I wanted to start to set out my views in this post, as a starting point for a dialogue.
What prompted me to start this blog was a concern that the politics in this country had lost the representative nature that the system was designed to have. Politicians, when shown in the media, tend to spend more time talking about their opponents and the problems with their opponents policies rather than their own.
I see this as a result of the two party system where the 'us or them' attitude runs all political decisions and is often the only choice presented to voters.
My goal is to have each Member of Parliament in Australia be truly representative of their particular electorate's views and to present those views regardless of whether they agree with them or not, rather than any particular political parties views. Essentially what i'm saying is that i would like to see all MPs be Independent.
A lot needs to happen for that to be a reality as will be obvious. Our current system wouldn't accomodate that, however there aren't too many changes that would need to take place, and the vast majority of our system could remain exactly as it is.
I will start setting out those changes in the next post, in the meantime, what are your views on that? What would need to change, and would this make a difference? I invite you to look at this and consider how it could work, as well as how it might not. Have fun!
2 comments:
I think it'd be great to have an independant MP doing what I wanted, but that's cos I'm about as mainstream Australian as you can get. If there's only people looking after their own followers (on a regional level, so still working with majorities in groups of tens of thousands) then how could you assure, for example, that each rep. would even TRY to change anything when faced with such heavy odds and competition to be heard, let alone have the resources available to fully understand the multitude of issues at hand? One of the challenges facing minor parties is that they have to keep abreast of every issue but can't afford the staff. I definately don't want to pay the bastards even MORE, and have them take longer to make decisions!
The main reason minor parties have that challenge is BECAUSE they are up against multi-million dollar corporate machines.
However, if it was a single individual representing a particular region, then to represent them, they only have to keep abreast of what their region's views on a particular issue are.
In an ideal world, I would see it as a joint role of both the government (The workers of the various ministries, not the representative assemblies) and media to disseminate information, and the representatives to collect the feedback.
That is tricky in todays climate, but if you were to remove the political affiliations then more objective truth may come out. At the same time, editorialising also has its place, so long as it is accompanied by unspun facts.
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