Another idea - not sure if it would work but here goes:

Get rid of the Party system.

Vote for candidates in your electorate with a clear platform and ideals.

Government is formed from all candidates elected - why should your MP not have as much of a say just because they are in Opposition.

A leader, Ministry and other positions voted in by secret ballot by the elected MPs. Get rid of State Governments - why do we need so many tiers of government?

Health, education, child protection, law enforcement are all universal and relevant to each state and can be centralised. Local Councils would take up more uniquely local issues and current responsibilities.

It sounds a bit like governing by committee but it may be more representative than what we have now.

Obviously there are some problems with this such as what role would the Senate play and would there be enough scrutiny and review in the process of passing legislation?

What mechanisms would keep the Government honest or to account without an opposition as such?

Maybe I am barking up the wrong tree, but any ideas on what might work better than the system we have now, or is what we have got the best of what will always be an imperfect system given the wide range of people and opposing ideas

Peter Hume,
Sorry peter you misrepresented what I was saying in your post.
Sadly your current assertions are inductive rather than deductive, in that you have jumped to conclusions based on incomplete information. The larger the sample the greater confidence in the mean.
The smaller the sample the greater the probability for skewing away from the real mean. This was my point about 50+1% of a sample = 25% of the whole (The US example)for optional voting.

I agree with Pelican representatives represent their interests first, then the parties, maintaining power and their constituents' interests a poor 4th.

Peter, it could be argued, and I would, that the primary root causes to the unrepresentative issue is threefold.

- Firstly, *the party system and the priorities and compromises that engenders*. Get elected, the party's interests, gaining of and maintenance of power then the interests of the people.
- *The cost and nature of elections* All add to the indebtedness to specific *non voting* interest groups that may or may no be in the electorate's interests.
- The perverting power of *non voting* noisy or cashed up interest groups.

The interrelationship between the three as perverting factors is as obvious as it is complex.

IMHO I think the facts are clear it is now about if, what, when and how we address those issues.

Detailed ideas have peppered my posts ad infanitum.

Pelican asks:


"Where have the moderates all gone?
Why have we moved so far away from the
middle ground over the last 30 years?"


Yet, paradoxically, it is claimed the formula for political success in Australia, the ability to obtain an endorsement from the electorate to govern, depends upon the party of government or would-be government being perceived to appeal to the middle ground of the electorate in order to obtain the necessary majority of votes.

This formula is tacitly recognised in the claims, or observations, that there is increasingly little to distinguish the major parties from a policy standpoint.

Is it correct that despite the seeming dependence upon, and endorsement by, a middle ground majority of the electorate, the parties of government are consistently failing to adopt policies wanted by that middle ground majority of voters? Pelican's observation with respect to what have historically been public utilities, for instance, would seem to be a correct statement of majority community view. Are the expectations of the middle ground majority out of touch with what is realistically achievable by government?


Could it be that another factor may be at work to produce this discrepancy between public expectation and government performance?

It seems the significance of a little realized fact has gone almost completely unnoticed by the public at large, and by the commentariat in particular. The results of the last Federal elections, as shown on the Virtual Tally Room web pages at the end of counting in 2007, have been taken down and replaced by reworked pages. What might be the implications of that?

Could it have been that over the last thirty or so years there has been an influence other than that of the middle ground majority of the electorate at work in the ballot box, and that this influence has been tacitly or unconsciously responded to by the majority of representatives across the political spectrum to give policies unwanted by the majority of the electorate?

With the recent server problems on OLO, perhaps viewers did not notice the report of that take-down of election results.

It seems to me Forrest, that a fragmented and piecemeal system is to blame. The elections can only be won by a majority, so the parties say whatever they think will get them the most votes. When they get into power, they find that things are a lot different to the way they looked from the Opposition benches. For example, they realise that the ship of state has a lot of moving parts that need to be maintained for the system to carry on the way it has. The pollies then perhaps subconsciously change their approach partly because it's easier and partly to maintain what we already have.

Added to that, the ambitious in-the-moment politicians innately realise that they will only get credit for doing things that their peers think is important or cutting-edge and they then tailor their efforts to doing what is best for their careers. By the time such factors work their way through the system, you have a disconnect between what people voted for, or what they thought they were voting for, and what the pollies actually do.

I'd liken this funneling effect of the political process to a building that's on fire. Just because all the smoke is coming out of the one open window does not mean the fire is in the room the window's in.

Forrest
Yes, many people must vote on what party is throwing around the most money rather than what might be best for the country. Although there is very little said about ideology anymore and what a party stands for. Perhaps as Peter H said it is inevitable with development and affluence.

People do talk aobut potential governments needing to appeal to middle Australia. However, there are no clear platforms and a growing cynicism for politics ensures the strategy of vote buying and pork barrelling works. What does an electorate do if there is little choice?

We have come to expect much more from government over the years so much so that there are many hands wanting a piece of the pie. Unfortunately this means there is less money for what most taxpayers would consider essential services - a good quality health system, education, roads/transport/rail, law enforcement and so forth.

When there was talk of selling the Snowy Hydro the electorate made loud noises close to the NSW State election and the decision was shelved. At least in this case, for now, that promise was kept.

By all accounts, the public, do not want publicly owned utilities sold off yet sold off they are.

Forrest I am not sure what you mean by the election tally results - aren't these results a matter of public record?

Pelican I'm afraid your brilliant post will fall on deaf ears- you will even see jaw-dropping posts like "it's fine because Labor are better than the other Party (singular)"- most Australians are so drawn into two-party politics and media focus that the concept of actually looking at ALL your local candidates (eg more than two) is completely unthinkable.
Hell, the Greens is an obvious example- they're NOT a 'single issue party' as you pointed they would appear to be in public- they have dozens of basic policies and hundreds of pages of more details on their website- just like the Democrats, One Nation, and most independents- yet too many are too lazy to even spend a few minutes to actually type their name into google and CHECK- and are happy to take someone else's word for it.

And you will see that basic stereotypes still dominate the voting scene- eg that our parties are "center" or "center left" and "moderate"- yet nobody seems to acknowledge that both are overwhelmingly staffed with self-absorbed career pollies who clearly don't care about any issues they even bring up outside capitalizing on it- but are both happy to stomp on our rights to pander to religious minorities, sell public assets and bail out polluting industries before even DREAMING about actually doing anything about our pollution levels.

It's a mountain we'd have to climb over before anything changes.