The Australian Democrats are back. They’ve just announced a dozen candidates in next month’s Victorian election, with more to come. National President Leonie Green sits down with editor Anthony Klan…
FEATURE
It’s one of the best known slogans in Australian political history.
But it wasn’t always agreed on.
For that matter, it still isn’t entirely.
“We’re about keeping the bastards honest”, says Leonie Green, national president of the Australian Democrats.
Sitting down to lunch with The Klaxon in Box Hill, in Melbourne’s east, Green chuckles when asked about the famous line.
“I was talking to one of our life members recently, he was telling me how he was at a BBQ in 1977 and Don Chipp used the line and he remembers going, ‘my god that’s the line, we have to use this line!’,” says Green.
“And then he was telling me, that next election, not all the states used it.
“I was laughing because in the last federal election it was still a debate around who wants to use it, why do we want to use it, is it worth using?”
“Its still a debate, it’s actually hilarious” — Leonie Green
For the avoidance of any doubt, Green is 100% on board.
“Keeping the bastards honest I think is one of the best taglines invented for a political party, right?
“It’s why the others steal it at times!”
The party – perhaps best known for its founder, Chipp, and its longest serving senator and former leader, Natasha Stott Despoja – is back.
First stop the Victorian election.
Please consider DONATING HERE to support our quality journalism
The Australian Democrats, lead by Leonie Green, have announced 12 candidates for the November 28 Victorian election. Source: Australian Democrats
On Wednesday the party announced 12 candidates running for the upper house, and it’s preparing to also announce a host of lower house candidates.
Not that it ever went away entirely, Green is eager to point out.
Since its founding in 1977 there has been only one federal election it hasn’t contested.
But the party has been given an overhaul and a new lease of life, with swelling member numbers, an ambitious and clever leadership team, and a savvy social media presence.
“The party has been given an overhaul and a new lease of life”
And in Victoria it hasn’t contested in 20 years.
Its primary focus is the upper house, where smaller parties tend to have a greater chance.
That said, in Victoria, the state is divided into eight regions for the upper house, making it more difficult than elsewhere for parties with wide but shallower support to get representatives elected.
There is talk of changes, but that’s all so far.
Regardless, the Democrats, entirely volunteer run, are full throttle.
And in Victoria it has the most engaged number of members, Green says, making next month’s election an ideal launch pad for its rejuvenation.
Democrat candidates Andrew Rowse, a Melbourne City Councillor – and pharmacist-turned business analyst and IT systems expert, Sahar Khalili, are running for the Victorian Senate in the Northern Metropolitan Region. Source: Australian Democrats
Green, a former senior employment lawyer, who now works as a consultant, had been a Democrats member many years ago.
In 2021 she came back into the fold.
“I was a member in the late 90’s, and early 2000’s handing out how-to-votes when Natasha was leader, and then got busy with life,” she says.
“Then I got a message out of the blue in 2021 saying will you come back as a member? And I immediately signed up.”
Green later became president of the party’s Victorian division, before being appointed national president last year.
Off the bat, she set herself the task of consolidating the party.
“When I came in in November last year, the bit that I really wanted to make sure was that we were working in a very clear and aligned way nationally rather than all of the divisions trying to do their thing, and not learning from one another,” she says.
“So that’s the bit that I’m excited about, seeing that change happen.”
At the heart of the party’s goals is a healthy and functioning democracy.
“We’re not a governing party — perhaps in somebody’s lifetime, that would be amazing, but we’re not,” says Green.
“But we are the party that can highlight the things that need to he highlighted, and ask the questions that need to be asked.
“To hold power to account.”
“We are the party…to hold power to account” – Leonie Green
“Keep the bastards honest” – Australian Democrats national president Leonie Green. Picture: Anthony Klan/The Klaxon
The surging in the polls of Pauline Hanson’s far-right One Nation, funded by mining tycoon and climate denier Gina Rinehart, underlines a sense of urgency.
“Since the Australian Democrats stopped holding the balance of power in the Parliament, lies and misinformation have become the norm, spending by private interests on election campaigns has increased, peaceful protest is being criminalised, and journalists and whistleblowers are being charged for exposing government wrongdoing,” the party says.
“We must get back into government to keep the bastards honest.”
Green says the heart of the Democrats remains the same as when it was founded by Don Chipp, a disgruntled Liberal Party defector.
“When we started, the members got to vote on what the values were of the party,” says Green.
“They chose honesty, compassion and tolerance, which I love, because what political party says that’s their values?”
Green says those values reflect her experience of the party today.
“We are absolutely about compassion, and about finding a way to bring everybody with us and trying to create a better future — and a better sense of social cohesion generally.
“Everything that we stand for today is very much what was at the heart of who we were as a party in 1977,” Green says.
“Everything that we stand for today is very much what was at the heart of who we were as a party in 1977” – Leonie Green
Don Chipp, official Government portrait, 1974. Source: National Archives of Australia
The more things change
Two key policy areas are environment and AI.
“We’re still very much about taking action in relation to the climate, which Don Chipp was talking about 1977,” says Green.
“Which is why we often say, we’re the original environmental party.”
The threat to workers in the face of vast technological advancements are also at the heart of the party — then and now.
“Don Chipp was talking about the need to bring people with us, given how much things would change from a jobs perspective — he was talking about that in 1977,” says Green.
“Now we are looking at what’s happening from an AI perspective, this feels like it’s come from nowhere.
“(Chipp) could see the technological changes that were coming” – Leonie Green
“The speed of AI is huge, and if we don’t start thinking about what this looks like for jobs for the future, we’re missing a whole piece.”
Green says she has an 18-year-old daughter and has “no idea what her job in the future looks like”.
“ As a country, we’re not having that conversation,” she says.
“But we need to have the conversation, we need to actually start planning for that, and thinking about that.
“(Chipp) was taking about that in 1977, clearly not in relation to AI, but he could see the technological changes that were coming,” says Green.
Contesting the Western Victorian Region for the Senate are wildlife rescuer and local campaigner Andy Meddick, and governance campaigner Peter Kelly. Source: Australian Democrats
Revival
Chipp served 16 years as a Federal Liberal Party MP — including six years as minister — but resigned from the party in 1977.
In December of that year he was elected to the Federal Senate as leader of his newly-formed Australian Democrats, along with fellow Democrat Janine Haines.
Chipp retired in 1986, having led the party to four federal elections, and Haines took the reigns — making her the first woman to lead an Australian parliamentary party at the federal level.
“Janine Haines was the first woman to lead an Australian parliamentary party”
The Democrats held or shared the balance of power in the Senate across three decades — from 1981 to 2005 — and in 1998 reached a peak of nine federal senate seats.
In 1996 Natasha Stott Despoja, at 26, became the youngest woman elected to Federal Parliament, and was party leader from 2001 and 2002, announcing her retirement in 2007.
(In 2020 Despoja was elected to the UN Committee on the Elimination against Women, the first Australian member in nearly 30 years. She was re-elected in 2024).
Natasha Stott Despoja addresses the National Press Club in 2020. Picture: Mick Tsikas/AAP
The Democrats lost their final Federal Senate seat at the 2007 election.
In all, 25 Democrats served in the Australian Senate and 15 were elected to the upper houses of NSW, the ACT, South Australia and Western Australia.
The party is now enthusiastically ratcheting-up its revival.
“The party is now enthusiastically ratcheting-up its revival”
Green notes that Chipp left the Liberal Party out of “frustration with politics as it was at the time”, and not feeling like he had a political home — and “certainly not in the Liberal Party”.
“That speaks volumes as to where we are today,”she says.
Yet the Democrats leader is realistic about the headwinds the party faces.
It is run entirely by volunteers, has no current members of parliament, and limited media visibility.
ABC’s Vote Compass, for example — where voters answer a series of questions and are told which parties have policies most closely aligned with their views — won’t include the Democrats, because it only includes parties with existing members of parliament.
It’s something of a Catch-22.
“Because (Chipp) was already in parliament he was able to get that groundswell of interest and support straight away,” says Green.
“And visibility is probably our biggest challenge right now, as we don’t have someone in (parliament) yet.
“Hopefully, as soon as we have that one person, that enables us to lift and change from there.”
For now it’s full steam ahead with laser focus on November 28.
And as for “keeping the bastards honest”, it’s not going anywhere. Although Green says she drops the “bastards” at times, depending on the audience.
“The debate is the use of the word ‘bastards’, perhaps unsurprisingly,” she says.
“Dropping it doesn’t have quite the same Australian twang? — fang? — that it might, but it’s still the reality, that that’s what we’re doing.
“But keeping the bastards honest is who we are.”
Truly independent journalism is vital to our democracy – please consider supporting us for as little as $10 a month, or by making a one-off donation of any amount here.
(You can also support us via PayPal, or by making a direct deposit.)
Thank you!
Anthony Klan
Editor, The Klaxon
