If people don’t trust democracy and politicians, why do they continue voting for the same people all the time? If enough of them turned up at polling booths to have their names marked off to avoid fines, then walked out the exit, or stayed long enough to write comments on the ballot papers, political parties would sit up and take notice.

It has been suggested that there should be a mass enrolment in parties so that we could influence the selection of candidates, but getting down and dirty in political parties is a step too far for most of us. No, the easiest and cleanest way is to cast an informal vote, or pass through the polling booth on the way to somewhere else.

There is no point in telling pollsters how much you hate politicians or how much you are jaded by the misuse of democracy; you have to do something about it.

And, forget ‘direct democracy’ - Citizen Initiated Referenda - while you sit back and let the current crop of no-hoping, self-serving politicians run the show instead of serving you as was intended. There will never be CIR as long as we allow ourselves to be dictated to by politicians. The don’t want it, and they will not give it to us.

Limit immigration for a bit so people feel like their vote matters, get the birth rate above replacement, and watch confidence in democracy soar

DEMOCRACY! Hahahaha. You're joking surely? Democracy is defined, by the people, of the people and for the people. And we have nothing like that here! Instead, it is by the political parties, for the political parties and of the political parties.

And starts with our system of highly manipulated and managed preferential voting, which is rendered into an absolute nonsense by preference swaps ( dirty deal done in the dead of night) that all but render the popular will of the people, just so much BS (sales marketing) AND SHOVELLED BY THE SHIP LOAD!

Then there is this crap about toeing the party line! And given it is in vogue, might as well elect one player supported by a number of rubber stamps! Because toeing the party line, all but guarantees, that's the effective outcome?

And then academics like yourself wonder why de-mock-crazy, is less popular now, as a more erudite electorate looks at our system and wonders, why bother!? I mean around 40% of young folks don't!

Particularly when all one sees here is patently puerile partisan party politics, self-evident self-interest and the wielding of power as the only real goal, with all else, just window dressing and (machinegun, motor mouth) sales marketing? And represented in (real-life) the streets, by those (me, me, me)buffoons who have emptied out the supermarket shelves?

Then we wonder why we, a once egalitarian society, went from the third wealthiest nation on the planet and a creditor one at that. Marked by unprecedented post-war prosperity, to the debt-laden debt-riddled basket case it has been (deliberately) transformed into?

And what one might expect as an outcome, when the same old business a usual is trotted out all while expecting a different outcome! And I know you know exactly what I'm saying?
Alan B.

"Most mainstream Western political leaders, whether of the right or the left, including ours, are garden-variety globalists. They are out to dispense increasing quantities of useless foreign aid to ne’er-do-well states; import unending streams of poorly-skilled, culturally-challenged refugees; free up trade whatever the despair this causes within many of their own communities; and make quixotic quests to save the planet whatever the cost to their own industries, to their old and to their poor"

Democracy is merely the catch-cry for the hangers-on !

Hangers on!? Like all those folk that sit on their asses ( the drones and leaners) as others do all the grunt and the thinking for them! That amasses their personal wealth?

Or those whose small independent businesses depend on the great unwashed custom to survive? Hanging on by their fingernails currently?

And destroyed by a few weeks quarantine?
Can still get out there and do the grunt with the rest, once our economy recovers, in around a decade?

Unless the business, as usual, is replaced with leadership and vision. which would size the day and all the annual billions we'd earn as a perfectly safe, nuclear waste repository

And then use that mostly unspent fuel, in MSR technology to power the nation for thousands of years, with all but free, economy turbocharging, carbon-free, electricity, we can also export to anywhere via, undersea, graphene cored cables.

All funded and financed via the aforementioned, annual billions. Annual billions we currently turn our backs on solely due to diabolically disingenuous mendacious mischievous, vexatious, the sky will fall, totally irrational BS fearmongering!

You can't polish a turd!

It's the indolent, coal-fired hangers-on who alone prevent this potentially massive, vast economic renascence!
Alan B.