Dear Opinionated2 & The alchemist, et al,

Modern representative democracy is still very much an evolving thing. No one person has sat down in the past and said "this is how it should be", there have simply been incremental changes over the centuries to many and various external influences.

eg William the Conqueror wins battle of Hastings in 1066 and starts ruling most of the island of Britain AND Normandy with his Norman mates. A few generations later in January 1215 a group of barons demanded a charter of liberties as a safeguard against the King's arbitrary behaviour. The barons took up arms against John and captured London in May 1215. John was forced to sign the Magna Carta.

In the 16th century, Henry VIII established himself as a Protestant ruler and Catholics were suppressed.

In the 17th century, Charles’ disdain for consulting parliament led to the English civil war, the defeat of Charles by the parliamentary forces, and the establishment of the Commonwealth under Cromwell.

After Cromwell’s death, England restored the monarchy under Charles II, but his successor James II tried to turn England back into a Catholic nation. It was in this period that the “parties” – or Whigs (anti-Catholic) & Tories (more Catholic-friendly) really began.

James' attempts to force Catholicism on England and regain prerogative doomed his reign. Parliament emerged supreme.

Meanwhile, the loose alliances of Whig & Tory continued to evolve throughout the 18th & 19th centuries. Sir Robert Walpole (1676 - 1745), first Earl of Orford, is considered to be Britain's first prime minister. The Whig alliance evolved into the Liberal Party of Britain and the Tories became the Conservative Party. These were the two main parties until the rise of Labour at the cost of the Liberals.

With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, there was pressure to have more say in politics from the new bourgeoisie. The first Reform Act of 1832 dramatically increased the franchise to all men who owned property worth £10 or more. This gave the vote to a whopping 7.5% of the population!

cont ....

I reckon go further...Abolish all religions and political parties in Australia.
Provide everyone who's interested with a computer and conduct everything by referendum on line.
That way the only thing left to discuss is of course sex, which computers are quite good at I believe.

Just a point. Being interested enough to want to participate in referenda and knowing anything about the various issues could be two different things. So we would need informed and impartial preambles. But who is invariably impartial enough to provide these preambles? And, as we all know, questions can be phrased to make the outcome more likely to be what the questioner wants.

So both the preambles and the form of the questions would need to be open to challenge. Some challenges could be justified, others frivolous. Some could be used merely as delaying tactics. And some challenges could be honestly made, but logically unsustainable because they come from a religious or philosophical faith based belief. But the people with such a viewpoint are entitled to be considered, aren't they, just as long as they aren't allowed to force their views on everyone else? [Which is an unacceptable part of the current system.]

And with this right to challenge, how long would it take for some referendum questions to ever be decided? I suppose we could consider how the Swiss do it.

As I was saying ...

1838 the London Working Men’s Club put forth the “Peoples Charter”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartism

They wanted 6 MAJOR reforms to the British parliament, viz:
i) universal suffrage
ii) every man can stand for parliament
iii) parliamentarians to be paid
iv) equal electoral boundaries
v) secret ballot
vi) annual general elections.

Note: AUSTRALIA was the first country to implement five of these (at the time, RADICAL) reforms! Secret ballot is still known as the Australian ballot in many parts of the world.

The Australian constitution did NOT mention the word “party” until AFTER a 1977 referendum. The 1975 sacking of Gough was possible because casual Senate vacancies were, by “convention”, filled by nominations from the same party by the state governments. NSW & Qld did NOT do this, which gave the Conservatives power to block Supply. After the 1977 referendum, a person of the same “party” MUST be nominated!

As for the war in Iraq, it could NOT have occurred if Bush, Blair, Howard, et al had to face the electorate each and every year!

No, I am NOT a “party hack”. The choices we have now are not always the best, but I certainly know that two-party democracy is far better and more accountable than multi-party (or "independent") shenanigans.

I cannot see why the grief over the idea of annual general elections? If you’re a shareholder in a company, it must hold an AGM. We are all equal shareholders in our respective nations, states and communities.

Making our political servants more accountable may even one day help make our private enterprise corporations more accountable!

Sorry Opinionated2, but legislatures full of independents is nothing more than pie-in-the-sky to me (although annual general elections would certainly connect them better to "the people" in their constituency!).

And no The alchemist, to me it ain’t a “failed system”, not by a long way!

You CANNOT "conduct everything by referendum on line". As Rex points out, someone needs to set the agenda/questions etc. I do support Citizen Initiated Referenda however.

In peace,
David (from Perth, Western Australia)

Yes thats food for thought...
you would need a team of academics to phrase the questions as many different ways possible then get a computer to randomly distribute them. I wonder why this is not done already with ballot papers, where if you score the number one position you get 20% of the vote (like Fred Nile) because most people realise it dosent matter a rodents posterior anyway when the choices are so ordinary.
I dunno if I'd quote Wikipedia on too much, its an interesting place to get peoples opinions on things much the same as this site. But I'm in total agreement that annual elections (of the non compulsory type) would be of great benefit to the vibe of the place. I can only dream of the day that Gretel Killeen announces "Its time to go..."
With kind regards from tropical north Queensland.

PW Thankyou for your history lesson I appreciated it.

I suppose I could say the same as what you say about my independents, about annual elections... I just can't believe our pollies would ever put that before the voting public to test it... as they wouldn't test my everyone's an independent proposition.

They are not about passing power back to us... that I know for sure.

That is why the citizens referenda will never get up.

I don't think people want to vote on everything online... but we certainly could increase the numbers of referenda using that as a system.

The point regarding referenda though under the system I outlined you would actually be voting for the bill if the parliamentarians couldn't make up their minds.

As I said earlier I haven't thought all bits of this through it was only a suggestion.