John Neve writes:
I believe any objective review of our Representative form of Democracy, would have to admit it has been eroded over time. As a direct result, many people have lost faith in their ability to influence the direction of their lives.
Successive federal and state governments have introduced laws that restrict the ability of the ordinary Australian to participate. Very few people have the money or resources to stand for any level of government. Unless backed by a political party, church organisation or business group.
There are a number of ways we could endeavour to restore faith in our political system. Some of these are as follows; cap the money spent by or on behalf of any candidate, do away with blanket voting for the Senate by removing the LINE on the ballot paper. The voter would then have to mark every box. Scrap compulsory voting and introduce fixed terms, thus removing opportunistic snap elections. Giving the electorate the time to truly assess a government’s performance. Most importantly, insist on equal electronic media coverage and limit lead times prior to an election.
Better still, we could move to a Direct Democracy system. With a population of little more than 20 million, it would be easy to introduce a system similar to California or Switzerland. We could hold referendums quarterly, with the added ability for citizen initiated referendums, if 10% of the population so desired.
There are probably many other options, which would enable the people to have a greater say in how our country is run. But I believe some thing must be done, no one could deny the increasing loss of the citizens rights and privileges over the last 20 or 30 years. Those we choose to elect no longer listen to us, they now tell us what is good for us! Sad to say they often have gotten it wrong.
John A Neve
Brian Canute writes:
In WA, local government voting is not compulsory.
They also respect local government for what it is; local.
Between Perth and Fremantle, on the north shore of the Swan River,a distance of approximately 20 km, there are 8 local government areas. They talk periodically of amalgamation, but prefer to cooperate by outsourcing their various services. Meanwhile, the different councils are able to pursue their own philosophies, on matters such as debt level and entrepreneurial activity.
In Claremont, one of these LGA’s, the mayor used to wander around the shopping centre every Saturday, just chatting to people.
Interstingly, just to the north of these councils lies WA’s largest LGA, Stirling (250k). During the WA Inc era, around 1990, guess where all the brown paper bags full of cash were found; yep, Stirling City Council, dominated by the large political parties and remote from the voters.
Unfortunately, Nancy and the state government do not get it. The thing that makes a community prosperous is the linkages between the people; it works for bushfires and works for economic development. Hopefully these blogs will achieve what Nancy’s Newsletter (unless you own a horse) and amalgamation are trying to frustrate. These blogs have a huge potential to be the mechanism by which we share problems, dreams and ideas. And that can make us very prosperous.
Very interesting Brian. In another part of this news site I commented that up to 30% of the people of the region have not had their say in this election, either through not voting or informal votes. It now seems certain that this figure will end up closer to $40% than 30.
So it appears that the people of the Fraser Coast have opted for non-compulsary voting regardless of the governments position. It must be of real concern that the people feel that disconnected from their ‘local’ representitives. But this does raise 2 other questions.
Firstly, if we had not had compulsary voting how low would the voter turn out have been? It would seem very unlikely that we would have come close to 50%. You can only imagine what effect this has had on the outcome.
Secondly, in an arena of compulsary voting, how much legitimacy does a government have if the voter turn out is only marginally over 60%?
Another point worth considering, is that due to the extremely biased media reports on the run up to the election, whereby positive information was only available in press releases associated with (in the case of the Mayoralty) Kruger and nothing worthy of note on anyone else apart from the “admonition” from the Editor to vote for Mick if in doubt, did this then set up doubts in the electorates minds that if the didn’t want Mick, they would be playing Russian Roulette voting for anyone else, so they simply didn’t register a vote?
The amount of damage inflicted on the democratic system by this biased old rag I feel is beyond comprehension and hopefully if or when the Electoral Commission launch an investigation into the numerous breaches of the “Electoral Act”, we may get some notion of how great it was.
But it seems that many more people voted in the mayoral election than the council election. I think the problem may run much deeper than just the reporting of the paper. It may have to do with people feeling overwhelmed by having to select 10 Councillors from a list of candidates of whom they know so little. This is something the paper could have done something more about.
It may also have something to do with the residents feeling disenfranchised in a much bigger regional council which was thrust upon them with not even a pretence to consultation or an interest in their needs and wants.
You may find it is a case of, they didn’t need it, they didn’t want it, they don’t think it is going to make anything better therefore they are simply not going to have anything to do with it
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2008/2191722.htm
The above link will take you to an audiostream of last week’s ABC-RN-Counterpoint program which included a critique of a community consultation held in Perth.
The introductory blurb is as follows:
“Deliberative democracy occurs when political or business leaders claim to capture the true, informed, opinion of ordinary people. Broadly speaking, it’s the idea that citizens ought to participate in government decision-making more deeply than merely by voting in elections. But just how genuine is participation when encouraged by leaders with a strong agenda?
Paul Maginn asks whether it really works and discusses the practical difficulties of achieving deliberative democracy.”
They used written surveys, a TV Hypothetical and community meetings. I wonder if it may have produced more with the inclusion of blogging as a communication tool.
If you have broadband, have a listen and share what you think of the idea.