Excellent posts Sock, I entirely agree.

Our system of democracy (and by extension, the UK's Westminster system) is by far the system that still qualifies as a democracy on the flimsiest grounds.
We:
-Don't actually get to directly vote for our government, prime minister, or anyone (except Senators, to our credit).
-Have a voting system that virtually requires a party to form government at the expense of independents
-Can actually be barred from voting for parties by virtue of geography
-Have our votes support candidates we didn't actually vote for via preferencing, backroom deals
-Disqualify any vote that wasn't for the individual party that got the most votes.
-Are governed (with considerable power) by a government that not only does not actually have majority support, even if 70% of the voters did not even vote for them.
-Our highest office is appointed
-We have absolutely zero right to hold our politicians accountable except by trying to heckle their local electorate to think about everyone else once every 3 years.
-Have no CIR and are rarely consulted in referendums
-Have election dates decided by the party in power

Most other democracies actually do the opposite of many- if not almost all of each of these things (and seem to be getting a lot more done). Sadly we happen to be descended from the country whose entire history had consisted of being ruled under some of the most stratified systems in the world.

Personally, the Swiss system puts ours to shame.

Just one point on preferencing - We do not need to follow the party deal on preference it is our democratic choice to place numbers where we want to preference. We also can work the system we have.

Why have parties at all when there's little or no difference between the two majors – the only parties allowed to get control? It means a whole lot of people not represented in the actual running of their public affairs. The Labor Party claims as its difference to the Big Business party that it looks after the common mortals first and the wheeler-dealers second, even a close second (to avoid the socialist taint). When the global melt-down occurred due to the obscene misconduct of the deregulated banks, a group whose privileges rely on government license, not divine decree, PM Rudd promised to rein in the carpetbaggers and put some responsibility back into the system.

This weekend we learn that he's not going to do that at all. He's going to deregulate further to give the banks even greater license to go into feeding frenzies that wreck all our lives. Bravo Australia!
This is non-government – the sort you have in the jungle, where animals born lucky get to eat all those less endowed. Parties aren't about government. They're about unfair distribution of God's bounty to the clever and the devious and the greedy. It's about furthering a partisan cause at the expense of 'the enemy' amongst their fellow citizens – fellow Australians who share a common birthright. The greasy pole has always been the best measure of merit in Australia, especially if you're amongst those granted the right sort of gloves and spiked boots needed to make the climb effortlessly.

Parties are factionalised groups in a jungle, not democracy. Our 'Robin Hood folk heroes' only come out from under their logs when the game is up for them and it's too late to do any robbing of the rich to give to the poor. For decades I was a supporter of the Democrats largely because they weren't a party by the usual definition. Their constituency was everyone who votes. The demise of the Dems is the biggest blot on our political landscape in our miserable 200 year record of social hooliganism.

We reap what we sow.

Bravo Sock Ratteez!
I couldn't agree more. I'd only add, a la Squeers above, that democracy ultimately means rule by the dark human heart. Democracy ought to be answerable first to humanistic ethics, and "then" to the will of the people.

Mitch, you've opened a can of worms there mate. Nobody in a proletariat wants to hear that the scrubbers don't know Jack Schitt about nuthin' - even when it's true. Lenin realised what he was up against, and it more or less put the kybosh on Communism right from the outset. What followed wasn't what Marx prescribed. Thomas Jefferson had the same distressing epiphany in the newly created USA before him. The Nazarine had it as he stood before the poor distressed Pilate. Welcome to reality, boys!

The rabble doesn't have a clue what is needed, any more than a submarine crew has an idea what to do to in an undersea shoot-out to the death with another sub or destroyer. All they can hope for is a Captain who likes them and knows what they would hope he can do for them. We're all undersea mariners, and we all hope that we have a Captain on board who isn't a prick. The Navy has been told by Head Office (The White House and Congress) that what it does is IMPORTANT, so it has put in place measures to ensure that it has a reasonable chance of getting good Captains on subs, and other boats where so many lives depend on the quality of their decisions.

This is to be contrasted with politics, where the party disease has taken hold and choked all the hopes submariner/voters might have. The Americans have think-tank Colleges to determine finer points not appreciated by rabbles in an atmosphere of mob rule. We don't have them. But we need them, constituted not of people who can achieve party pre-selection but have an AO or similar recognition for services to their country. A board of such people would act as a hedge against bad captaincy of the type we've suffered for two centuries. (continued below)

(Continued from above)

The Navy ship analogy is not quaint or flippant. Very few in a democracy know what's at stake in the struggle to make their lives half tenable. We just haven't bothered to thrash out the additional things that need doing to get a better result than the swill we've been getting out of politics. Politicians are servants of the people. Parties have become all-powerful because there's no connection between the ordinary voter and the party.

We've lost control of our parliament, and politicians committed to party before their country will always vote to maintain that anomaly - as they've done so consistently for more than a century. The way things are, all you have to do is join a party, like Joe Tripodi did, and bully your way round long enough until you can call all the shots, no matter how empty you are of noble content or ethical intent. We're at a stage in history where we have to graduate to a new level, and we have monkeys in charge of the process. Good one, Australia

I personally believe that a mechanism could be initiated that discerns certain anti-democratic conduct by legislators as treason. I can't see it happening in the present climate. But I didn't expect the Soviet Union to collapse like a cardboard box either. We're making all the same old mistakes they made, and the clock is ticking.