Club Troppo

Via a tip on Catallaxy comes news that the Liberal Democratic Party – Australia’s libertarian political outfit – are being accused of something like electoral fraud by ALP MP Chris Bowen of Prospect.

The relevant Hansard entry is reproduced below the fold.

Liberal Democratic Party
Mr BOWEN (Prospect) (1.51 pm)âLast week I re-
ceived a letter from one of my constituents in which he
complained that he had received notification from an
organisation called the Liberal Democratic Party that
he was an honorary member of that party. It also said,
âIf you are contacted by the Australian Electoral Com-
mission and asked to confirm your membership, please
do so.â This came as a considerable surprise to my con-
stituent, who informed me that he has been voting La-
bor for 50 years and is looking forward to voting for
me later this year.
It is an outrage that a political party would seek to
put somebody on its membership roll without consulta-
tion with that person. That person has no intention of
becoming a member of any political party, let alone the
Liberal Democratic Party. This morning I looked on
the Liberal Democratic Partyâs website and found that
they are a libertarian party. It is not very libertarian to
make somebody a member of that political party with-
out asking what their intentions are. I have today writ-
ten to the Australian Electoral Commissionâand
members opposite might think it is a light matter that
somebody has been placed on the roll of a political
party without their knowledge or permission, but I do
notâcomplaining about this tactic. I call on the Liberal
Democratic Party to cease this tactic. Putting people on
your membership rolls without their permission or their
knowledge is not an acceptable method to ensure your
continued registration as a political party.

I am inclined to take the view that Mr Bowen may have overstated the case. It’s far more likely to be mixup than malice, if my opinion is worth anything.

Indeed I have had a similar experience. In the period from 2005 through 2006, I was President of the University Liberal Club at Charles Darwin University, in which capacity I was able to heckle Ken Parish in lectures.

More to the point, the Liberal Club ran “Freedom LANs”, as most of the membership were geeks of one stripe or another. This involved providing a room, networking equipment and free sausage sizzles for people paying to attend. Beer was provided by David Tollner, the local MP.

Part of the gimmick was that non-members paid $15, members paid $10, and the $10 membership fee covered one session at a Freedom LAN. The practical upshot is that we got a lot of members this way, and I managed to bring people around to thinking more seriously about political and economic issues over a beer and sausage-in-bread.

However not everyone read the fairly specific, not-really-fine-at-all print on the membership form, which had a large Liberal Club logo and our name in big letters on top. We received a complaint from one attendee that he had been tricked – tricked! – into joining the Liberal Party, even though he was an ALP member and union official.

It was fortunate that he was so quick about complaining to us, as in a few days we would have squinted at his form before accepting his membership at an Executive meeting. As it was we turned down the membership, apologised for the confusion and embarrassment (he’d been called out on it by another attendee, apparently), and refunded his membership fee.

This fellow went on to be a sometime regular. The lesson we took away is that when you sign people up who you don’t know, mistakes will be made. The lesson I would have referred to the aggrieved constituent who wrote to Mr Bowen is that perhaps he could have written to the LDP first. I am sure they would have been mortified to discover they had incorrectly enrolled in their membership someone who did not wish to be a member.

For what it’s worth, I’d encourage Mr Bowen to CC his letter to the AEC to the LDP, and to encourage the constituent in question to write to the LDP to request they be removed from the membership roll. I’d discourage him from over-reacting, or indeed trying to smear what is probably most honest party in or out of parliament.