Renewing democracy

There is no reason to believe the same observations do not apply to Australian MPs.

I believe it is time to reign in the exponential growth of corporate donations. The retention of public funding of elections should be accompanied by measures to limit the size of individual private donations to $1500, or thereabouts, and to proscribe any donations from corporations and large organisations. An extension of free-to-air radio and television could accompany these changes.

Negative Advertising

There are other reasons to scale down paid political advertising, particularly given the increasing tendency of Australian parties to emulate the negative tactics of our American cousins. As many have suggested, such advertising is one of the corrosive influences in our political system.

To paraphrase an analogy:

Politicians shouldn’t be surprised when their negative campaigns succeed, not only in diminishing their opponents, but also in undermining confidence in all politicians. Tony Abbott’s "don’t trust politicians to elect the President" campaign was a case in point. I think we should be greatly concerned that negative campaign advertising will increase voters' cynicism about the electoral process and be taken by some voters as "a signal of the dysfunctional and unresponsive nature of the political process itself," causing them to lose interest in how they vote.

Mirror or descriptive representation

Part of the growing sense of disenfranchisement about politics among Australians may lie in the obvious differences between party members and MPs and the wider community.

Candidates, in aggregate, are not even remotely typical of the wider society, even using crude indicators such as: age, gender, income and occupation. For example, one in three of the House of Representatives Liberal members trained as lawyers (22/64 and women are under-represented in both major parties. Voters need to feel that their representatives can understand their circumstances and have sufficient identity with them to press their interests. The greater the distance of representatives from electors, the greater the mistrust.

This failure in representation begins with the political parties themselves. None of the parties in the Australian political system is a mass party with a substantial membership base. Nor are their members typical. In general, factions within the parties control the branches and manoeuvre for control of seats or regions which then become their fiefdoms – new members which they do not control are a threat. Candidates for safe and winnable seats are then chosen from within the group, which controls the area; serious contests are rare, although factions sometimes test their support in full-scale combat.

There is no question that the parties themselves have contributed to the view that they are in the thrall of special interest groups. As I have observed elsewhere, the principle of "one vote, one value" – the prime condition for a democracy – is not observed in my party’s rules. Not only does this rob us of the active commitment and participation of union members, it also disenfranchises ordinary branch members who are active in their own right. It means they can be overwhelmed by solid blocks of disciplined votes. They often resent this.

I believe it’s time for the ALP to insist on one form of membership – that of individuals who take responsibility for their own membership, including paying for it. As a first step, only individuals should be permitted to sign up as members and everyone’s vote should have the same value.