Communism was a really good idea – stay with me here – and so is democracy. Unfortunately, neither ended up the way their idealist inventors imagined.
If you lived through the ‘Reds under the bed’ era this might come as a shock, but at its core communism is really rather nice. It would be great to think that we could treat everyone as equal and be sharing, caring community.
The fatal flaw, though, is communism didn’t really take human nature and greed into account, so ‘What’s mine is yours’ evolved into ‘What’s mine (and yours) is the dictator’s’.
Democracy started off in a similar vein – based on the premise that all members of a community should have equal share of political power. Sure, originally those citizens only included rich males of the dominant cultural group, but we’ve fixed that along the way.
The problem now is all the institutions that have been created to make the great idea a little bit more practical – parliaments, political parties and the like – have actually pushed the common man and woman almost entirely out of the picture.
At the last federal election, how included and how powerful did you feel? (No, not you, Clive Palmer)
Average citizens, unless they have the good fortune to live in a marginal seat, often feel as if they are an aside to the political sideshow and completely powerless, creating the cynical and disengaged community so often bemoaned during the last bunch of elections.
The truth is, democracy these days is nothing like the idea it once was. In South Australia, four men (Federal pollies Don Farrell and Mark Butler on the Labor side, and Nick Minchin and Chris Pyne for the Libs) essentially dictate the entire political operations of the state. There are similar set ups across the nation.
These famed faceless men – with power not from the people, but from unions and lobby groups – decide pre-selections, ministerial portfolios and any number of policy matters at a state and federal level.
Two of these backroom maestros expressed outrage last year when that upstarter from the Greens, Adam Bandt, dared suggest politicians consult with their constituents over gay marriage.
Chris Pyne effectively said “I don’t need to be told how to do my job” and Mark Butler’s comments were along the lines of “People voted for me knowing I was from the Labor Party and what our position was on this issue”.
To which I say, to all politicians – the votes you got (and remember it was only a tad over half, preferences included) were gained because people agreed with more of your policies than those from the other lot. Not because we signed up, part and parcel, to everything you have said or will do.
Now, I have one modest suggestion which could return some power back into our hands. I propose that at each election, voters could express an opinion on the political issues of the day. A kind of referendum at every election on the things we care about. For example, each party could put forward four of their policies and those which garner a majority would have to be acted on, regardless of which party won.
So you could vote, for example, to have Tony Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme and Julia Gillard’s National Broadband Network, or to have neither.
This would also have the advantage of forcing politicians to campaign on policy, not personality or catchphrases, to explain their plans to the public. For example, ‘Stop the Boats’ would not be allowed on the ballot paper, but a plan to ‘reopen the Nauru processing centre at a cost of $X’ would be acceptable. And voters wouldn’t be trapped in an either/or paradigm.
Obviously, this idea has many flaws, including how minor parties and independents would be incorporated. But – and I’ll admit it’s a long shot – I have this crazy idea that if we the people start intelligent conversations about how we want democracy to work for us and include us, politicians just might have to follow suit.
So what would you like to change about Australia’s democracy to put some more power in your hands?
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