When the Council of the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) voted on participation in the recent Federal election, President Hal Wootten was one of seven out of 36 who supported the Director's recommendation that ACF should not endorse a political party but should confine itself to a vigorous and well-publicised critique of the party policies. The majority of councillors however took the view that the ACF should endorse the Labor Party in the House of Representatives and the Democrats in the Senate.

When replying to members who wrote expressing opposition to or concern about ACF's action, Hal Wootten promised to write an article for Habitat raising the general issue of election participation for discussion. Here is that article. Habitat welcomes your responses and will publish a representative sample of readers' views.

The July 11 election brought up once again in acute form an issue that first crystallised in 1983, which for conservationists will always be remembered as the year of the Franklin Dam election. At that time ACF and The Wilderness Society (TWS) campaigned for the defeat of the Fraser Coalition Government, which, although sympathetic to the preservation of the Franklin River and willing to pay Tdsmania compensation to forgo building its dam, was unwilling to use Commonwealth legislative power to override the obdurate Gray State Governmtent. The Labor Partv on the other hand had promised to do so, and with the active electoral support of the conservation movement won the election and carried out its promise.

Although a dramatic step, this kind of electoral intervention was further development of a process that had been going on for at least a decade. It was exactly ten years earlier that ACF had undergone a palace revolution as a result of membership dissatisfaction with the passive stand taken on the Lake Pedder issue, a stand which reflected a general view about the role of ACF.

Is it possible to be non-political?

It had been said&emdash;indeed it is still said&emdash; that ACF should be nonpolitical. But what does this mean?

In its broad sense politics is about government decision-making and action, and any attempt to influence government policy is a political act. Environmental planning and protection is today essentially a matter of (Government responsility. Much of what happens to the environment flows directly from government decisions about what it will or won't do, what it will or won't fund or subsidise, what it will or won't permit or forbid. The large private actors on the environmental scene commonly argue that they are entitled to do whatever profit making dictates, so long as they remain within the law. Like Email defending its subsidiary's logging of Downey Creek, they cast on governments the responsibility for setting the environmental parameters of their actions. Unless conservationists seek to influence political decisions they will be irrelevant to what happens to the environment.

The 'non political' stance of ACF in its early years was a lofty and dignified one, as a responsible part of the establishment remote from the sordid world of political wheeling and dealing. The ACF then was a body that would be heeded by the gentlemen and bureaucrats who seemed destined to go on running Australia as they had since 1949, and even by the less radical people who were coming to dominate the Labor Party and the State governments it controlled. The industrial giants could be brought in to ACF as corporate sponsors and prevailed on to see that environmental excesses were not in their enlightened self interest. All this was made easy by a view of conservation that limited it to the wise and efficient use of natural resources for the benefit of mankind, and accorded no intrinsic value to the non-human world.

An illusion

But to regard this as non-political was an illusion. It was not the politics of election campaigns and party conferences, but it was politics none the less&emdash;the politics of the old boy network, of the subtle pressure of peers, of a word in the ear at the club, of the relaxed discussion about the enlightened...

..."single issue" group that does not care about other issues of critical importance, or as endorsing the policies of the supported party on those issues. This will not only damage its community standing, but may cause it to ignore issues of great long term importance to conservation. For example the environment may suffer if aceess to the media is limited by concentration of ownership, if campaigning is affected by civil liberties restrictions, or if development decisions are not made openly or are tainted by corruption or favoritism .

The costs of political campaigning

Thc costs of political campaigning are easily overlooked. Financial costs are the least of these, as most work is done by enthusiastic volunteers or at low rates by supporters, and considerable income is generated from donations and increased membership. It is amazing how the creativeness released in a campaign can produce results that money cannot buy. But a great toll is taken of the energy of staff and supporters, and work on other issues is disrupted. This is particularly damaging on long term issues which are not usually the stuff of elections, and can get more and more pushed aside. Elections to our many legislatures are all too frequent.

On the other hand, to say that ACF should never support or oppose a political party in an election closes off important options. If Labor had not been returned in 1983 the Franklin would now be dammed, and the wilderness potential of South West Tasmania drastically curtailed. It may be that Labor would have been returned without conservation support, but there is no guarantee that this would have happened, or that in government it would have displayed the political will to save the Franklin if it had not been such a prominent election issue.

Again in 1987, a Liberal victory and implementation of its campaign promises would have left Mr Gray free to carrv out his promise to build the Franklin Dam, and Sir Joh free to mine Fraser and Moreton Islands and Shelburne Bay. The refusal to use export controls or treaty powers for environmental protection would have left State governments free to do as they wished with World Heritage and national estate areas, with immediate consequences to Queensland's rainforests and the Lemonthyme and Southern Forests of Tasmania. The successful election campaign has not only averted these threats over the next three years but has made the Government highly sensitive to conservation concerns and led the Opposilion to rethink its environmental policics. The NSW Opposition has already greatly improved its policies.

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If the view is adopted that ACF should not exclude endorsement of political parties from its options, some cautionary points should be made. It should not happen regularlv or as a matter of course, but only when there are great and significant differences between the parties competing for government. It is reasonably arguable that such differenccs existed in 1983 and 1987 and in each case there is no doubt that tangible results were achieved. But it is all too easy to fall into a habit and get the immediate issues out of perspective. We hear little now of ACF's endorsement of the Democrats in the 1984 election on the issues of uranium mining and export, and Daintree World Heritage listing (on which Labor and Coalition policies were then seen as identical), or of Democrat endorsement in the 1985 Nunawading by-election on East Gippsland and Alpine Park issues. I vividly remember arguing that the issues in 1984 did not justify intervention, only to be told that if we did not support the Democrats on the uranium issue, the world may well not be in existence at the time of the next election.

Getting good environmental policies from all parties

Any campaigning should concentrate on environmental issues and eschew any temptation to stray to other issues or on to personalities. The door should always be kept open to dialogue and reconciliation with a party which is opposed. The ultimate aim is to get good environmental policies from all parties.

It is important that ACF continue to observe the policy that election expenditures are not paid out of membership fees or general donations, which may have come from members or supporters who object to such use, or from government grants or tax deductible donations, as the use of these for electioneering purposes is clearly inappropriate.

So far ACF has not been moved by any proposal to start a Green Party. A Green Party will not in the foreseeable future get into government and could not do so without a wide range of policies. Thc main hope of getting seats is where there is a proportional representation system, as in the Senate, and there the Democrats are already exploiting the possibilities. There may be good reasons for individuals to form or support Green Parties, but identification with them would narrow ACF's existing wide base and diminish its considerable capacity to influence the policies of mainstream parties which will hold power at least for a considerable time to come.

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