Vern Hughes

Vern Hughes is an Australian advocate for civil society and Anglican layman. He is Director of Civil Society Australia and Convenor of The Sensible Centre.

For the Major League Baseball pitcher, see Vern Hughes (baseball).

Life and career

Hughes was at the first meeting of the Socialist Forum in 1984 and later served in its leadership until the forum dissolved in the early 1990s; the forum provided a space for people on the left to discuss issues outside of existing political parties.[1] The forum was later discussed and misrepresented in Australian politics when Julia Gillard, another member, became prime minister.[1]

He supported Mark Latham's articulation of the Third Way in Australia which advocated community engagement and social regeneration rather than market based or top down State interventions.[2][3]

In 2006, he founded, and was president of, the People Power Party, a reform party that sought to give ordinary people a voice in politics.[4][5] In January 2007 he was defeated for the party presidency after in-fighting with fellow member Stephen Mayne, and resigned from the party.[6] By August he was running as the Democratic Labor Party candidate in a by-election for the state seat of Williamstown,[4] and in Gorton in the 2007 federal election. In 2010 he led a group of Legislative Council candidates for the unregistered Parents Families and Carers Party.[7] In the 2014 Victorian state election, he convened a team of candidates in Melbourne's western suburbs as Voice for the West.[8]


From 2007 he was Director of the Centre for Civil Society, which became Civil Society Australia in 2016.Director In 2018 he convened The Sensible Centre

Publications

Hughes has written on many social, political and theological topics for publications and organisations that span the political spectrum. He made several contributions to the New Right think-tank the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA)[9] including Reconciliation: Where to now? in 2000, and The Empowerment Agenda. Civil Society and Markets in Disability and Mental Health in 2006.[10] Earlier contributions to IPA publications dealt with the importance of community self-reliance and mutualism in the 1995 article Between Individual and State[11] and on the history of gambling regulation in Australia in Gambling and the State in 1996.[12] He also contributed to the Health Care reform debate in 2004 emphasising the role and potential of mutualism in an article published by the libertarian think-tank Centre for Independent Studies.[13]

In 2010 he published an essay called "Twelve Reasons Why Australia Needs a Conservative Party", in which he said: "There is a tradition in Australia of people gathering in local communities to help themselves, build social relationships and make a difference. But to strengthen society it is also necessary to challenge both neo-liberalism and managerialism in their public influence. Challenging just one or other of them will not do: their corrosion of society is a joint reciprocal effort, the result of a pincer movement in operation over the course of a century. Here are 12 compelling reasons why Australia needs a contemporary transformative conservatism to challenge both neo-liberalism and managerialism, and fill the vacuum at the heart of our public life."[14][15]

References
  1. Chip Le Grand for The Australian. 4 December 2012. Gillard style already in place when the ratbag lefties met in 1984
  2. Vern Hughes, Opinion article, The tragedy of Mark Latham, former thinker, The Age, 13 December 2004. Retrieved 14 October 2014
  3. Mark Latham, The Latham Diaries, (2005) Melbourne University Press via Google Books. Retrieved 14 October 2014
  4. "Spinning around". The Age.
  5. "Stateline Victoria". Abc.net.au. Retrieved 6 September 2013.
  6. "Mayne returns to strife-prone party as chief axed". The Australian.
  7. "New political party for parents, families and carers".
  8. "State Election 2014 results". Victorian Electoral Commission. Retrieved 29 November 2014.
  9. Millar, Royce & Schneiders, Ben. Sydney Morning Herald, 25 August 2013. Free radicals
  10. Contributor profile, Institute of Public Affairs website, Retrieved 20 October 2014
  11. IPA Review, Vol. 48, No. 2, 1995: 32-38. Institute of Public Affairs
  12. IPA Review, Vol. 48, No. 4, 1 January 1996. Institute of Public Affairs
  13. Policy Vol. 20 No. 1 Autumn 2004. Centre for Independent Studies
  14. Australian Parliament Bibliography
  15. Vern Hughes for On Line Opinion, 2 March 2010. Twelve Reasons Why Australia Needs a Conservative Party
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