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Chapter 8: Producing Leaders

Table of ContenTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1 – MAKING THE BEST OF THE SYSTEM WE HAVE
CHAPTER 2 – THE CURRENT DYNAMIC IS ‘PROGRESSIVE VERSUS CONSERVATIVE’
CHAPTER 3 – OUR CURRENT PARTY STRUCTURES ARE INEFFECTIVE
CHAPTER 4 – INDEPENDENTS CAN’T FORM EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT
CHAPTER 5 – BREAKING INTO THE CARTEL
CHAPTER 6 – PATHWAYS TO SOMETHING NEW
CHAPTER 7 – A POTENT POLITICAL FORCE NEEDS PEOPLE
CHAPTER 8 – PRODUCING LEADERS
CHAPTER 9 – KEEPING IT SIMPLE
CHAPTER 10 – DRAFT ORGANISATIONAL MODEL
CHAPTER 11 – PEOPLE
APPENDIX 1 – HISTORICAL COMMENTARY ON THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM
APPENDIX 2 – AUSTRALIAN COMMENTARY

One of the fundamental factors in progressing Australia is producing the leaders to do it. Beautiful flowers still grow in barren deserts—talent can shine through no matter what the circumstances. But, it is not in our interests to wait around and see what may or may not emerge from barren ground.

A better option for politically active and aware citizens is to create fertile ground that fosters both a high quantity and a high quality of potential leaders. We want a political institution and a culture that is conducive to attracting the best and brightest Australia has to offer. Australia is producing tons of amazing people. The goal is to find and develop a large number of potential cabinet-level leaders capable of running good executive government. Broadly, this would involve:

  1. creating clear and transparent pathways into politics
  2. drawing from a large talent pool
  3. developing potential leaders
  4. assessing those potential leaders.

This would also require effective ways of selecting candidates, which balance a focus on channelling talented people into parliaments, with a system of preselection that gives all party supporters a say in who represents them. If we balance these two aspects effectively, we would be more comfortable in knowing our representatives were not only popular, but also properly qualified, enabled and informed to run a good government.

The Pool-Size Issue in Australian Politics

There is a pool-size issue built into Australian politics. The number of people from which the executive is chosen is small. A key aspect of the Westminster system of government is that the executive branch of government is drawn from the legislative branch. This system inherently means that the executive is chosen from a very restricted, limited pool. The leader and the ministers must also already be in parliament.

When we adopted the Westminster system and made our own hybrid, the pool got even smaller. For example, we only have 151 members in the House of Representatives. The UK, while larger in population, also has a much larger talent pool to select from—650 in the House of Commons. This is four times as many people in the main legislative body who can become ministers in the executive government. Even as a proportion of its population, the UK Parliament—which, like ours, functions as its ministerial talent pool—is still 2.6 times larger than Australia’s.[i]

In the US (and many other presidential systems around the world), the potential talent pool for the executive is literally the entire population. The president gets to choose all other members of the executive from the public. This raises the potential pool size for executive government to its highest achievable number as members from the entire country can be picked, rather than just those who have already worked their way into the legislative body. In the US, members of Congress (the US parliament) are there only to make and pass laws—not to be part of executive government.

It is in our interests to pump as much talent into the pool as possible. The best way to overcome this built-in circumstance and improve outcomes is by improving the party processes that decide who gets to stand for election in the first place. The more people we have who can perform important functions in executive government, the better. The fewer of these people we have, the less likely we are going to win, and the less likely we will be able to do a good job when we are in government.

One of the key issues is that ‘good local members’ are chosen because of their connection and appeal to the local community. In the US system this would not be a problem; members of Congress are not part of executive government. It is, however, an issue in Australia because it further limits the pool of people who can effectively run executive government. A ‘good local member’ who has few of the attributes needed to be an effective member of the executive is further limiting the pool size. We don’t need them in Federal Parliament—we need people who can help run the federal government. We should seek to have the strongest backbench possible, with lots of ministers in-waiting from all over the country, ready to step up and join the cabinet when required.

Clear Pathways into Politics

It is in our interests to widen the talent pool of potential leadership in Australia, and to make the process of entering politics more accessible. We are best served by having clear pathways into politics.

It is not in our interests to have politics be, and be perceived to be, something that is murky and dirty to be involved with—obfuscated by unclear processes. Having confused and overly complicated pathways into politics only serves to further increase this lack of clarity, and consequent distrust in those systems by the public and potential leaders.

By making these pathways more transparent and accessible, we can successfully widen the pool, attract the best people, and help develop them as leaders. It is also about having pathways for people from all different walks of life to be leaders; people who are at different stages in their lives and careers and have different life experiences; people from different backgrounds and educations. Additionally, it provides clear and transparent processes for high-performing professionals to come into the organisation and get elected. By making clear processes of entry into political careers, we can encourage more people to participate.

A Large Talent Pool

The bigger the pool size, the more likely it is you’ll attract the people with the most talent. This is true of any situation where you want the people with the best abilities in order to create the best outcomes, whether that’s politics, sport or any other area of human endeavour. Take the example of the leading English Premier League football clubs, like Manchester United or Liverpool. Their talent pool is the entire planet, so they can get the best, most skilful players. As a result, they’re usually excellent at football. In contrast, the local footy team have a significantly smaller talent pool to draw from, so the ability of their players just isn’t going to be as good. Sure, you might get lucky and find a star athlete living in the suburbs, but it’s far less likely that you will build a better team than if you were able to pick from a larger pool of players in the first place. If you’re trying to win, who wouldn’t go with the larger pool?

This same concept can also be applied to politics. By widening the talent pool, instead pulling from a narrow group, we can choose from the best that Australia has to offer. Plenty of other human endeavours draw from the widest talent pools they can, and politics should be no different.

Developing Talent

It is in our interests to prepare people for the tasks of winning elections and performing in executive government. This concept of learning how to run government as a part of the political process isn’t a new idea. The political training academy is a tried-and- true model. Training academies have existed throughout history and are not a new concept.

Nowadays, this concept is rarer in politics than in other disciplines with high levels of risk and which require valuable skills. Think of the training that is required to become a medical specialist. From society’s perspective, cabinet ministers are far more important than brain surgeons. We want people to hit the ground running and enter into politics with the best preparation.

A training and development academy can run as an independent arm of the organisation. It is a way to learn the skills necessary for executive government. It would create an environment of competency. People would be better equipped with the knowledge on how to run executive government. This concept also provides transparency, by making it simple for interested people to observe and track the development of potential candidates.

One of the main, current ways people are trained for political careers is by working in the offices of politicians. This serves as a type of apprenticeship. While it can create situations where people have limited life experience outside of politics, it is also a positive learning process to have people seconded into politicians’ offices.

Development curriculum for a political training academy could include:

  1. theories of administration and governance
  2. how government works
  3. how to function as an executive
  4. rhetoric and presentation skills.

This would allow people to develop over time without being full-time professional politicians.

Assessing

Candidates should be assessed on their potential to perform. This occurs all the time in the real world. It is not about their beliefs—they should be capable of telling you those by themselves. It is about their ability to function and perform in winning elections and running executive government.

This gives us a better idea of the people we are preselecting to represent us. It gives us a better idea of what their strengths, weaknesses and chances of growth might be. In today’s culture we’re used to assessing people through reality-TV talent shows where people get judged on their performances. A group of ‘Assessors’ could be another separate, independent part of the organisation at the development academy. All they would do is give objective ratings based on different criteria. This then gives the people involved in preselecting candidates a better idea of the people they are giving their support to.

The criteria could include:

  1. management and administrative abilities
  2. understanding of government
  3. life experience
  4. rhetoric
  5. demonstrable leadership skills.

Assessments allow potential candidates to improve over time, and for other people to see it happen. They would indicate the strengths and weaknesses of each potential leader, as well as the areas in which there would be room for growth and development. The objective is not just to have people elected who share your beliefs. It is to have people who can also be excellent at winning and running government. Assessments would give people a better idea of the candidates they are preselecting to represent them in parliament.

The Ideal Traits of a Senior Minister

There are definable attributes of the people that we want to see in executive government. It is in our interests to have as many people with these attributes in parliament as possible. Apart from being smart, clever, and functional, these could include:

  1. the ability to deal with and plan a pathway through complex situations and explain them to the public
  2. a sound understanding of how executive government works and is administered
  3. behaviour that enhances public trust in government
  4. the capacity for long-term decision making
  5. the ability to communicate with influence and change people’s minds
  6. performance in the ‘theatre’ of politics with a splash of charisma
  7. strong but pragmatic political principles and sense of good government
  8. the ability to lead large groups of public servants
  9. the ability to think meaningfully about the operation of government.

Selecting Candidates

Our best option for selecting candidates is to have custom-built methods that use the system we have, to the best of our advantage. This means creating new mechanisms that help to overcome its limitations. It is not about creating the perfect outcomes in all situations. It’s more about balancing the two desirable outcomes within the possibilities the system imposes on us.

Two competing objectives when it comes to selecting candidates are:

  1. the need to give the widest possible group of people in each electorate a say in who stands to represent them
  2. the need to get talented people into executive government.

Selecting our parliamentarians has to strike a balance between channelling talent into executive government and allowing people to have a say in who represents them. There should be ways to channel talent in which the process is on full display.

This will allow all the participants in the organisation, and the public, to have more confidence in the integrity of the process. Without having these mechanisms, it is difficult to overcome the limitations of the ‘small pool-size issue’ within our system.

The Split-Preselection Mechanism

The split-preselection mechanism allows for a balance between competing priorities. The vote in preselections would be split: 50% from a Selection Council, which is elected by the party Participants and whose main purpose is to channel talent into parliament; and 50% by the Participants directly in each electorate.

Candidates could be nominated in one of two ways: self-nomination as a ‘Local’, or by being selected to run for the seat by the Selection Council as a ‘Star’. All the people standing for preselection must be part of the candidate pool and must have been assessed according to the party’s objective criteria.

During the preselection vote—people on the Council and the participants in the electorate can vote for whomever they want. It is up to the Stars to win support from the Locals, and the Locals to win support from the Council. To be successfully preselected, you must get support from both.

[i] For demonstrative purposes, this comparison does not include ministers from the upper houses (Senate, House of Lords). The comparison is based on a UK population of 67.22 million and an Australian population of 25.69 million, each data portion drawn from the World Bank’s 2021 population counts. To equal the UK’s ratio of potential cabinet ministers to population, Australia would need to almost double the House of Representatives to 248 members.