User talk:Jonkavelli

Hi, Jonkavelli.

If you can read Italian, we could use some help over at: [1]. on the discussion page there, we would like to know more about what ref-3 and -4 say. Have a good one/ Terryeo 16:08, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

AD member participation

Greetings, Daniel. You removed (In fact, the primacy of members' participatory voting power had effectively been ended during the leadership of Cheryl Kernot and Meg Lees in 1993-1997--and neither Stott Despoja nor any other AD senator had ever acted to remediate that very significant loss.)

What is the basis of your understanding of the 'participatory democracy' of the Democrats? Are you aware that it was a foundation principle of that party to empower grassroot membership to initiate policy propositions as well as have them determined by ballot? And, in fact, that all significant decisions would be either made in the first instance by membership ballot and/or could be reviewed at reasonable intervals by ballot on the initiative of, eg a prescribed number of petitioning members or a single state division.

The requirement to elect leaders (automatically after each election) was merely the most basic and unshakable of members rights. However, it was undermined in 1991 when elected leader Janet Powell was deposed by a group of senators, supported by the national executive, before the petition they had organised could result in a ballot. (I note that this issue, very well publicised at the time) is also not adequately covered by Wikipedia.)

The Powell coup was followed by a systematic scaling down of the party's internal democracy which is demonstrable mainly by reference to internal docuentation. Eg, in 1993, the publication of the National Journal (then the sole means of members' interstate communication) was reduced to a quarterly publication designed for advertising rather than debating.

For about ten years, I have carried on my own website [2] the record of how the WA membership was proscribed from electing the leadership of its choice, and denied ballot action to query the relevant regulation (6.7.1)--which was declared to be unlawful by the national executive's own legal adviser. More than 80% of the WA membership left the party over the issue. It is absolutely true that no senator is on record as deploring what happened in WA in 1993-95. But, on the other hand, the national executive's control over communications prevented most from even knowing about it.

Your requirement for citations is, of course, commendable but could result in removal of a majority of content from AD articles owing to lack of authoritative publications or even media coverage of all but the most 'newsworthy' of party happenings. Cheers-- Bjenks 07:05, 3 August 2007 (UTC)