This last year has seen an enormous disruption in Australian politics with the collapse of one of the two pillars of our two party politics. I have posted over a dozen times to call for a change to our voting system to bring us in line with the true, successful and stable democracies that exist in Scandinavia and the Baltic.
Already we have no real opposition in South Australia, West Australia and our Federal parliament.
If we had proportional representation, this would never have happened.
Using proportional representation, a wide range of parties can emerge and expect to be represented in parliament in direct proportion to the votes of their supporters.
Only then is the ‘will of the people’ respected.
Currently we have a government with only 34% support at the last election yet they hold over 60% of the seats in parliament. Sadly the ‘energy’ created by the dissatisfaction with the governments performance is being wasted. Rather than rearranging the current offerings in our politics we need to fix the underlying problem with our voting system and adopt real democracy to get us out of this predicament. Then we can start to solve some of our seemingly intractable problems.
If we had proportional representation, then governments would form from a grouping of parties that gave a majority on the floor of parliament. This would immediately mean that the majority of voters felt ownership for the decisions of government. No wonder that the countries with this system show up highest on the happiness surveys. Feeling empowered goes a long way.
There is no point looking at the self- declared ‘beacons’ of democracy, the USA and Britain for inspiration. Both have shown that centuries old constitutions are not fit for purpose in the 21st century. What a mess they are in, and are we far behind?
The first step toward proportional representation would be for parliament to recognize the need for change, to show that we, as a society, want to be a real democracy.
This has not been possible in the past as the two party system has ruled through the old parties but now there is a mood for change and the old parties are nervous about their futures. A vote to change the electoral system would allow the Australian Electoral Commission to send a delegation to Scandinavia and the Baltic to learn how we could adapt a similar system to our electoral landscape. Such a transition would take time to ‘iron out’ any anomalies but in the meantime the development of new parties would enrich the broader debates on policies.
A very exciting time to be in, as opposed to the drab rehash of failed politics we have suffered for decades.