Pledge

THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY has an extraordinarily strict code of behaviour relating to membership, and an elaborate mythology relating to its rats throughout history. The great crime is to be elected as a member of the ALP and then, having benefited from the collective efforts of the whole, to go back on your Pledge; it's related to the similar---but very different---great taboo that operates amongst trade unionists for people who cross picket lines. The Labor rat is a cultural hate object, and something like the prodigal son, they're generally more famous than the well-behaved. Mal Colston will live on in notoriety, Billy Hughes will always be loathed. Who remembers the loyal?

It's not at all clear, despite the Greens' inheritance of a lot of the same culture, that the same taboos apply in their Party. The federal leader of the Greens Larissa Waters said of Senator Dorinda Cox's decision to join the ALP:

...we had a very calm and measured conversation about it. And I did genuinely wish her all the best. There’s no animosity there.

It’s disappointing for us to lose a Greens senator. But Dorinda says her values lie there. You need to be true to yourself, don’t you?

Obedience to one's conscience is human, but free will is not ALP policy. Nor should it be, when other people do work to get you into Parliament! Certainly the Australian system operates with an excessively strong Party discipline that's unusual in the world, and an outlier in democracies, but there really is a stigma that goes with waka-jumping that's widely held in countries without the same kind of cultural-political traditions. The kind of sentiment from Senator Waters which stresses that 'value' is all about the individual, to be obeyed regardless of its effects on others is strange; it's a feature of a consensus-led, conflict-averse culture that I can't understand. There's an excess of relative respect. Is the Pledge of the Australian Labor Party a set of values worth respect from the Greens or not?

At some level we as citizens expect our representatives to display public virtue, and though there's a very wide spectrum of it. The Greens have a very strong tradition of performing it, from heckling George W Bush, to getting censured for holding up a bit of a sign. But there's also a public virtue in doing what you say you'll do, and condemning the breach of it. Publics in democracies everywhere are extremely harsh toward politicians who break---or are seen to break---promises, a disdain that extends towards even people who don't condemn promise-breaking. And that's what's displayed by the acts of a Senator who jumps Parties immediately after an election, and what's displayed by people who gloss over the act as a genuine social breach. I think the less of almost everybody involved.