From parliament to the people

There are some issues which should now move away from parliament and over to the people.

In every country there is frustration with the performance of government. From time to time in this country this frustration is reflected in serious questioning of the worth of the middle tier of state government.

Regardless of the absurdity of dismantling a structure which cost countless dollars to put together and the ignoring of the natural law that bureaucracy always expands no matter what the restructuring, there is no reason why our present three-tiered structure should not be made to work in a way that does not frustrate us.

Failing in a fundamental way

• In a parliamentary sitting, two combative teams glare at each other from opposite sides of a room. Rather than maximising the information and then workshopping what was on the parliamentary table, there is, almost continuous, point-scoring. The objective seems to be not to arrive at the best option for the people but to gain a win for the left or the right team.
   
• Representation as it was originally conceived is becoming increasingly meaningless as the cost of campaigning increases. To be a candidate for one of the two major parties is to receive substantial campaign funding. The trade-off is that the successful candidate must be absorbed into his or her party and away from his or her constituents.
   
• There is intense competition for seats because to serve two or more terms is highly financially rewarding. A casualty of intense competition is often integrity. Every person who approaches a ballot box has been subjected to manipulation by the political parties. Some of the political sales-pitch is deliberately misleading - but most is wishful thinking dressed-up to sound credible.
   
• The personal beliefs of those in power can greatly distort the democratic process. One example was the overruling (through a private members bill) at federal level of the wishes of the people of the Northern Territory that they have legal voluntary euthanasia.
   
• The political party in government can simply dip into public money to promote itself. For example: last month all households received, in an expensive magazine format, advice on addictive drugs. It was information that young people and parents had heard over and over again. It was a message delivered by a fatherly prime minister in the run-up to an election - and it was completely unnecessary.

We should not passively accept the above. We should not allow both government and opposition to continue to be self-absorbed in their own importance. We can start with calling the proposed Plebiscites Bill for what it is - which is sheer arrogance emerging from the house on the hill.

The bill as proposed by the Howard Government is designed to maintain the power of parliament. It will still leave the man-in-the-street without any say in the direction this country is heading. Only community groups dominated by sectional interests will be recognised as being fit to submit an opinion. And then there will be no obligation for parliament to act on that opinion.

It’s time to demand limited but genuine direct democracy

The first parliament was made up of men with substantial property who believed that they, and not just the monarch, had a right to determine the future of the country. Then the masses were permitted to have in parliament men who need not be wealthy to speak for them. Then the door opened for female representatives.

That is the structure we have now. It conveniently ignores the facts that the population generally has been educated to well above the general standard of the year 1901 and we now have digital technology. It is intellectually and technically possible for the people to vote competently and frequently on specific issues.

We can have voting machines similar to ATMs. The voter inserts his or her electoral card, keys in a PIN and then presses the Yes or the No button for the issue appearing on the screen. The voting machines could be set up in traveling vans. Once the system was up and going, issues could be put to the people at frequent intervals.

Let us look at a hypothetical case.

If a sitting member is demoted from the front bench, he or she can resign in a huff leaving his or her electorate with an inconvenient and expensive by-election. Why that seat cannot be automatically filled by the candidate at the last election who gained the second highest votes is beyond the understanding of most of us. However, there must be some logic in it somewhere.

For example, it has been decided by government to put to a general vote the issue that there be no more by-elections. Following the announcement, there would need to be a ban placed on any media coverage of that issue. This ban will have to be effective enough to negate the politicians’ traditional mob-rule argument.

The period of the ban would be several weeks long. (We already have media blackouts, but only for a matter of hours.) The ban would include letters to the editor of major newspapers and letter-box drops (as these can be organised to be on a very large scale). There would need to be huge penalties for defying the ban. Exempt from the ban would be the promotion of a point of view to an audience in a building (for example, church or hall).

Meanwhile, the authorised Yes and No camps would prepare their arguments and before the ban period expired, they would exchange their arguments to be scrutinised by the other side for their factual content. At the end of the ban period, the mutually acceptable Yes and No arguments would appear side by side in all major newspapers.

Following the people’s decision, there would be no point in having any further discussion as the case has been closed by order of the people and cannot be reopened for a set period of time (maybe 10 years).

This process of “closing the case by order of the people” can be of benefit in emotional issues such as legal abortion, legal euthanasia, therapeutic cloning, punishment of pedophiles and so on. It would put an end to the never-ending ravings on blogs and talk-back radio.

However, compulsory voting would be a sticking point. When voting is compulsory, the vote of a keen political watcher can be exactly nullified by the vote of someone who cannot remember who he voted for. When voting is compulsory, many cast invalid votes and many cast valid votes for people they do not wish to vote for.

As the purpose of the reform would be to relieve the frustration of having no input into the direction the country was heading, only the genuinely frustrated will wish to vote - and when they did, it would be done properly.

Summary

There is a general feeling of impotence among voters, whether they are poor or rich, educated or uneducated. Utilising digital technology, we could have frequent voting on specific issues within the scope of the average person’s understanding. And, we would need non-compulsory voting to enable this to be achieved effectively.

This innovation would be just a penetration of the barrier. From then on the real target would be the parliamentary culture. It may take several years to achieve any real change, but it is time to get moving towards that goal.