In politics, victory goes to those who best manage their internal contradictions

The Liberals are riddled with tensions between “moderates” and the far-right; between liberals and conservatives; and between rank-and-file members and elected MPs – tensions that appointing Tony Abbott as party president is unlikely to resolve.

But the Liberals are not the first party with contradictions. One purpose of a party is to manage contradictions by committing to a shared platform, dangling promotion as a reward for discipline, and working out disputes privately.

Historically, the Australian right has papered over its contradictions by focusing on a shared enemy.

Before Federation, Australian politics was a battle between Protectionists and Free Traders – two ideologies that appear mutually incompatible. When Labor formed government in 1904, Protectionists and Free Traders found a common foe. Before the decade was out, the parties merged to form the first iteration of the Liberal Party.

Since then, various fusions and coalitions of conservatives have won government far more often than their Labor competitors – but always with anti-Labor animus providing discipline and unity.

The party of the working class faced different contradictions. Labor feared that elected representatives with newfound individual power and elite status would not stay true to collective decision-making. In the UK, they called it “duchessing”: a taste of high society was enough to break MPs’ class loyalty.

The solution was the Pledge, binding MPs to party room decisions and, originally, to the Labor Party platform.

Here, too, there are contradictions. In practice, the Pledge binds MPs only to fellow MPs, not the platform decided by 50,000 members. If the party room has been duchessed, the Pledge constrains working class and radical MPs instead of empowering them.

These days, party leaders set the direction and work out factional conflicts internally, with little role for backbenchers – let alone party members. Fatima Payman was forced out for voting against her colleagues, even though she voted in line with the party platform.

Exemptions to the Pledge favour one side. Labor allowed conscience votes against same-sex marriage, abortion rights and birth control, but not for an end to mandatory detention of refugees or the recognition of Palestine. Labor Left crush their contradictions while Labor Right indulges theirs.

Contradictions can also be reconciled through storytelling and mythmaking. The Greens are fiercely pro-union but concerned with supposedly middle-class priorities like art and culture, heritage protection and the environment. How can the party balance job-creating industry against protecting places from exploitation?

The NSW Greens in particular draw on the history of Sydney’s green bans in the 1970s, which began when the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) claimed workers had the right to withdraw their labour from harmful uses. On that basis, middle-class women approached the union in 1971 to save Kelly’s Bush on the harbour foreshore from development.

BLF members were overwhelmingly working-class men who needed the wages and had little leisure time for picnicking or bushwalking. But they understood the common good, and after saving Kelly’s Bush they took industrial action to save heritage like The Rocks, stop poorer tenants being evicted, and stand up for a student kicked out of campus accommodation for being gay.

The green ban heyday ended when the NSW branch was taken over by the federal BLF in the mid-1970s, and the federal BLF itself would be crushed in the 1980s by the union hierarchy and the Hawke Labor Government after corruption and legal scandals.

It is the perfect origin story to paper over the Greens’ class tensions:

When working-class Australians, mostly ‘socially conservative’ migrants, discover their power, they use it to fight for LGBT university students, arts and culture and the environment, unless they are betrayed by a hypocritical labour establishment.

One Nation is inconsistent on matters of class and race. Pauline Hanson paints herself as an Aussie battler while flying on Gina Rinehart’s private jet. She cooks wagyu steaks for Barnaby Joyce, himself an accountant from an expensive boys’ school. Every time an Asian-Australian runs for One Nation, people thrill at the irony.

But these contradictions have, so far, strengthened One Nation. When a party official went around Melbourne playing “spot the Westerner”, the press pointed out that she was herself a recent immigrant, as if this was a “gotcha”. Instead, it took the edge off the hateful stunt.

The community independents, also known as the ‘teals’, represent new forms of organisation – with their own contradictions. Helen Haines and Kate Chaney voted for (modest) changes to franking credits, while Zoe Daniel, Sophie Scamps, Allegra Spender and Kylea Tink voted against them. The group split on superannuation and on issues relating to Israel–Palestine.

These contradictions have not caused deeper rifts because the model of loosely affiliated independents accommodates them. Beyond broad agreement on climate change, anti-corruption and women’s rights, candidates can express some combination of their own views and those amenable to their electorate.

In the absence of party structure, independents have traditionally struggled to coordinate volunteers, establish legitimacy, or develop policy. But the ‘Voices of’ model developed in Indi with Cathy McGowan has provided enough structure to overcome these problems.

Bill Browne is the Director of the Democracy and Accountability Program at the Australia Institute