This is a pretty insightful article Mr Young.

Monochrome is probably a quite understated way to describe some of the candidate selection processes.

I am quite comfortable with unicameral state parliaments but I don’t envy the Queensland system with the winner take all process.

I think states should give strong consideration to the Hare Clarke system. It is very unhelpful to stackers and gives the voting public a greater choice in their desired parties candidates.

In Tasmania and the ACT you will have a choice of at least 5 candidates from which to choose, from the party you want to support. This frustrates the hell out of the bruvvers and factional warlords. The voters not the warlords decide who will get in.

This system results in each election being an intra as well as inter party competition largely decided by the voting public each election.

There have been some pretty strong numbers men over the years but not even Richo in his hey day would have been able to secure 5 out of the 5 candidates put up by the party for an electorate.

Whilst I won’t have to wait to long before people say but that will lead to hung parliaments. Name the states that have not had minority governments over the last 10-15 years. Currently both jurisdictions with the Hare Clarke system have majority governments.

Not a good title for subject.
Tasmanian vegetable farmers are travelling in their tractors to various regional centres of South Eastern Australia. Their issue is that fast food outlets are obtaining some of their produce from overseas. They are also arguing that we need very specific labelling for Australian vegetables whether they are fresh or frozen.

Just the beginning of the joys of a free market, where Australia is allowing imports from overseas where their produce is subsidised.
The joys of brand "Liberal" and "Mc".

ANT...

in spite of our level of difference on other issues, we are at one on this one. I'm definitely NOT an advocate for an 'open slather' free market because with the regimes in some countries its not 'free'.

All that happens is that multi-nationals locate their factories in totalitarian (but bribable) 3rd world countries and then sell us cheap (subsidised) vegies as you observe.

JIMBO (and ANT)

What I note about Grahams article is that it is still couched in 'us/them' politics. "We lost because labor used a 'sparkle' campaign" so to speak. While this may be true on the surface, I still wonder if the Libs in QLD are toooo much into 'vested narrow interest' to be 'of' interest to the wider community.

For Federal Labor and QLD Libs to be relevant, I think Labor need to move away from the left toward the centre, and the Libs of Qld just need to get out more.(and move toward 'responsible government' rather than simply representing the interests they do.

I'd rather see them digging a bit deeper and exploring where we really are, and from where we have come, and asking 'is this where we really wanted to be' ?

Being 'me' I can't leave issues without some kind of Biblical perspective, and in this case it is just the golden rule. Both parties should seek to 'do for others' etc, but I'd prefer that all sides examined their own hearts and put them before the scrutiny of the Almighty, and then think about how to approach issues. (that applies to me also in case you thought I was looking at other's specks :)

Boaz_David, its pretty difficult to argue against the golden rule!

There is talk about huge multinational wharehouse type developments outside of urban areas which sell all sorts of items. There is no identification with local communities or the country in question. Profits leave the particular country; I gather there are such developments in New Zealand already. The problem is that local businesses cannot compete and may go bust.

I think the Labor Party has moved to the right, and looks more like the Liberal Party of years ago. It was the fiscal policies of Keating that set up the current Coalition Government. The Liberals in the meantime have moved further to the right to break down the influence of Pauline Hanson.

Some thoughtful posts here. Until politicians are servants of the people and concerned about every Australians wellbeing and not about their own election we will not have good representatives.

BOAZ_David,Can I ask, which State you live in?

Is there some sort of a conspiracy to take this thread off topic? Not sure what article you guys are reading, but your comments have nothing to do with this one.

Philo... I'm in the ONLY State (there are others ? :) VIC....

Graham..

humble apologies, must have seemed like we were using your article purely for the promotion of pet ideas.

I looked further into what you said, the thrust of which seems to be that we should find ways of involving the community in the political process.
The ePortal sounds ok, a bit like this forum already. (is this your training wheels ? :)

I do like the idea of transfering pre-selection from party machines to a broader community interest/involvement/primaries type of approach. One suspects that the reason our political parties seem to much 'us/them' is because it is a mentality handed down by the political hyper fundamentalist machine people.

For me personally, the opportunity to interact with various 'opposing voices' is most refreshing, it provides ample fuel for reflection and also an outlet for the results of such reflection. It also causes us all to research our positions more thoroughly (except for Kenny :)

So, on the suggestions you raised. Go4it.

P.S. the fact that we take things off topic at times, is also a litmus of the fact that we enjoy the social interaction on matters important to us, and clearly we say things in our posts which trigger 'hot spot's of concern in others.

I am a member of a Christian values Party in NSW and we have all our online members constantly answering opinion polls on issues, to gauge our supporters views. We also have members with similar interests interfacing online to develop ideas into policy to be put to our politicians.

I would think that it would be much better to have proportional representations of sections within our community rather than current Party structures.
For example: All persons involved in the food indusrty by proportion be given a quota of representatives. All persons involved in the mining, manufacturing and timber industry be given a quota of representatives. All persons involved in commercial, tourism and service industries given a quota of representatives. etc etc etc
This way we have the industries etc presenting their best spokesperson to form policy to develop, protect and service Australia.

This idea needs some thrashing out, otherwise we continue with unknown Party hacks to vote for.

Graham, Thanks for this insighful piece. I'm giving it some deep thought before I respond /engage. (as I suspect others will too).

My off the cuff response is that E-democracy has yet to fully realise its capacity and a prototype model where concise discussion is facilitated and resolutions enabled is long over due.

This is a topic that has interested me for some time. Graham raises some interesting and desirable possibilities. However, I think that the responses above from a couple of TNF's 'usual suspects' exemplify why such a cyber-democratic utopia is unlikely to eventuate for a while yet.

If democracy has anything to do with the ability of individuals to influence the body politic, then it's pretty obvious that at this stage the Internet is a long way from delivering the kinds of representative functions that Graham envisions. It's too easy for a small group of extreme windbags to target particular forums, even within those that are restricted to members of politically-oriented groups.

And as for Internet polls - who hasn't been urged by email to vote in this or that poll on MSN or wherever, in order to skew the results?

Then there is the question of who runs such a portal and sets the rules by which it is conducted. For example (and IMHO), this site is compromised to a large extent by perceived partisanship on the part of its administrators - which results in its attraction of disproportionate comments that express extreme right-wing ideologies. Relatively speaking, this site attracts very little attention from the progressive side of cyber-politics in Australia, who are very active elsewhere on the Internet.

Having said that, I like the idea of eDemocracy, and will be interested to see how it develops. However, I suspect that it will be quite some time yet before the general public has sufficient confidence in the Internet for it to have much direct political impact.

e-democracy will only ever be a theory until we find a way to identify - properly - everyone who partakes in it. It is not for nothing that the act of voting involves the laborious process of presenting yourself, in person, at a designated location in order to be counted in. The Internet, by its nature, has characteristics that will never allow it to perform a similar function. Not until, that is, we are all allocated our own URL, which is firmly embedded in our DNA at birth and destroyed when we die.

Technology is not an answer to anything. It can only spotlight or magnify existing capabilities. To try to use it as a sounding board for ideas, one has to be very specific about the ground-rules. If OLO, for example, were to decide that all posts should identify their writer by name, address and postcode, we would have a very different style of discussion. If they then made sure that the information provided was accurate - by sending the police around to check, perhaps - there would be a substantially different, and possibly much smaller, complement of posters.

All in all, I would have as little faith in the feedback from a "political brokerage" function as I would in the result of a fully on-line federal election. There simply aren't the safeguards available that will allow you to be sure that the information you receive has not been managed and manipulated.

Having spent far too many resources in promoting proper governance - running resident's associations, lodging submissions, attending meetings, court hearings, standing for election, overturning corruptly elected councillors, trying to get the electoral commissioner to take enrolment fraud seriously, and having missed election 3 times by less than 30 votes (out of 17000) the thoughts presented above berating any sort of electronic (or public) involvement ring true.

The number of voters who say "glad you're around to keep them honest" or who sincerely let you know that "we voted (major party) but put you second..." clearly indicates that advocacy outside the main parties, whilst publicly acknowledged as a necessary good, is not viable so long as the majority of unthinking/uneductaed voters are compulsory enrolments caught up in advertising campaigns, rather than on voting records or candidate CV's.

Graham's contribution to opening up political debate in Australia through the Forum has been terrific. But on this issue, Graham's desire to find a solution to the party malaise while accommodating his own Liberal Party allegiance, just does not work. If, as Graham's argument runs, the duopoly stifles democracy in all meaningful senses, then we must get rid of the duopoly. Any proposed solution that falls short of that will be inadequate. The creation of a broad centrist electoral option that cracks open the duopoly and opens up reform of the political culture is essential. It just has to be done. Courage is required to do it, but do it we must.

Vern Hughes

There's a few issues here. Garra raises the problem of gatekeeping. On a site our size with the technology, there is no avoiding having a central authority. Central authorities always get accused of bias. With some of the technology and systems we are developing, the issue will in some cases become redundant. Any organisation that joins National Forum will be able to use the site to, for example, mount a petition. We may also publish more material, and use a reader ranking system to sort it, or perhaps even have competing publishing teams. The trick is to do this whilst maintaining coherence. In my view Indy Media lost the plot by not having any "chairmanship" function, and it is basically moribund. However, I'd like a broader base of supporters collaborating in the work on this site.

Online personality is an important issue. We decided against trying to make people give real names because it is impossible to enforce. But it is possible for all of us to use our real names, or identifiable version of them, as our nicks. Perhaps Pericles might like to start a trend of shedding the nom-de-plume for the real name. It might make the debate more civil than it is (although I think it is pretty good on this site compared to anything else like this I have read or participated in).

I understand Reality Check's point, but I think politicians are responsive to public opinion, just not necessarily letter-writing campaigns etc. What we are gradually doing through this site is making public opinion instantaneously available, at the same time that it is usefully transparent. One reason all of our surveys ask for political affiliation is so that it can be more convincing to politicians.

I think the challenge to Vern's desire to set up a third party is to find tools to make that possible. It's a feat that hasn't been achieved in any system of single member constituencies that I am aware of, with some rare examples of cataclysmic change, like Canada, using the old technologies. New technologies might provide more possibilities.

I agree with the major sentiments of GY’s article.

Peoples perceptions change over time. We have moved from an era when the class system drove the social order to a system where the authority of the nobility (upper-class) and church has evaporated.

Filling this “gap” we see corporate structures entering the social arena and thus political organisations need to move and reflect such trends or cease to be “politically viable”.

Ideally a successful politician reflects the views of his electorate and if most people relate to the hierarchical structure of their work more than some archaic social order then politicians, to be successful (elected), need to reflect such significance.

McPolitics – oh not a good choice of title for any article – but it is accurate and “thought provoking” – and ain’t that what a forum should be about?

Garra – who "runs" a forum is not the issue

Who decides to post on it determines the strength and quality of the forum.

I choose to post here.

I find GY’s stewardship of this site even handed and non-intrusive (non-intrusive – except for the most flagrant abuses and flammings).

I find your attitude pretentious and arrogant.

I know if you ran this forum I would not bother to post here because I would feel I was extending support to an unworthy cause.

If you feel so strongly about the way this forum is run – I suggest you vote with your mouse and scurry off elsewhere. I for one will not miss you [deleted for abuse].

Remember garra –
“democracy” does not mean we all have to agree with you or your view, quite the opposite.

Regardless of how much better you think you know how we should all think, feel and behave (as proven by your comments), I will continue to express my view, freely and as diametrically opposed to yours as I feel suits.

Graham, don't be so defensive - I absolutely agree with the concept of voluntary anonymity on forums such as these. Whether it is used as a convenient alter ego, to express views you wouldn't otherwise want to be accountable for in front of your peers, or simply as a defence mechanism in case you become the physical target of those with extremist views, it can only be positive. And I absolutely agree, the standard here is comparatively high, and long may it remain so.

Where the line has to be drawn however is the use of feedback mechanisms such as these for any form of public policymaking, even the second- or third-hand variety, as they are so easily hijacked by the noisiest folk with the most vehement agenda, not necessarily the, or even a, majority. To use the Internet for any form of voting is, for the same reasons, utterly unthinkable.

Col Rouge, I agree that onlineopinion is run in a fair manner.

I had a look at the www.getup.org.au a little earlier. It has people with seemingly different political persuasions involved including John Hewson.
It apparently wishes to marshall opinions and channel them to Coalition Senators. I remember when Malcolm Fraser had a huge majority that comments were made that it was a double edged sword; backbenchers could become unweildy. We now have the situation where Senators can become a target for non-traditional lobbying. One critic has written off GetUp as sending nothing but spam to Senators; however, how can it be spam if it is a voter sending a GetUp message along with their own message?

McPolitics .
Yeah I agree , In fact I think this is the biggest problem we have .
We sorta need to deregulate politics , If we want to keep up with the rest of the world , in terms of trade that is .
The problem is that to win enough seats to form a government a party must capture the imagination of the uninterested within the last week or so of an election . This is done with the same old slogans ,public saftey ,health , enviroment ,etc etc , via our left hand media . No wonder joe bloggs thinks "they all sound the same".
The solution is simple , We have to do away with this compulsory voting nonsense . The oppertunity exists now to do this , However I don't believe any of our parties are prepared to become listeners .

It will be interesting to see how GetUp fares. While I don't think that this is quite what Graham had in mind, similar groups like MoveOn in the U.S. attract a large amount of support, although it's debatable how effective they are in actually influencing government policy and action.

Of course, this is the nub: while the Internet lends itself to spamming-style campaigns, at this point I'm unconvinced that they actually achieve very much. I'm sure that American policy makers dismiss MoveOn as baby boomer ex-hippie relics, while I doubt that anybody pays much attention to the loony godbotherers and waspish armchair fascists who seem to be most vocal at this site.

Issues surrounding identity, security and privacy are indeed critical to the deployment of the Internet in political action - and it seems very unlikely that these issues can be resolved sufficiently for it to be seriously utilised in the actual political process for quite some time yet, if ever.

Certainly, given some of the more rabid ideas expressed by some who are attracted to this particular site, there is no way for reasons of personal security that I would want some of them to be able to identify me and where I live. On the other hand, as a couple of posters in this thread demonstrate, the cloak of anonymity affords them the opportunity to express the most objectionable ideas publicly, without fear of being held to account for them.

Garra you have beaten me to the punch - I was going to discuss Getup also. As you say it is not strictly what Graham had in mind - however it will be interesting to watch and see if it does have any influence at all.

I can't imagine some of the insulting and offensive posts that have been directed towards myself and other moderates to this site being said to my face. While I wish that there was a way that the rabid element could be made accountable, this same element makes me value my own anonymity - many are clearly savage.

I also believe that because of these radicals many would be posters refrain from making a contribution as they do not want to be subjected to the abuse even though they are anonymous. For these reasons it is unlikely that the internet can be used as a safe, accurate and effective brokerage role. Entertaining and interesting - absolutely but serious political polling? I don't think so.

I agree with most of the comments about GetUp. If you really want to know what I think in detail I did a blog post on it at http://ambit-gambit.nationalforum.com.au/archives/000773.html. But I don't believe that this means the 'net can't be used for democracy.

We produced an alternative means of expressing an opinion collectively when we ran the online petition on Mandatory Detention, which is still up at http://onlineopinion.com.au/petitions/. No-one ever suggested this was spam, because we went out of our way to do it in a non-confrontational and helpful way.

And our polling questions always ask voting intention so we can say to politicians "No, these aren't your opponents saying this, these are your supporters," or maybe "Yes, you're right, they are your opponents." In a way we are subverting party control just by doing qualitative research and making it public. Members who care to read it will find out more about what is happening than their own parties will let them know from the internal research.

Sites like GetUp are confrontational, but that is because they are not trying to change politician's minds, but recruit a grass roots campaign. They're about campaigning, not pure democracy. They have their place, and we'd be happy to take articles and advertising from them.

The discussion on Altman's views on schools is very important (though I suspect it belongs to a different topic). But since it has been raised here, and because it serves as a classic case study of the larger political malaise, here is my view. Rainier is right - a radical range of reforms would need to be introduced into public schools before they could inspire public confidence. But we all know these reforms will not be introduced because the teacher unions and the department bureaucrats will never support them (allowing diverse educational philosophies in public schools, allowing parents and ngos to manage 'charter' schools in the public system according to their preferred educational 'charter', culling the dead wood amongst teachers and the ideologically-based curricula, etc).

But here's the rub - the Liberal Party will never introduce these reforms either, because their constituents already have their preferred (private) schools, and the 'Tory paternalism' in their Party is hostile to devolving power to the lower orders. Brendan Nelson is a case in point - all about paternalism and centralism, not about devolution of power to parents.

Which brings us to the point about the party malaise in our democracy, because when you have two parties who agree not to reform something (schools in this case) in defiance of the broader community, you have a dysfunctional democracy. Ditto in health, aged care, disability, indigenous affairs, family support, mental health, tertiary education, and the list goes on.

And at this point, innovation in the party system becomes necessary to break the cycle, otherwise it self-perpetuates, generation after generation.

Vern Hughes

Graham, thanks again for providing such a great forum and on the hands off approach you take to the content.

Your article is bothersome in that it highlights the pragmatic issue of the need to win elections. "The voter is always right regardless of what party policy says". Common approach I suspect but one which must contribute to the level of cynicism about the parties.

garra, and others I'm another who enjoys the anonomity of the site because it does provide a measure of retailiation form the extremists. Maybe more so because I comment on Family Law issues - tends to lead to a bit of paranoia. I try fairly hard not to abuse that anonomity and never use it as an excuse for abuse. You might want to look a bit wider at the groups who might be a threat to others. Much though I dislike much of the god botherer content of some postings on this site I doubt friend BOAZ is the type to turn up on your doorstep to bash you. The only thing he is likley to bash is your ears (with words), a cup of coffee could be painful but not physically brutal.

It might be worth remembering that it was left wingers bashing One Nation supporters attending political meetings not the other way around. The extreme right can be violent but they don't appear to have a monopoly on it in political debate.

Cheers
R0bert

Hey Robert, I didn't have BD in mind - he's about as threatening as tissue paper - but there are those whose comments are so snide as to be creepy - besides I mostly skim BD's posts anyway - too much with the bible bash. As for violence - both extremes (left and right) have exhibited much of it out in the real world.

But not so much on this forum - seems the right get more downright mean and nasty than the left here. I know you are more moderate Robert and don't include you in this.

On topic - the poll conducted by Graham was most excellent and a very good way to put forth an opinion and indeed there have been moves to release families from detention - Yey Graham! We made a contribution. What was very telling about that poll was the sheer dearth of those in favour of mandatory detention. The poll in no way reflected the numbers of far right extremists that hunt the moderate upon these forums. Shows how very deceptive the views on this forum can be.

Also that poll was based on real name/address etc. Maybe Graham is right and there is a way.

Really enjoying this particular thread.

TRINITY....... "I'm a watching you girl"..... now your on a LIST...
(the list of people to pray harder for:)

Whats this 'about as dangerous as a lettuce-leaf' huh ? grrrrr...

Seriously speaking. I'm glad you don't percieve me as dangerous in that way and I DO notice what you and Rob observe, (in some other posts) and THAT... is my worry also, and is the reason that I try to link my position to a sound interpretation of scripture, I know I'm on safe ground.

I used the illustration about how Hitler read where Jesus chased the 'merchants' out of the Temple. and interpreted it as "The Merchants were Jews, Jesus hated the Jews, lets kill them all".

But I don't ALways 'bash' with the old King James you know. (I shudder at the language, and prefer the NIV)

Sometimes we can only fight prejudice against us by showing what the reality in terms of our fundies IS..... and that often means a whack with a verse or 2 :)

The word IS more powerful than the bunch of 5s :)

We have to be caring for the likes of you and poor Garra.. you mob are heading towards the 'endangered species' category mate, ask our Deaconess Pammy Bone or Bishop Andrew Bolt :)

Yes.... I know.... nothing about topic here. But hey.. its FRIIIIIDAY.
cut a guy some slack.
Have a great weekend you and all.

Trinity, probably staying off topic however that wouldn't be a first for me. I suspect that the view about the level of viciousness might be influenced by our respective biases. I would have thought that some of those posting from the left can get rather vicious. I would find it hard to accept that the personal attacks come more from the right than the left. Thankfully most manage to move on from the nastiness at times and behave like adults.

Now an attempt to tie this back to an aspect of the topic ;)
Thankfully even amongst all of that those of who really want to engage in honest and friendly(ish) discussion can generally manage to do so. Therein lies one of the great strengths of this kind of forum. It is is giving those willing to understand and learn the opportunity to do so. It is helping us find a means to understand the other side of a debate. That is the strength of this e discussions. Can you imagine us lasting through some of the discussions we've had on this site over a cup of coffee.

R0bert

Garra “the cloak of anonymity affords them the opportunity to express the most objectionable ideas publicly, without fear of being held to account for them.”

The darn inconvenient thing about freedom of expression - we all get to say pretty much what we want, within reason. Democracy is a bitch like that – I suggest if you are not prepared to take it on the chin, like a grown up, you should avoid trying to dish it out.

Trinity “posts that have been directed towards myself and other moderates to this site being said to my face. “

– I am not sure if your aside was directed at me or not.

However, let me assure you, speaking for myself, I would not hesitate in saying whatever I post here to anyones face if such opportunity presented itself.

You may dislike what some of us have to say – as we often suffer supposed “moderate” asides too but like garra – you will simply have to get used to the idea of “freedom of speech” if you want to partake in a forum like this or accept the alternative and scurry away.

One of the best ever asides, of a less than complimentary nature, was the following

One politician to another

“Sir – may you die of the pox or the gallows”

Response

“Sir – such a choice depends on whether I embraced your mistress or your politics”.

That exchange, reportedly between The Earl of Sandwich and John Wilkes, occurred over 200 years ago - I guess some things are never going to change.