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.
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. The forum was later discussed and misrepresented in Australian politics when Julia Gillard, another member, became prime minister. 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. 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. In January 2007 he was defeated for the party presidency after in-fighting with fellow member Stephen Mayne, and resigned from the party. By August he was running as the Democratic Labor Party candidate in a by-election for the state seat of Williamstown. In 2010 he led a group of Legislative Council candidates for the unregistered Parents Families and Carers Party. In the 2014 Victorian state election, he convened a team of candidates in Melbourne's western suburbs as Voice for the West. From 2007 he was Director of the Centre for Civil Society, which became Civil Society Australia in 2016. 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 including Reconciliation: Where to now? in 2000, and The Empowerment Agenda. Civil Society and Markets in Disability and Mental Health in 2006. Earlier contributions to IPA publications dealt with the importance of community self-reliance and mutualism in the 1995 article Between Individual and State and on the history of gambling regulation in Australia in Gambling and the State in 1996. 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. 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."
