The Forum > Article Comments > Insiders V Outsiders: The implications for minor parties > Comments
Insiders V Outsiders: The implications for minor parties : Comments
By Geoff Ward, published 22/2/2005Geoff Ward argues there should be a broad-based centre party for Labor outsiders and disillusioned Liberals.
- Pages:
-
- Page 1
- 2
-
- All
However I became concerned that this is not occurring, after reading a comment by Phillip Adams in an article titled “Political realities of the one-party state” at…http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12177494%255E12272,00.html
“The other day I asked Bob Carr if he'd noticed the net changing Australian politics and his emphatic response was, "no, not at all". Despite the strident blogs, the exuberant conspiracy theorists and the new tribalisms of the web, it's hard to see solid evidence of significant impact. Yet.”
Now I am personally concerned if the Internet has not made much difference to politics within this country. Hopefully it does so in the future, as it appears that mainstream journalists can be bought or pressured to basically lie, distort the truth, or provide only half-truths to the public. I also think that investigative journalism in this country is much in decline.
However it is becoming evident that there is a very wide gap between rural and city people, and while much of the country’s economic wealth and exports originally come from rural areas, the country’s politics is mostly played out in the cities.
Personally I would like to see all political parties taken out of the Senate, and the senate made up of independents only. Such a senate would then act as a true and impartial house of review, and provide over 70 different viewpoints when legislation is passed to it from the House of Representatives. It would also eliminate much of the rorting that is presently occurring in the Senate, that comes about because of the exchange of preferences at election time.
At present I think that most Senators don’t even know who they are supposed to be representing, or what policies they are supposed to be supporting, because of all the preference deals made with other parties at election time.
I also have some thoughts that the Democrats went into decline because they were too honest, too principled, and were not willing enough to exchange preferences with less principled parties. Eventually they have lost their power in the Senate because of this, and so the public has lost it’s third political party. Similar to what has happened to the Democrats, can also occur to other minor parties at present such as the Greens, or Family First.
In the “dog eat dog” world that is our present political system, a more principled party can readily loose out, and so does the voting public.