Shhhh. Democracy sleeping

But even the major parties have been in the reform game, albeit far less radically than SOL. The Greens have a strong empowerment agenda, and support the citizen assembly model (except for the issue of carbon pollution). The ALP, as we now well know, oppose citizen’s assemblies, except for issues that the Prime Minister has strong policy preferences on. The Liberals, too, have been talking up improvements to question time that they hope will increase democratic oversight. More importantly, under Kevin Rudd’s leadership the government initiated an inquiry into ‘‘government 2.0’’: the increased use of modern IT tools in government such as blogs, open access data, citizen applications, and increased online consultation.

Democratic practice is a moving feast, and if you don’t like how its evolved, then it is possible to add a little intelligent design into the mix like New Zealand’s complex but interesting mix of single-member, party-list and indigenous members of their national house.

What often isn’t well ventilated is the way that political parties in Australia work: both in terms of the basic processes by which they are funded (and who funds them) and the processes of collective (or top-down) decision making that goes on within them. While the call for more transparency of funding and relations with lobbyists are common, we need to unpack the very nature of party politics in this country: making party registration (and the considerable liberties and financial benefits the status of being a party brings in Australia) dependent on parties meeting a broader benchmark of transparent internal politics than they currently display. All parties are subject to the problem of elite inside rule, as recent email leaks from the Greens have shown. As organisations dependent on the public purse, their welfare dependence needs to be matched with the responsibilities to innovate democratically and demonstrate this to the wider community.

Some of the barriers to the participation in an electronically-facilitated democracy will be overcome by the development of the National Broadband Network (or the Coalition’s wireless alternative). But the introduction of electronic citizen juries, e-referenda, or online consultation systems needs more than the cursory attention it’s been given to date. NBN or no, we run the risk of exacerbating the distance between the insiders and those who sit on the margins.

The great advantage of our representative model of government lies exactly in the fact that we elect others to govern on our behalf: we don’t always have the time, intelligence or moral fibre to be on top of every issue. Any reform, therefore, needs to be compared to our current benchmark of democratic practice: the universality and simplicity of the upper and lower house vote. If we are to change politics, we’ll have to turn the gaze of electronic democracy directly on to those hearts of darkness: parties.