Chapter:
34 - International Affairs
Mover:
Seconder:
 
 
Source:
Policy Committee: Int Affairs
My Private Notes


Preamble
​Conference welcomes Labor's advance on electoral reform, including improvements to campaign finance, and affirms that free and fair elections underpin democratic outcomes and representative policy.

Presently and historically, expansion and equity of the franchise is a fundamental means and end by which gender, racial and socioeconomic discrimination has been reduced and progressive outcomes advanced.

The separation each of state powers, of church and state, and of commercial interests and political representatives must hold for democracies to continue to flourish and set a strong example of successful societies with a strong middle-class, where personal aspirations fulfilled.

Without these principles, the Australian Labor Party not only would become existentially threatened, but would not originally have come to exist – it is a party borne from a strong, inclusive democracy.

Today, many democracies including Australia still have work to ensure universal participation and equitable representation across legislatures. In the UK, conservative governments have grown the House of Lords while proposing to reduce the House of Commons, and in the US gerrymandering and a stagnant setting of Senate seats has wrought ruin on the fairness of representation.

Across leading democracies including Australia, emerging issues including foreign interference must be addressed, and Labor values to this end should be sustained in favour of the sovereignty of smaller and newly recognised states, like Pacific Island partners and Timor-Leste, or Palestine as an independent state in line with Labor’s policy for a two-state solution.
General Resolution

Promoting Labor’s values and representative democracy internationally

​ACT Labor calls on Labor Governments and the party organisation to engage more strongly internationally on strengthening democracy, from the world's the oldest democracies to the newest, and the largest and most powerful to the smallest.
Areas for engagement may include:
- Campaign finance reform and independent, public election funding;
- Universal and even distribution of the franchise to ensure representative democracy;
- Independence of judicial branches, and the breadth of tribunals and commissioners;
- Measures and where appropriate direct support against foreign interference, whether by proximal or distant neighbours, and by democratic powers or autocracies;
- Programs and knowledge-sharing to support the conduct of free and fair elections.
Further, ACT Labor calls on Labor Governments and the party organisation to deepen engagement with a diverse range of political representatives in key partner countries on ideas for electoral reform, and to be outspoken and forthright where key principles are violated to the loss of democratic franchise.