Poor Senator Murray, trying desparately to find fault in others when he can't see his own. He is just another lightweight but then this is the party that has produced so many of them. Firstly he blames his own party for leadership instability when he presonally created so much leadership instability ( Didn't he topple their leader?). Then he prevents workers from going on strike with his sellout IR policy deals with the Howard Government when he is the only politician in the History of Australia to go on strike himself- did he have to apply to the Commission for the right to strike? What the never to be elected again Mr Murray fails to recognise that most of us external and hence objective punters look for in the minors is INTEGRITY. Perhaps the Democrats should have thought about that when the decided to deceive the electorate about their GST stance. Good riddence RIP

I suspect that Leadership stability is only a part of the picture.
If the Democrats really were about "Keeping the B's Honest" I would probably vote for them. Instead they seem to have been caught in the position of becoming a minor left wing party (maybe some mirror to the correlation to left leaning leaders in the statistics).

I would like someone holding the balance of power who's policy was to keep the government to it's promises and nothing else. No modified GST - the Govt went to that poles saying they would introduce a GST across the board, it was the Democrats who forced them to break that promise (hardly keeping them honest). Let the Govt of the Day run with the policy announced in the lead up to an election and join with the opposition in stopping things not agreed to by the opposition which are inconsistent with the pre-election platform and you might have a winner for the Democrats.

I love how the good Senator has put his spin on Democrats history, and to some degree, his comments on the phenomena of the leadership 'churning' is quite correct.

However, there is no doubt that the Democrats are in certain decline and it is now a case of not 'if' but 'when'. Their woes really started with the defection of Kernot and were reconfirmed with the GST and the undermining of Stott-Despoja.

Andrew Murray has always been the most astute and capable of the Democrat Senators. But in this article, Andrew lets his own cause down by not drawing out the obvious political lessons from the last 20 years. When the Democrats were captured by the left, their relevance dropped. When their leaders were drawn from the loony left, they almost disappeared into oblivion.

Andrew now has an obligation to put forward some big picture ideas and strategies about how to recreate a party of the centre. I don't think the Democrats organisation can be revived to become a centre party again, because its culture has been too infected with the nonsense of the past 10 years. Starting again from scratchy is now a better option.

Vern Hughes
vern@peoplepower.org.au