Tag Archives: Federal Council

I don’t think Federal Council ever fully found its feet. And I think one of the fundamental reasons for this is that we never really understood what it was for. Was it intended only as an emergency brake for bad decisions made by a reduced size Board, or was it intended more of a broader Overview and Scrutiny function, equivalent to local government? My interpretation of the constitution was that it was the latter, but much of the discussion in Council focussed more on the former – which decisions should we call-in?

This fundamental tension is one the party must resolve if it wants a functioning Council. A productive relationship between the Board and Council isn’t one where the Council threatens use of a big red stop button constantly. Instead, the Council must trust the Board to do the right thing, with that trust being earned with Council being confident that the Board is doing the work to implement the party strategy, as agreed by conference, through proactive scrutiny. The use of a veto power should be an extreme one. Expense limits for the Presidential election was one of the few examples of the Council being effective at influencing the board, and we did not need to use the veto to implement this.

Federal Council is not yet a productive committee. In fact, given I’ve had to skip at least one canvassing session to attend it, I might go as far to say that it’s been a net negative in terms of achieving the party’s goals of getting liberals elected.

It has so much promise. In the handy visual diagram of the party’s committees provided in the conference handbook, it’s shown as equal to Federal Board, so is a committee that if effective yields important power. But so far, we have little to show for our time.

Much has been said about our power to call-in and overturn Board decisions, but for me, the call-in power should only be one of last resort—an Emergency Stop to the workings of the federal party only to be used in extreme circumstances. Our other power, that of asking the Board to respond on any issue, has barely been used. We have had Q&As with the president, but if all Federal Council can aspire to be is another forum for Q&As, indistinguishable from those asked of the Board at Conference, then we are failing in the responsibility to Conference when the Federal Council was created as the compromise for a smaller, more agile Federal Board.