Here is an idea I heard a while ago.


Have a non party political system.  Everyone is an independant.
Every decision made by the government must be unanimous.

Other people here would have heard of the same idea.

Any comments ?

Independents would more or less divide along the current lines and you will have made no difference. Then there is the other issue of the ministry, although that can easily be voted on by the houses.

Don't get me wrong, ideally I agree with you... but human nature tends to screw with idealistic scenarios

I would just like for the current party discipline to break down a little, and politicians adopt a more open attitude towards voting independently on local issues with local constituents in mind, like Barnaby does. The Liberal party I believe is way ahead of Labor in this regard in that they allow floor crossing, as far as I'm aware if you cross the floor in the Labor party you are out of the party (but I could be wrong).

Hi JJJ , Zoso and Stu,

These are just my guesses, I am making it up as I go !!! (always the best fun)

JJJ - The PM would be just a spokesperson to represent the Govt.  He would not be a "leader, as such.


Zoso - interesting. Yes, human nature is the .... crucial point. From what little i know, I like the sound of Barnaby.

Stu - All things start with a dream

Stu wrote on Mar 30^th, 2007 at 6:20pm:


Only you can answer that, Stu.   

Quote:


Yes. I don't understand your point, or are you just agreeing with me? 

Quote:


That was intended to mean:

Government of independents = non-partisan --> direct democracy

One step away is a point of comparison, that direct democracy is only one step from non-partisan government (i.e. Shirley lives around the corner, she is only one step away from me). You are interpreting this literally (i.e. Shirley smells, I am taking one step away from her, where the air is more fresh).

What I should have said is "what you are proposing is a form of non-partisan democracy, which is one step from direct democracy".

what would happen to all those generational labor and liberal voters, they wouldnt know what to do...

we dont want to confuse anyone

There is no point having a government that requires absolute unanimity because it will always default to the lowest common denominator - which everybody already agrees on beforehand. There's no meaningful decision to be made there. Who needs a law that everyone already obeys instinctively?

Government is about resolving contentious differences peacefully and expediently - it requires compromise, and also needs a mechanism which can break deadlocks when necessary. A majority vote of some kind seems the only practical way of doing this to me.

Rousseau, I think, suggested that unanimity was inevitable when the "General Will" was accurately determined, and also suggested that any kind of factionalism was a sign of a failure of the democratic process. The only sense I've been able to make of this is to recognize a distinction between the acceptance of the process (ie. there has to be unanimous acceptance of the legitimacy of the parliament and therefore it's decision), as opposed to an expectation that the process itself would be determined by a unanimous vote. Rousseau emphasized the distinction between the "General Will" (acceptance of process) and the "Will of All" (sum of individual wills). I suspect that when you have a functioning direct democracy this distinction might disappear, which I think was Rousseau's assumption, and it might be a source of confusion if we are talking about representative systems.

Political parties are simply a regulated form of political association. Freedom of association is a basic democratic right.