Andrew Bartlett - Leader of The Australian Democrats

Leader of The Australian Democrats

After the resignation of then party Senate leader Natasha Stott Despoja on 21 August 2002, Bartlett was elected to the Democrats Party leadership in October, supplanting pro tem. incumbent Brian Greig.

To a degree, Bartlett stabilised the Democrats' troubled party room and spoke strongly against the Government's maltreatment of refugees and maladministration of the Department of Immigration. He also oversaw the Democrat senators' use of their potential balance of power role to influence increased funding for Medicare, protection of the welfare payments of sole parents, the unemployed and the disabled, and entitlement of some homosexual couples to superannuation entitlements equivalent to those enjoyed by heterosexual couples.

In December, 2003, Bartlett took leave from his Senate leadership after an incident involving Liberal Senator Jeannie Ferris when leaving the Senate chamber after a vote. Bartlett, who had been drinking at a Liberal Party function held just outside the chamber, was accused of stealing five bottles of wine from the function. Some time after Ferris had retrieved the wine, Bartlett approached Ferris, and was alleged to have gripped her arm and verbally abused her, both inside the chamber and along the way to an outside courtyard. Parliamentary video of part of the incident appeared to show that Bartlett was drunk in the chamber, although did not show him grabbing Ferris's arm. Bartlett's subsequent formal apology was accompanied by a bottle of wine, which Ferris described as "quite inappropriate ... as an apology for drunken behaviour involving abuse and a physical attack." By contrast, Liberal Senator Brett Mason, who witnessed the incident, said "Perhaps a little more was made of the incident than should have been made. I think it was overplayed by the media, and by everyone." Labor Senator Claire Moore was reported in The Bulletin magazine as saying Bartlett had been "unfairly demonized."

Bartlett resumed the party's parliamentary leadership in January, 2004, giving an assurance that he would totally abstain from alcohol. However, the party's support levels remained at the same low level to which it had fallen at the time of Stott Despoja's resignation. He was unable to increase the party's support leading up to the 2004 election in which the Democrats were defending three Senate seats. All three seats were lost—one going to the Greens and two to Liberals. The party polled what was at the time the lowest vote since their inception in 1977.