorable slogan in Australian political history, it also confined the party to an honest broker role. According to Bartlett “we did a lot more than that”.

But as Andrew Norton points out, the Democrats never found a stable constituency among the ‘concerned’ middle class. “People would vote for them, but vote for someone else next time,” he said. Now, it would appear there will be no next time for the Democrats. From next week onwards, the Senate balance of power passes to the unlikely and unstable grouping of the Greens, Family First and Nick Xenophon. Allison and Bartlett can only wonder what might have been.

Natasha Stott Despoja flies from Democrats ashes

At just 38 years of age, Natasha Stott Despoja has retired from politics. She did not contest her South Australian Senate seat in the election and her twelve year term in parliament expires on 30 June 2008. When she leaves, so will all the last four remaining Democrat Senators. The party has been annihilated barely 30 years after it was founded. The fact remains that the Democrats have not won a seat since Stott Despoja won four, including her own, as leader in 2001.

Stott Despoja made her decision to resign in 2006 so she could spend more time with her then 21 month old son. She said it was a matter of “personal choice values”. But she also said the system was not perfect. She said women work and have families all the time. “We've still got issues like parental leave, child care being accessible and affordable, flexibility of work hours, the opportunity to return to work part-time,” she said. “All of these issues should be forefront on the top of the agenda."

But Stott Despoja will no longer be in parliament to push this agenda. This will be a disappointment for the supporters of the woman who was once more popular than either the Prime Minister or the Opposition Leader. At 26, she was the youngest woman ever in parliament, at 28 she was deputy leader and then at 31 she was the youngest ever party leader in Australia. But although she won the Democrats their last ever seats in the 2001 election, she was ousted less than a year later by a power struggle within the party. She took maternity leave in 2004 and while her profile dipped, the fortunes of her party nosedived.

The story of Stott Despoja’s brief and traumatic leadership of the Democrats is told in a fascinating insider’s profile in “The Natasha Factor: Politics, Media and Betrayal” by Alison Rogers. Rogers was Stott Despoja’s chief media adviser during the leadership and was therefore very close to the centre of the action. In 1998 Rogers was an ABC Radio presenter in Adelaide when she met Natasha. They liked each and Natasha offered her a job. It wasn’t until two years later when Rogers, bored with the ABC, decided to take her up on the offer.

Stott Despoja was then deputy leader and had been re-nominated as the party’s lead candidate in the election that was due the following year. Despite Stott Despoja’s magnetism and popularity this was not straightforward due to major divisions within the party. In 1998, leader Meg Lees had stunned the party when she went back on an election promise and negotiated with PM John Howard to pass a GST bill through parliament. Stott Despoja led the branch of the party opposed to Lees’ action.

The party mood was gloomy ahead of the 2001 election. This was the first vote since the GST split. A WA election in February saw the last two Democrats lose their seats in that state’s Upper House. The clamour to replace the low profile Lees with the more gifted communicator Stott Despoja was growing. While Natasha wanted to wait until after the election, she was worried there may not be a party to lead after the election. After a gruelling six week campaign (the entire two thousand strong Democrat party takes part in the vote), Stott Despoja won a resounding victory in every state and territory. Lees’ supporter Aden Ridgeway was elected her deputy.

Stott Despoja had always been a media dream. Young, attractive and full of ready quotes, she was hot public property from the moment she set foot in Canberra and the leadership increased the tempo further. Now there was conflict afoot as media were keen to explore the party divisions while Stott Despoja wanted to move onto the next phase. Laurie Oakes of Channel Nine immediately went on the attack in his first interview with her as leader asking “how does it feel to have blood on your hands?”

Meanwhile the women’s magazines were desperate to get up close and personal with the Democrat’s young leader. She agreed to talk to Australian Women’s Weekly because they said they would ask policy questions. However the price of giving her views on the GST, same-sex parenting and euthanasia, were questions such as who she thought was the sexiest man alive and what was her favourite flower. The magazine also breached an off-the-record component of the interview set-up with Alison Rogers herself featuring in the profile. Elsewhere in the media, the buzz words were Natasha’s “first test” as leader, whether it was the budget, the Victorian by-election, or the federal election that followed.

In mid 2001, the Democrats were polling a healthy 8 to 9 percent reflecting public acceptance of the new leader. Then came Tampa. Along with Labor, Stott Despoja bravely opposed Howard’s emergency legislation despite huge public support for action against the boatpeople. The mood of fear in the electorate intensified after 9/11. The personal element for Natasha was strong. Andrew Knox, a close personal friend, died in the twin towers. With the effect of Tampa dragging on, Labor backflipped on the legislation, leaving the Democrats isolated in opposition. John Howard called the election in October, with Australian troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

Democrat polling showed that Natasha was the party’s best weapon for success. So they ran a presidential style campaign with Natasha featuring prominently on all ads and literature. The government ran strongly on asylum seekers leaving the Democrats with a difficult task to retain their five seats in the election. The media was tough on Stott Despoja and she blundered on Afghanistan’s maternity leave scheme giving the impression the Taliban’s regime treated women better than Australia. A former mentor and senator, John Coulter resigned from the party one week out from the election saying it had not done enough to purge pro-GST elements.

In the election itself, the Howard Government was re-elected in a landslide win. In the Senate, the Democrats vote dropped since 1998 but they held on to four of their five seats, losing only NSW. In an otherwise boring election, the media painted it as a defeat for the Democrats at the hands of the Greens. Though it was highly unlikely, they would have done any better, the Lees faction began an open rebellion against Stott Despoja. Deputy Ridgeway was reported as being “unhappy” with the presidential style of the election. In her personal life, she split with long-time boyfriend Hugh Rimington of Channel Nine and began seeing lobbyist Ian Smith.

The results were no better for the Democrats in her home state election in February 2002. They took 7.3 per cent of the South Australian vote, a huge swing against them since their record 16 percent of the previous election. Commentators were quick to pin the blame on the leader who was away in New York for much of the election. Afterwards the only coverage the Democrats could get was about the party split. Meg Lees was making antagonistic statements and casting doubts on Stott Despoja’s ability as leader. The pair differed over the impending privatisation of Telstra. The personal bitterness between the pair grew as the year progressed.

The party room was split down the middle. Lees had the support of Ridgeway, Lyn Allison and Andrew Murray. Stott Despoja relied on the council of Andrew Bartlett, Brian Grieg and John Cherry. When Andrew Murray did an interview that clearly showed his sympathies for Lees, Bartlett retaliated by calling Murray “politically inept or deliberately treacherous”. After a long stand-off in which Murray refused to back down and threatened to stand as an independent, he was accepted back into the party without the apology Stott Despoja needed. Her authority was fatally compromised.

Matters worsened when Meg Lees resigned from the Democrats but refused to resign her seat. Lees blamed an intolerant party machine for her departure. An independent Lees was exactly the lifeline PM Howard needed to get his Telstra sale through the Senate. Stott Despoja was grilled by the media and blamed for the Democrat troubles. Andrew Murray continued to snipe at her leadership. Though accepted back into the party, he had given no ground. Without her approval, the party put out a ten-point plan that reduced her power and gave in to Murray’s demands. The plan was approved 4-3. Natasha had lost the balance of power.

Stott Despoja resigned on 21 August saying “it is hard to define your role as leader of a political party without the full support of the party room”. The party had no real plan other than to remove her. None of her opponents would volunteer for the top job. The battle to be her successor was fought by two of her supporters and Andrew Bartlett won it from Brian Grieg. But Bartlett did not have Stott Despoja’s charisma and he lost three seats in 2004. Lynn Allison has now lost the remaining four in 2007. No-one has effectively replaced Natasha Stott Despoja. As Rogers prophetically said in the end of her book in 2004: “the damage that the infighting, public displays of disunity and bickering has caused to the Democrats is yet to be counted.”

An Interview with Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett

This evening Woolly Days met with Andrew Bartlett at his electoral office in The Valley. Bartlett has been a Senator for Queensland since 1997 filling the casual vacancy left by Cheryl Kernot’s defection to Labor. He was re-elected in 2001. A former party leader, Bartlett is now probably the highest profile Democrat standing and the one with the best chance of retaining his seat. However this election is Bartlett’s greatest challenge and the latest Galaxy Senate poll released today gives him an “outside chance” of being re-elected.

Andrew Bartlett himself remains optimistic about his chances with barely two days left in the campaign. He is heartened by the fact that historically Queensland is the Democrats second most successful state. Bartlett is holding up well after a long and tiring six week campaign. He said it has been a long election year. He didn’t think it would be called this late in the year and compared the campaign to a marathon. With election now in sight, Bartlett admitted he was looking forward to Sunday. He said that at times the campaign bordered on “delirium”. “I’m doing all I can to get every last Senate vote,” he said. “But the Senate [result] is hard to predict.”

He admitted the gruelling campaign made family life difficult especially for his six year old daughter Lillith. Bartlett said he was able to stay at home because he mostly campaigned in South East Queensland. However he said that in some respects that was harder than being away on parliamentary business in Canberra. “I leave home in the morning before my daughter gets up, and she’s asleep by the time I get home,” he said.

Andrew Bartlett could never imagine what lay ahead when joined the Democrats in 1989. He said he was inspired by then leader Janine Haines. Bartlett said he liked that Haines "said what she thought rather than play it safe". He was also attracted to Democrat ideals such as the conscience vote, its strong pro-environment stance, and its sense of social justice. At the time, he didn’t conscientiously seek political office but he said, “I joined lots of organisations and got involved in lots of issues I found useful or interesting”.

In 1990, Bartlett joined the staff of Senator Cheryl Kernot as a fill-in. However the person he temporarily replaced never came back and Bartlett kept the role. He described the situation as ‘serendipitous’. Bartlett said Kernot was "a fascinating mix". He praised her contribution to parliament saying she played a pivotal role in the landmark changes to superannuation laws during the Labor Government era. “She had charisma, charm, and was highly articulate and focussed,” he said. “She was also a control freak and very hard to work for”. Bartlett and Kernot eventually fell out and he went to work for Senator John Woodley until 1997.

Bartlett’s life change dramatically after Kernot’s shock defection to Labor that year. He was chosen to fill the casual vacancy. Bartlett said no-one had an inkling that Kernot was about to leave the party. He decided to take on the role in an effort to “keep things together”. “It was an extraordinary situation,” he said. “It was a monumental crisis for the party, particularly in Queensland”.

Once elected, Bartlett quickly got across the various policy areas and got onto inquiries and committees. He said that one of the best things about being a Democrat senator is the chance to get across several portfolios. He compared that with the single-minded silo mentality of the major parties. “You cover so much, you can never get into things in the detail you’d like,” he said. But by looking after several portfolios, “you can see how different things connect.”

By 2001 the Democrats were in internal crisis with the party split over the fallout over the GST which was supported by former leader Meg Lees. The presidential campaign of new leader Natasha Stott Despoja was criticised by the Lees faction within the party. However Alison Rogers, Stott Despoja's press secretary, says she (Stott Despoja) saved the party from annihilation that election. Bartlett agrees. “Natasha kept us in a job,” he said. Bartlett was one of 4 Democrats who kept his seat at that election despite many predictions he would lose. Bartlett was a close supporter of Stott Despoja and inherited her job as leader after she was forced out in 2002 when the internal conflicts grew too great.

Bartlett was never comfortable as leader. He didn’t see himself as charismatic. “The ten second sound byte was never my forte,” he admitted candidly. Party founder Don Chipp said of Bartlett that he was “unbelievably self-effacing” and said his shy nature was not a great quality for a party leader. Bartlett said his role as leader was a “necessity of circumstance”. He said he would “hopefully hand it back to her [Stott Despoja] but of course, that didn’t happen”.

Bartlett resigned the leadership after the 2004 election when the Democrats lost three seats including one in Queensland. “I was brought in to stop the destabilisation, but it never translated into electoral success,” he said. Since then Bartlett has thrown himself back into his policy work and expanded into the social media with his thought-provoking blog at The Bartlett Diaries. He said the blog was just another avenue of communication and a way of de-mystifying politics. He said he didn’t want it to turn into an insider's diary and said it was “less exciting than it could have been”.

Bartlett said indigenous affairs was by far the most important policy area that was being ignored by the mainstream media. He described the plight of Aboriginal Australia as the country's “biggest unresolved problem”. Bartlett wants to push for action on delivering restitution for Stolen Wages and compensation for the Stolen Generation. He doubted if a new government would repeal the new NT intervention legislation though they may not act on the “massive powers” the minister now has.

Bartlett said he has found his time in the senate “fascinating”. When pressed to name the legislation he was most proud of, he nominated the 1999 environment protection and biodiversity conservation act. He said that at the time, the act was criticised by the Greens because it did not go far enough but he said this was “very significant legislation” and could be used, in time, to stop the Traveston Dam. He said environmental groups have not properly used the legislation. Bartlett said that a weakness of the Democrats was that they were “hopeless at promoting their own legacy”. He said they needed a better balance of self-promotion and hard work. There is no doubt that Andrew Bartlett demonstrates plenty of the latter quality, it is up to the Queensland voters on Saturday to see whether he has got the balance right with the self-promotion.

An interview with the Democrat candidate for Lilley – Jennifer Cluse

As part of a continuing exercise in interviewing all candidates for the Queensland Federal seat of Lilley, this time it is the turn of the Australian Democrats. The Democrats stronghold is the Senate where they hope Andrew Bartlett will retain the seat he has held since 1997. However they are also contesting every House of Representative seat in Queensland. In 2004, the Democrats took one 1.5 percent of the vote in Lilley and the candidate this time round is Jennifer Cluse. Woolly Days interviewed Jennifer Cluse yesterday.

By her own admission, Jennifer Cluse is not a politician. She is a retiree who worked in the air force as a radio technician and then as a commercial pilot. She is a mother of two sons and lives in Chermside where her dream is to make her home completely carbon neutral. Cluse said she was compelled to put her name forward as a political candidate after John Howard won control of the Senate in 2004. Since then she has seen “appalling legislation” pushed through such as workchoices and the anti-terror laws passed almost without debate. She compared the current situation to when the Democrats had the balance of power. “We checked every line and queried every problematic bit of drafting,” she said.

Cluse said she was the classic swing voter and had elected the government in the lower house in every election for the last 40 years, except in the last one. She said she voted Democrat each time in the Senate. “Don Chipp rang all my bells and pushed my buttons,” she said. She denied that the Democrats were a spent force. “[The media] were saying we were finished after Cheryl Kernot left,” she said. “They were wrong then and they are wrong now”.

Cluse praised the Democrat Senate candidate Andrew Bartlett as an “amazingly stable, patient, and listening politician”. She said most politicians only want to talk at you but Bartlett was a great listener and he has the gift of finding a way of precisely expressing what he has heard. If Cluse had one minor criticism of him, it was that his voice modulation tends to be even and there were “no oratory flourishes”. Cluse said he was “an honourable politician”.

I then asked what she was hearing from the electorate out on the hustings. She said there was “universal agreement we’ve got to get control of the Senate back”. She hoped that people would vote Democrat, or else the Greens. She said she was not happy with the way Labor was going. “I’m starting to worry that Garrett WAS joking,” she said. She said John Howard had done “admirable things” in the past such as changing the gun laws in the wake of Port Arthur and restructuring the superannuation scheme. But against that, she said he had caused anguish for refugees, denied the problems of global warming and promoted selfishness in Australia.

She said that while the Greens were on the right path, they were not yet ‘good enough’. Cluse heard Larissa Waters speak recently where she (Waters) said they ‘had 40 policies’ now. “That was the problem", said Cluse. “They have too narrow a focus.” She said that Family First were a sinister party associated with a Church that practiced manipulation on the young people that joined it. “They are too extreme,” she said. “Balance is what we need.”

Cluse said that the environment was the single most important issue of the election. She said that she knows from her radio technician days how a runaway positive feedback situation can have dire consequences. "This is happening with CO2 emissions NOW," she said. "Electronics can control runaway positive feedback with a fuse which blows. The earth has NO fuse.". She believes we have a maximum until 2018 to stabilise our emissions though she notes that CSIRO are now saying we only have until 2015. She believed the message about this “desperate situation” was not getting through to people because of selfishness. She heard it best put in the phrase that goes “the economy is me, the environment is us”.

Cluse was depressed by the role of the local media in the election. She said she had stopped buying all local newspapers and subscribed only to The Economist. She said it was the only publication not to give the name of its reporters. The local media was all about opinion pieces, grabs, sound bytes, and was lacking in in-depth reporting. She blamed the journalism schools at universities who were commercially driven to produce what employers want. She concluded by saying that Howard had slashed education budgets and deliberately created a “dumbed down society”.

Andrew Bartlett launches senate re-election campaign

Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett launched his Senate re-election campaign today at the QUT Gardens Theatre in Brisbane. Bartlett has been a federal Senator for Queensland since 1997 and is now seeking his third term. Around 250 people turned up today for the launch and heard a speech from former Queensland Democrat senator John Cherry, endorsements from high profile citizens such Julian Burnside and Frank Brennan and finally the keynote speech from Senator Bartlett.

The launch was kicked off by Democrat State President Liz Oss-Emer who asked Aboriginal elder Aunty Carol Currie to issue the welcome to traditional lands. Then former Senator John Cherry spoke. Cherry was a trenchant choice of speaker. His defeat in the 2004 election by 1 per cent after 159 counts elected Liberal Russell Trood and handed control of the Senate to the Government for the first time since 1981. Cherry stated he was the victim of an electorate that “forgot to think” and it must not happen again. Cherry stated that the Democrats were instrumental in turning the Senate into the most powerful and effective house of review in the world prior to 2004. They now have three months before the next election to put their case and urge the voters to “think before they vote”.

There then followed five testimonials. Julian Burnside QC described Bartlett as “completely honest” and performing a crucial role in senate committees. Yassmin Abdel-Magied (young Australian Muslim of the year 2007) praised his support of Muslim youth. Afghan born and former Nauru detainee Chaman Shah said that Bartlett was the only politician who gave the detainees hope. Bobby Whitfield of the Liberian Association of Queensland praised Bartlett for his practical approach and support for those marginalised and oppressed. Finally Frank Brennan paid testament to the “power of good” Bartlett did especially for minority groups.

Andrew Bartlett began his own speech by thanking those who turned up. He appealed to his supporters to take the campaign out in the community as he cannot compete with the advertising budgets of the big parties. He said Senator Cherry reminded the audience of how the Democrats began after the constitutional crisis of 1975. Bartlett pointed to the pledge made by former Queensland Democrat Senator Michael Macklin where he promised not to abuse power by blocking supply and bringing down the government. Bartlett made a similar pledge.

Bartlett then launched into policies. He was critical of the Howard Government’s WorkChoices legislation which he said “must go”. Bartlett called for more flexibility in the workplace without exploitation of employees. He re-affirmed his commitment to fight nuclear power and condemned what he called “the drastic decline in numbers of Senate enquiries”. Bartlett said we needed laws to protect our freedoms and called for a Bill of Rights.

Internationally he supported those in China, Vietnam, Burma, West Papua and Zimbabwe who fight for freedoms we take for granted in Australia. Bartlett claimed that the independent voice of the smaller parties gave them greater freedom to speak out on human rights issues. However he also supported “those who have no voice” in this country. He pointed to the example of ex-service personnel who are often neglected on their return.

Bartlett opposed what he called the unrepresentative views that emerged in 1998 in Queensland epitomised by the Pauline Hanson scare campaigns. But, he said, it was not about opposing Hanson herself but opposing the anti-refugee actions supported by both major parties, as well as opposing the “anti-migrant dog whistling” and the public attacks on African and Muslim refugees. Bartlett pointed out there was a great diversity in the wider community “if only we listened to them and gave them the opportunity to speak”. Bartlett said a strong democratic framework does not occur by accident, it must be encouraged.

Bartlett then went onto indigenous policy. He said the first priority must be clearing the massive backlog of land rights claims. The Stolen Generations report needs to be addressed as well as the Stolen Wages Inquiry. Bartlett said that “no one should wrap themselves in the flag” without acknowledging that Aboriginals lack what most of the rest of the population enjoy. He also said the wrongs of the past cannot be undone but must be acknowledged. Bartlett supported the move to protect NT’s children but it needs sufficient resources to make it work for as long as it takes not for “the ten second grab”. Bartlett said he wanted to see action taken against child abuse in all communities.

Bartlett then addressed the problem of growth in greenhouse emissions. He said the Democrats were responsible for the first parliamentary enquiry on the subject in 1991 and that government inaction since then amounts to “culpable negligence”. He said the decisions we need to make are tougher now than they were 15 years ago. The issue demands “honesty, common sense and working together” and everyone must change their behaviours. Bartlett discussed his own goal to be carbon neutral, cut emissions and offset the rest through a trading scheme.

Bartlett then discussed taxation and said “the easiest thing to do is offer tax cuts”. But Bartlett reiterated the Democrat position since the 1980s that what was required was indexation of income tax thresholds. He also reiterated his position against the proposed new dams in Queensland at Traveston and Wyaralong which he condemned as a “waste of money”.

Bartlett concluded by saying this federal election was “like no other” and Queensland was a key battleground. He exhorted his supporters to “take on the job to continue the fight”. He said the Democrats offer the community a “strong, effective voice for the issues that matter”. He closed the launch by repeating his campaign slogan “choose common sense” and asked his supporters to make every vote count.

Andrew Bartlett is a former leader of the Democrats and is now its deputy leader. The party has been long embattled with a declining vote in the last two elections. They could lose all parliamentary representation in the next election. The term of all four remaining senators (Bartlett, Andrew Murray, Natasha Stott Despoja and leader Lynn Allison) expires in June 2008 with both Murray and Stott Despoja announcing their intentions not to re-contest.

In 1997, he was chosen by the Queensland parliament to replace Cheryl Kernot after she defected to Labor. In his maiden speech (11 November 1997) Bartlett described his first political experience as a nine year old helping his mother hand out how-to-vote cards for the DLP outside his local school. The event introduced Bartlett to political disappointment at an early age; the DLP was wiped off the political map in that election.

Andrew Bartlett graduated in arts and social work from the University of Queensland. During this time he also played in local bands and became involved with 4ZZZ community radio both on air and behind the scenes. After a year of social work, Bartlett got his break in politics in 1990 when he was appointed electoral officer to Democrat senator Cheryl Kernot. After three years he left to work for another Queensland Democrat senator John Woodley whom he served until his own appointment to parliament.

Bartlett is a strong Senate campaigner, a thoughtful blogger and an active citizen who is often found at protests, demonstrations and public meetings throughout Queensland and elsewhere. He has served on numerous high profile parliamentary commissions including A Certain Maritime incident (Siev X) and is a strong believer in the power of the Senate as body of review.

With his party polling at five per cent or under and a strong challenge likely from Larissa Waters of the Greens, it will be a very tough ask for Bartlett to win re-election. In his favour is his strong image of integrity and excellent record in the Senate. Depending on how well he does on preference deals with the slew of other parties expected to line up, he may yet be returned to parliament for a third term.

The slow death of the Democrats

The Australian Democrats moved another step closer to politician oblivion with the announcement today of the resignation of high profile former leader Natasha Stott Despoja. Although the 37 year old senator’s resignation does not take effect until 2008, her decision not to recontest her seat is a massive blow to the party. She is the longest serving of the party’s four remaining senators. All four including party leader Lyn Allison are up for re-election in 2008. With the party losing support badly to the Greens, Stott Despoja was expected to the only one with a chance of retaining her seat. It is the second major blow for the party this year coming on the heels of the death of party founder who died in August.

Don Chipp founded the Australian Democrats in 1977. Chipp had already enjoyed a distinguished career. He served in the Royal Australian Air Force in World War II. After the war he worked as an accountant and had success in sport playing Australian Rules at the highest level as well as being a finalist in Australia’s richest short distance foot race, the Stawell Gift. He managed the organising committee of the Melbourne Olympics before entering council in 1958. He entered federal politics in 1960 as the Liberal member for Higginbotham before moving to the seat of Hotham. Harold Holt made him a government minister in 1967. He became famous as Minister for Customs and Excise two years later when he abolished censorship of books and other written material.

Though this action was popular, it alienated him within the highly conservative Liberal Party. Malcolm Fraser became opposition Liberal leader in 1975 and he and Chipp did not get along well together. Despite being a shadow minister, Chipp was left out of Fraser’s ministry after the Liberals won power in December. He stewed as a backbencher for a year before finally quitting the party in 1977. He founded the Australian Democrats with the memorable mantra to “keep the bastards honest”. He was elected to the Senate along with two fellow members. He led the party until 1986. Under Chipp’s leadership the party grew to become the balance of power in the senate.

Natasha Stott Despoja arrived in parliament 10 years after Chipp left. She was born in Adelaide in 1969. She cut her teeth in student politics at the University of Adelaide where she was president of the students union and was also prominent in women’s rights issues. She graduated with a BA. On leaving college she worked as a political adviser for the then South Australian Democrat Senators John Coulter and Cheryl Kernot. Coulter resigned in 1995 and Stott Despoja was nominated to fill the casual vacancy. At the age of 26, she was the youngest federal senator ever. She arrived in parliament in trademark Doc Martens. Youth was her marketing edge. It was a carefully cultivated appeal to Generation X. She faced the electorate a year later and held onto her seat. Barely 12 months later, she was elected deputy leader under Meg Lees after its ex-leader Cheryl Kernot defected to Labor.

Under Lees, the Democrats started their downward spiral in its support base of the wealthy inner suburban areas of the state capitals. John Howard won the 1998 election despite his promise to introduce an unpopular Goods and Services Tax (GST). However he lacked outright support in the senate for the tax. Lees campaigned in the election that the Democrats would not support the tax unless food was exempt. The government initially refused this exemption but eventually reached a compromise with Lees. The bill was passed with Democrat support in 1999. Lees claimed the dilution of the bill as a success but the cost was high with two of her senators voting against the bill. These two were Andrew Bartlett and Natasha Stott Despoja. As a result of the infighting, the Democrats support fell rapidly. They lost three senators and eventually lost the Senate balance of power in 2004.

Amid the fallout, Stott Despoja launched a challenge to Lees’ leadership and became party leader on 6 April 2001. Lees immediately left the party. Stott Despoja’s left-wing politics were popular with the party faithful however her leadership style caused problems in parliament. After 16 months in the job, she decided she couldn't heal the rifts which divided her seven-member party room. She resigned in August 2002 after an ultimatum by four members.

In 2004 she took maternity leave from the senate when she gave birth to her son Conrad. She subsequently returned and has again taken a prominent stance on education, women and family issues. She has been strongly associated with a stem cell research bill and wants to stay in parliament until it is carried through. However health is now an issue for Stott Despoja. She was rushed to hospital earlier this month for emergency surgery due to an ectopic pregnancy. She says she now wants to spend more quality time with her son. Yesterday, she ruled out a bid to enter South Australian politics but wouldn't discount a return to Canberra. "I might be so outraged that I might have to throw my hat back in the ring," she said.