Hawkesbury residents who want a say in politics are turning up to a party meeting in Clarendon. Some, according to accounts from the meeting, once held Liberal or Labor membership. They are now in a room with One Nation. Before dismissing them as protest voters, the parties they once belonged to might ask what persuaded them to give up their evenings for a different organisation.
The latest local estimate puts One Nation’s Macquarie branch at about 700 members and rising. In August, the Gazette reported that people attending a branch meeting had been told membership exceeded 400. Both figures await independent verification. They refer to a branch organised around the federal electorate of Macquarie, which takes in the Blue Mountains as well as the Hawkesbury. Even with those qualifications, there is a political difference between registering dissatisfaction in an opinion poll and turning up to help organise a branch. The Gazette’s earlier report on One Nation’s Macquarie branch
People want to be heard. A party branch used to give them somewhere to start. You could put up a motion, argue with people who broadly shared your politics and make the case for a candidate with some knowledge of your district. The branch could also tell an MP something a polling firm never would. It could say, to their face, that the people who handed out their how-to-vote cards thought they had got something wrong.
From branch stacking to branch shrinkage
We used to worry about branch stacking. Sign up enough people and you could change the result of a preselection. The danger was obvious. A sudden influx of recruits could give a faction control of a branch and the power to put its preferred candidate on the ballot.
There is another way to control the numbers. Keep the membership small, put obstacles in the way of people who want to join and leave decisions to the people who already have a vote. Call it branch shrinkage. A branch can keep its name, its officers and its place on the party’s books while gradually losing the people who used to make it representative of the district.
Parties have legitimate reasons to check a membership application. People can be recruited for a single ballot and disappear the week after it. A credible membership process should distinguish an organised attempt to capture a branch from a resident who wants to spend the next five years working in it. An applicant ought to be able to find the criteria, get a decision in a reasonable time and know how to challenge a refusal. When those things depend on who you know, insiders have a considerable advantage over anyone trying to get in.
The test for Hawkesbury’s parties
The local account about the Liberals is that Hawkesbury have five branches all of which can barely muster a quorum. That needs confirmation from the party. If it is accurate, five branches on a list give a misleading picture of how much opportunity members have to take part. A quorum is the minimum attendance required to conduct formal business. If a branch regularly falls short, who is left to debate policy, hold office bearers to account and have a say in the next preselection?
Labor and the Greens each have an identifiable Hawkesbury organisation. Councillor Amanda Kotlash is Labor’s local representative on Council and was the party’s candidate for the state seat in 2023. She is also reportedly a significant power broker within the Hawkesbury Branch, allegedly quick to email NSW ALP Headquarters with a complain about party members, who must then expend energy defending themselves or leave.
Hawkesbury City Council lists Councillor Danielle Wheeler as convenor of the Hawkesbury Greens, who allegedly has a similar record of locking out potential members, as the publisher of the Hawkesbury Gazette can attest to.
The Liberal vote for the Hawkesbury Council mayoral election shows the machinations of the party machine as four Liberal Councillor votes became three, with the spotlight falling on the local Liberal power broker Cr Sarah McMahon who the party nominated for the position of Mayor only to have her withdraw at the last minute with insufficient time for a different Liberal Councillor to stand. https://www.hawkesburygazette.com/when-four-becomes-three-2/
What is worth protecting?
Political office carries a salary or fee, but the amounts vary considerably. The federal parliamentary base salary is $239,270, and some office holders receive additional pay. The NSW parliamentary base salary is $185,228, scheduled to rise to $220,000 on 1 May 2027.
Hawkesbury councillors receive an annual fee of $28,890 in 2026–27, with additional fees of $60,000 for the mayor and $10,000 for the deputy mayor. What the positions share is influence over decisions that affect Hawkesbury and the social status such influence brings to the office holder.
The party has an immediate way of rewarding loyalty. It can endorse you again, support you for a leadership position or give you a more prominent role. The voter gets a formal say at the next election, after the party has already chosen its candidate.
That gives preselection real weight. When the people who control it are drawn from a small circle, an elected representative has a reason to pay very close attention to that circle. You don’t have to speculate about an individual councillor’s or MP’s motives to see the incentive.
Cartel parties
On ABC Radio National’s Rear Vision, the Lowy Institute’s Sam Roggeveen argued that major parties across Western democracies have lost members and vote share as they have shifted from mass membership organisations to smaller, professional operations.
A party can pay people to run a campaign and still have very few members in a particular town. For a resident who wants to influence what the party does between elections, a professional campaign offers few of the opportunities that an active branch once did. ABC Rear Vision, Putting One Nation in historical perspective
In the same program, University of Melbourne legal scholar William Partlett discussed the idea of cartel parties. He argued that established parties can use their access to government resources and their ability to set electoral rules to protect their position and spend government funds to promote candidates.
One-way parties weaken democratic institutions by treating longstanding courtesies as optional. When a minister comes to an electorate to announce a public project, the local MP should get advance notice, regardless of party. The people of Hawkesbury elected Robyn Preston to represent them. Yet the NSW Government’s 30 October release announcing the start of construction on the South Windsor ambulance station gave Labor candidate Adam Hall a voice and carried no comment from Preston.
Before that, the NSW Deputy Premier Prue Car MP appeared in a media release with Susan Templeman MP at Windsor High School to talk about education. Both Car and Templeman are members of the Labor Party. Education is a State issue, but Hawkesbury's elected MP Robyn Preston was not invited.
Partlett also questioned the assumption promoted by the mainstream political parties that a hung parliament necessarily brings instability. A parliament where the government has to negotiate can give smaller parties and independents room to change legislation and win concessions, giving better overall results to an electorate.
The same questions for One Nation
The test applies to One Nation as much as to the parties it criticises. The Gazette’s earlier reporting found that the Macquarie branch could have a voice in choosing a State candidate, with the final decision resting elsewhere in the party.
Attendees were also advised about a strict media policy. A well-attended meeting tells us people are willing to turn up. The next test comes when those members disagree with head office about a candidate or want to speak publicly about something their party would prefer to handle internally. The Gazette’s report on the Macquarie branch
Before Hawkesbury votes
There is a question worth asking every candidate. When your party wants one thing and the people of Hawkesbury want another, whose interests will you put first? Ask for an example of a time they stood up for their community, even when it cost them within their party.
The party decides who gets its endorsement. Voters decide who speaks for them.
Disclosure
The Hawkesbury Greens rejected Hawkesbury Gazette publisher Kooryn Sheaves’s application to join the Hawkesbury Greens. The Gazette maintains editorial independence.
