I agree with the thrust of this article and commend those who are trying to do something about it. Maybe I'll do something on the new site. But two things: the change has to start with ourselves, not with structures; and the change will be slow. I would support the intelligent use of the Internet, which allows us to communicate and form alliances in an unprecedented way.

"No votes for anyone. See what the boofheads make of that."

Leigh, I understand the sentiment, but if we all do that we'll be the same as Burma. What happens then is that, as nature abhors a vacuum, the strongest boofhead wins by force.

It's possibly better to vote strategically. In the House of Reps, I'm going to vote the majors at the bottom of the list with everyone else on the ticket above them. While one of the majors will eventually get my vote, at least it will come down to preferences. And I'm going to vote for the biggest minor party in the Senate.

If enough people did that, it would get the message across.

Congratulations to all involved in this initiative. How urgently it is needed. The present political auction (using our money) makes this all too crystal clear.

This nation deserves better.

While it's become the stock-in-trade of Australian politics for political leaders, once elected, to throw up their hands in horror, declare that they hadn't realised how bad things had gotten under their predecessor, and then disown large chunks their own electoral manifesto in the name of the "national interest" (read "their cronies"), this is doing tremendous harm to Australian democracy.

It engenders a corrosive political cynicism throughout the population, devalues the currency of public integrity, dumbs-down political discourse to the lowest common denominator, and makes the public media complicit in a wilful deception. The result is that we have a citizenry that has either given up on politics or accepts that's how the game is played, so doesn't demand anything better of the political class or the media. A very dangerous situation indeed for a democracy.

We seem to have forgotten that elections are more than periodic publicity stunts which cyclically allow one group of professional politicians to exchange positions with their opposite numbers. Democratic elections are also about about mutual political education - a time to challenge our collective taken-for-granted assumptions about the conduct of public policy, deconstruct opposing ideologies, and educate aspiring representatives on what the community values, expects and hopes for now and in the future.

How far is the present charade from this ideal!

A national Citizens' Parliament, randomly selected, could make a valuable contribution to revitalising our moribund democracy. We need a thoroughgoing and public review of the systemic flaws in our processes of national governance at all levels - flaws that the dominant political parties have manipulated and entrenched to their own advantage.

Such a citizens' Parliament would, in my view, need to be accompanied by community level discussions on the core values and purpose of our democracy. It is time to put the demos back into our democracy.

clearly i've been writing about the need for actual democracy in a foreign language.

but once again for the blow-ins:

democracy is a society ruled "by the people", as lincoln put it. in a modern nation state, it will have three features:

1. direct election of ministers
2. public conduct of public affairs
3. primacy of citizen initiated referendum

oz is not a democracy. worse, ozzians don't want democracy, because it's too hard for them. if they did want it, this is how:

1. organize a (would-be) citizen action group, to publicize their goals and get mass support for democracy.
2. notify all candidates that members of the group will only vote for persons who will enact legislation establishing the three elements of democracy.
3. if no candidate agrees to do this, withdraw legitimacy from parliament by refusing to vote, instead writing "democracy" on the ballot.

this program will bring democracy to oz in time, without violence. it just needs desire and patience from the oz electorate. big ask, huh.

A committee of selected "representatives"! Good grief! Imagine the politicising of that committee.

We have the Internet. The entire adult population can vote on issues. This has been said before. See

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6397

Ok I have a pretty different perspective on things.... Why the hell are we using democracy in the first place? What makes the views of the 51% better than those of the 49%? Or even the 99% over the 1%?

The very notion of democracy makes no sense whatsoever. People don't really end up voting for what policy they want for themselves, they're really voting for what should be imposed on other people. Not that voting ever changed anything of significance.

We're better than this system of coercive tyranny of the majority over the minority. I'd like to see the rights of the individual not being rode over roughshod. I'd like to see people apply about 3 seconds of rational thought to the idea of democracy and to realise that there is nothing about what the 51% want, that makes it the smarter policy.

If people actually stopped voting (or spoiled their ballots), then this would send a REAL signal, and it would delegitimize the current state of affairs. That's the way to send a real message. Those who wash regularly should not stoop to democracy.