longweekend58 wrote on Sep 2
nd, 2013 at 7:45pm:
it is also predicated on a populace who are politically engaged. without that, DD becomes nothing more than a vehicle for minorities to rule over the majority.
Australia has a very disengaged electorate. other than the few that hang out in places like this, very few care an iota between elections. I don't want a system were the 4% that vote routinely override the wishes of the majority who don't want to. Australia is nowhere near ready for such a system and I find it curious that most supporters of DD do so because they know it gives and energised minority more power than warranted.
I agree that at the moment people are not politically engaged but that’s because of the current system. People know that in reality their vote counts for nothing. Tick a few boxes on a sheet every 3 years after a campaign that devotes very little to proper policy discussion and more with adversarial maneuvering, negativity and name calling. No wonder we’re not engaged. They don’t want to engage us. And if you look at the way the current system waters down out vote what’s the point (as if being 1 vote in 12 million isn’t bad enough). During the election campaign many promises are made but there is no real obligation to honour any of them (we know that). I vote for my current member who says he will fight for this or fight for that but when he gets into Parliament he’s told what to vote by the party, decided by unelected people behind closed doors. I vote in a blue ribbon seat so if I vote for the non sitting member my vote effectively counts for nothing. If I vote for the sitting member it also feels like my vote counts for nothing. And how many marginal seats are out there where you feel like you can make a difference. Very, very few in the scheme of thing. I really like Liberals Policy A but I don’t like policy X, Y and Z. Well if I really like Policy A I have to also vote for policy X, Y and Z and then put up with the liberals telling everyone they have a mandate for policy Y. I don’t want my vote to go to either Labor or Liberal. But voting is mandatory and if I want to cast a valid vote (in federal elections), I must ultimately give my vote to either labor or liberal.
We are unengaged because the system gives us no meaningful way in which to participate. But in Direct democracy we actually make the decisions for ourselves. Sure I accept that it will take some time at first to get people involved but ultimately when people realize that they are actually participating in the decision making for the community you will get significant turn out (not as much as mandatory voting but enough people.). You might remember stories of politics in the USA in the mid 1800s when politicians would debate each other for hours before huge audiences who would sit and just listen for 6 , 8 hours at a time. At a time, I would suggest, when people felt that they were actually contributing something (not now unfortunately, we’re much wiser now).
This figure you pulled out of the hat of 4% who will vote routinely, is just that; a figure you pulled out of a hat. And to pretend that we are not ruled by a minority already is absurd. Just before the Iraq war the world turned out in the biggest mass demonstration in human history. It made no difference, we went to war anyway. Someone else decided. The war in Afghanistan is never discussed and both parties agree we should be there. Bob Carr had a blog screaming that we should get out of Afghanistan and a day or 2 after he was appointed to Parliament and made foreign Minister he said he changed his mind. From the 1990s onwards western democracies embarked on a mass sell off of Government instrumentalities with hardly any discussion and what was interesting was that it was done at about the same time in all these countires. Also during this time western democracies began in unison to dismantle the regulatory systems that have protected us from corporate excess since the Great depression and the result was the GFC. We have essentially one discussion in this country and the argument is generally focused on minutiae at the edges but the main direction we are heading is never under any discussion because its already decided and agreed to by the people who pull the strings of the 2 parties. When I was a kid they had a very similar situation in Soviet Russia. People used to laugh that they called themselves democratic because you had to vote for the communist party, even though there were a number of candidates arguing about minutiae at the edges.
There is always someone who says “But we're not ready for this". I suggest you either join in and influence how the DD is shaped or move aside because its coming whether you like it or not.
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