By François Crespel
Over the course of this week, some events have hammered the first nails in the coffin of representative democracy as we know it.
Last weekend in Melbourne the leader of ALP Bill Shorten changed his opinion and tried to align the party’s position to that of the Government’s on the treatment of asylum seeker boats.
The motion was voted down, but the facts are here. We were very close to have almost the whole spectrum of power Liberals and Labor agreeing on the Turn Back the boats policies of the government. A heated debate during the Labor’s national conference maintained the system of representative democracy alive, but just.
The two major parties in power would have had aligned policies, diverged from their promises and approved of the blatant mistreatment of people in the assessment of asylum claims. Both parties, disregarding Australia’s obligations under international convention and unashamed of their blatant disdain in baffling human rights.
The two dinosaurs Labor and Liberals are failing to represent the majority of Australian people’s opinions.
In the same week SBS aired their documentary “Go back where you came from”. A cast of six persons experience the life of refugees, travelling to refugee camps, warzones, in the middle east and in south east Asia. At the beginning of the show, four of the cast are pro “turning back the boats” with their personal reasons and the other two are against it. Upon travelling and experiencing the hardship, the harsh conditions of life and seeing the despair of asylum seekers, 3 of the 4 people who were pro “turning back the boats “ have radically changed their minds around.
The last remaining person of the cast whose name is Kim, remains the only person to stick to her original position, that of turning back the boats. She seems to stick to her original point of view despite having feeling of compassion when meeting refugees. There doesn’t appear to be any processed thought in her reasoning.
What these 2 events in a week show:
About two thirds of the people in parliament, close to 50 seats out of 76 in the senate since labor and liberal share 58 seats in parliament would advocate the “Turn back the boats policies” whilst in reality looking at a show with “informed” people, it appears that Australians are in a vast majority against the governments policy.
If 75% of representatives go against what 75% of what the population actually wants. The ratio validating representative democracy is negative and shows that the current system no longer works.
François Crespel, Online Direct Democracy Party (Empowering the people)
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