Significant changes to a worn-out Australian democracy require some positivity from Peter Dutton (cont)
Continued from Significant changes to a worn-out Australian democracy require some positivity from Peter Dutton
Let’s envision a future where everyone has equal opportunities for growth and success. The key to achieving this noble goal is to let go of outdated social objectives and invest in a broader social and philosophical common good that benefits everyone. By embracing ideas, imagination and positivity, “we can reduce inequality and create a brighter future for all“. Together, let’s significantly impact society and work towards a better tomorrow.
The major parties have become fragmented, with Labor losing a large segment of its supporters to the Greens or independents.
Both parties have pre-selection processes rooted in factional power struggles that often see the best candidates miss out. Both need to select people with broader life experience. Not just people who have come out of the union movement or, in the case of the LNP, staffers who have come up through the party.
Our Parliament, its institutions and conventions have been trashed by Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, and if he gets the chance, Peter Dutton will do the same.
Ministerial responsibility has at least been restored.
Political donations are out of control and should be recorded in real-time.
Question Time is just an excuse for mediocre minds who cannot win an argument with factual intellect, charm or debating skills to act deplorably toward each other. The public might be forgiven for thinking that the chamber has descended into a chamber of hate where respect for the other’s view is seen as a weakness. Where light frivolity and wit have been replaced with smut and sarcasm. And in doing so, they debase the Parliament and themselves as moronic imbecilic individuals.
Recent times have demonstrated just how corrupt our democracy has become. We have witnessed a plethora of inquiries and Royal Commissions, all focusing on illegal sickening behaviour.
We now have a National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), but after almost a decade of Conservative government, when corruption flourished, no one has been punished. The NACC has to date:
- received 2561 referrals
- excluded 1984 referrals at the triage stage because they did not involve a Commonwealth public official or did not raise a corruption issue
- 159 referrals awaiting triage
- 212 triaged referrals under assessment including 13 under preliminary investigation
- assessed 232 referrals
I cannot remember when my country was so devoid of political leadership. In recent times, we have had potential, but it was lost in power struggles, undignified self-interest and narcissistic personality. Under Albanese, it has stabilised.
The pursuit of power for power’s sake by an Opposition devoid of any ideas has so engulfed the political thinking on the right that the common good is forgotten and takes away the capacity for bi-partisan public policy that achieves social equity.
Then there is a ludicrous Senate situation where people are elected on virtually no primary votes, just preferences. It is also a system that allows the election of people with vested business interests without public disclosure.
One cannot begin to discuss the decline of Australian democracy without aligning it to the collapse of journalistic standards and its conversion from reporting to opinion. Murdoch and his majority-owned newspapers, with blatant support for right-wing politics, have done nothing to advance Australia as a modern, enlightened, democratic society. On the contrary, it has damaged it, perhaps irreparably.
The advent of social media has pushed mainstream media into free fall. Declining newspaper sales have resulted in lost revenue and profits. It is losing its authority, real or imagined. Bloggers reflect on the feelings of grassroots society. Social media writers with whom they can agree or differ but at least have the luxury of doing so. As a result, newspapers, in particular, have degenerated into gutter political trash, hoping they might survive. Shock jocks shout the most outrageous lies and vilify people’s character with impunity and, in the process, do nothing to promote decent democratic illumination. They even promote free speech as if they are the sole custodian of it.
A number of people/ideologies have contributed to the decline in our democracy.
For starters, the Abbott factor and the death of truth as a principle of democratic necessity. I am convinced Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton believe that the effect of lying diminishes over time and, therefore, is a legitimate political tool.
Mr Abbott has long set a high standard for not keeping promises. On August 22, 2011, he said:
“It is an absolute principle of Democracy that governments should not and must not say one thing before an election and do the opposite afterwards. Nothing could be more calculated to bring our Democracy into disrepute and alienate the citizenry of Australia from their government than if governments were to establish by precedent that they could say one thing before an election and do the opposite afterwards.”
On the eve of that election, after crucifying Prime Minister Julia Gillard daily for three years, Abbott made this solemn promise:
“There will be no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS.”
This was an unambiguous statement that cannot be interpreted differently than what the words mean. To do so is to tell one lie in defence of another.
When you throw mud in politics, some of it inevitably sticks, but there is a residue that adheres to the chucker. That was Abbott’s and, in turn, a conservative dilemma, but the real loser was our democracy. In Australian political history, Abbott’s and Morrison’s legacy will be that they empowered a period emblematic of a nasty and ugly period in our politics.
Our democracy is nothing more or less than what the people make of it. The power is with the people, and it is incumbent on the people to voice with unmistakable anger the decline in our democracy.
People need to wake up to the fact that the government affects every part of their lives (other than what they do in bed) and should be more concerned. But there is a deep-seated political malaise.
Good democracies can only deliver good governments and outcomes if the electorate demands it.
“You get what you vote for” rings true.
An enlightened democracy, through its Constitution, must give its citizens a clear sense of purposeful participation. It must remain perpetually open to improvement in both its methodology and implementation. Importantly, its constitutional framework must be subject to regular revision, renewal, and compromise whenever everyday life demands it. There can be no room for complacency or stagnation in a genuinely effective democracy. Only through constant evolution and adaptation can a democracy truly serve the needs and aspirations of its people.
Unfortunately, without Peter Dutton’s cooperation, we can expect more of the same. Without it, constitutional changes and an Australian Head of State are just fantasies.
My thought for the day
The most objectionable feature of a conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge. science, in other words.
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8 comments
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Andrew Smith -
Perry Gretton -
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leefe
Return to home pageA big project, like opposite of the Koch Network – Heritage Project 2025….
Firstly parties, especially Libs and Nats need to bring policy development in house, attract genuine branch constituents, avoid imported US strategies, ‘values’ and follow science/analysis.
This means ignoring any imported nativist authoritarian policies, model bills or talking points from Atlas or Koch Network’s IPA, CIS, Taxpayers’ Alliance etc. and SPA’s white nativism; masquerading as ‘free market’ and environmental.
Break up News, 9F and 7WM while paying more attention to sensible policies in the EU versus the flat earth Anglosphere…..
Your assessment of the Greens is nonsensical and spoil a well-considered argument. The Greens are not negative about everything, and unlike the LNP are ready to negotiate and compromise. Also, they are not beholden to big money interests, unlike the others.
Perry, I took it upon myself to remove that paragraph as it was linked to an article that is 18 years old. I don’t believe we can accept that as being current.
John, re. “Both parties have pre-selection processes rooted in factional power struggles that often see the best candidates miss out. Both need to select people with broader life experience. Not just people who have come out of the union movement or, in the case of the LNP, staffers who have come up through the party.”… it is what it is. Not to deny that the unions feed candidates into the ALP, or that the LNP is peopled by staffers, political hacks and timeservers, but do we actually see the ‘best’ candidates miss out, or is this perhaps a subjective view as opposed to, say, the reality that those who aspire to a career on the green or red benches are so often – not always but often enough – people of less than what we might wish to be the finest calibre in terms of representatives?
And as for “Question Time is just an excuse for mediocre minds who cannot win an argument with factual intellect, charm or debating skills to act deplorably toward each other. The public might be forgiven for thinking that the chamber has descended into a chamber of hate where respect for the other’s view is seen as a weakness. Where light frivolity and wit have been replaced with smut and sarcasm. And in doing so, they debase the Parliament and themselves as moronic imbecilic individuals.”… well, it’s asking a lot of people to perform with the sorts of finer skills per intellect, charm, courtesy etc., when they don’t themselves have those innate qualities.
I fully agree that the parliamentary pit has become debased and is a vulgar shadow of what it might ideally be, but again, these are the times and these are the people, and others of higher qualities might rightly question whether the effort of getting elected to represent their electorates is worth the effort. I would add that clearly there are exceptions to these less than impressive politicians and they deserve our support but many of the people who form the political classes are the types that you wouldn’t really want to associate with. In my humble opinion, it’s a dilemma that is essentially unfixable.
Bring on the independents, the Teals, the Greens, all power to their passions!
To put it bluntly: What the fuck type of glittery fairy dust is that arsehole Rockliff snorting to come up with this election brain fart of stupendous proportions?
@11.52am
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2024/mar/10/australia-news-live-heatwave-bushfires-victoria-anthony-albanese-peter-dutton-chris-bowen-fuel-standards
John Lord, thanks for your story.
I find it odd, in this day and age that you would disparage the ‘union movement’;
“Not just people who have come out of the union movement …”
Seems like a typical broken-record utterance from the LNP.
In the days when it could rightly be called the ‘union movement’, it arose out of necessity, and did much good for many in breaking the stranglehold and enslavement by the greedy elite.
Since those days it has gone through much change, good and bad, in the contest of labour vs capital.
Whilst there have been a few bad eggs, now mostly removed, unions are vastly diversified, and much more educated and sophisticated in their approaches. They are mostly seen when they take action on IR/HSE issues, but behind the scenes do much good work consulting with other ‘social’ bodies and NGOs, and not infrequently holding Labor to account.
In the proper process of political consultation, in the face of corporations, financial institutions etc., and their industry bodies and think-tanks (and the corrupted moronically biased msm), somebody needs to speak for labour.
In and of themselves, they are just another democratic layer, yet today you won’t find them operating coercively as a voting bloc in mainstream politics.
In the face of the dangerous anti-democratic blather of the fossil-fueler / neo-religious evangelist funded Atlas / Tanton / CPAC dynamics imported by the Duttonate, I am glad the unions exist, amongst many, particularly under the fine heads of Michele O’Neil and Sally McManus.
To have genuine representative democracy, there first needs to be a truly democratic electoral system for the citizenry. Unlike Australia’s proportionally representative [PR] electoral system, Canada’s First Past The Post [FPTP] system largely masquerades as real democracy. And, of course, many voters get to wait in long, bad-weather lineups to participate.
While the FPTP ballot may technically qualify as democratic within the democracy spectrum, it is the PR system thus governance that’s truly representative, regardless of political ideology.
FPTP does seem to serve corporate lobbyists well, however. I believe it is why such powerful interests generally resist attempts at changing from FPTP to proportional representation electoral systems of governance, the latter which dilutes corporate influence. Low-representation FPTP-elected governments, in which a relatively small portion of the country’s populace is actually electorally represented, are likely the easiest for lobbyists to manipulate or ‘buy’.
It can and often enough does enable the biggest of businesses to get unaccountably even bigger, defying the very spirit of government rules established to ensure healthy competition by limiting mass consolidation. Currently, corporate lobbyists can actually write bills for Canada’s governing representatives to vote for, albeit perhaps with some amendments, and have implemented, supposedly to save the elected officials their own time.
” … the Abbott factor and the death of truth as a principle of democratic necessity.”
It wasn’t Abbott who started that. Truth has always been a potential casualty of politics, but it was Little Johnny Howard who elevated lying to the top of the political strategy pile.