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Saints or communists? The threat to non-government organisations in Australia represents a threat to our national democracy.

Article Excerpt
When I feed the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.

Dom Helder Camara, Archbishop of Recife, Brazil

NGOs and Democracy

Non-government organisations (NGOs) have been embedded in Australian society for decades. Organisations such as the Red Cross, the Brotherhood of St Lawrence, Community Aid Abroad and the Australian Conservation Foundation, along with the thousands of smaller organisations all around the country, are admired and respected not just for the services they deliver to marginalised and disadvantaged groups but for their contribution to public debate and the democratic process.

Robust public debate is fundamental to the development of good public policy and a well-functioning democracy. Good policy must reflect a range of perspectives and be based on knowledge of real people's lives and experiences. Community groups--NGOs--are the repository of an enormous amount of information about how things work in their part of the world and governments today simply cannot make effective policy without access to that bank of knowledge.

NGOs serve several vital functions in the democratic polity, including the creation of deliberative forums, the representation of marginalised and stigmatised groups and the provision of a cost-effective channel for consultation. Importantly, they also help keep government accountable to the wider community through their broad constituencies and counterbalance the influence of corporate organisations over government decision-making.

These functions do not detract from other institutions of representative democracy but complement and enhance them. As ordinary citizens become increasingly disillusioned with formal political processes, many have turned to community organisations as a means of remaining engaged in something bigger than the next pay rise and when they can afford to upgrade to a plasma screen TV. In this way, NGOs are more important now than they have ever been to sustaining our democracy.

The Threat

Recently, however, the legitimacy of NGOs and their contribution to democratic processes has come under attack. Questions have been raised about their representativeness, their accountability, their financing, their charitable status and their standing as policy advocates in a liberal democracy such as Australia.

The attack on NGOs has been led by the right-wing Melbourne think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs, which first came to prominence in the 1980s when, backed mainly by the mining industry, it was instrumental in developing and promoting the policies of economic rationalism. The IPA now has close connections with the American Enterprise Institute, one of the principal sources of neo-con ideas that have so heavily influenced George Bush.

In the world view of the IPA, NGOs are seen as 'selfish and self-serving' interest groups...

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