Democracy & Responsibility

Many people don't "get" democracy. They think that it means that they personally get to decide how the country is run. These are the most disappointed & bitter people you will meet. Others think that democracy is where public opinion sets government policy. If that were the case, you could replace the parliament with a survey company, & it would still be cheaper. I think I've seen frightening Sci-Fi stories like that.

Democracy means that everyone has an equal say in which of several candidates represents them in the parliament - at the time of elections. Nothing more. Parliaments are not there to follow the will of the people. In fact, we have parliaments to make the decisions that the average person could not make & would not make if given the chance - the hard decisions. We often forget this when a new law is unpopular. The media might label a government as courageous if they make that hard choice & implement a policy that makes them unpopular, but that they believe is right in the long run. It takes courage, sometimes, to do what's right. That's why we should elect a particular government in the first place.

We should support governments that can & do make those hard decisions, rather than the weak ones who constantly bow to public opinion over matters that aren't "courageous". Public opinion itself is too often whipped up by a media frenzy when complex issues are over-simplified, or when the uneducated & loud (not mentioning any shock jock in particular) demand that people listen to his (never her) opinion. The alternative way to spur the slow-moving populace into action is by rallying the troops - whether that means unions, students, interest groups or communities. Painting a picture over an issue in a particular manner is a great way to garner support for your opinion. That doesn't make it worthy of the support of everyone else. It doesn't make it right.

It is the role of the government to take advice from experts - usually the public service, but often committees of specialists - & act accordingly for the good of the nation. By all means, they should keep an eye on the polls to see just how far from public sentiment the hard decisions are - & act accordingly by leading the public & educating them as to why the decision was right. For a government to simply turn turtle as soon as their popularity slides is worse than cowardice - it's turning their back on the responsibility given to them when they were elected by the democracy.

OK, It's My Fault

A friend recently complained about the outrageous cost of moving a phone number to a new residence. I sympathised, explaining that it's all to do with a lack of competition in the telecommunications infrastructure, & how this leads to inefficiencies, or at least a lack of interest in improving the service. I went on to describe how it is fundamentally a federal government issue, & how regulation is probably the only way out of the monopolistic mess we're in - that we need a fundamental philosophical shift to invest in (or encourage investment in) infrastructure differently.

He asked me how my grand plans for fixing the problem were received by the powers that be. I thought about it - I had, in fact, made a complaint to the ombudsman as a direct result of a particularly bad experience moving house. That, however, doesn't change policies. I hadn't offered my suggestion to Telstra directly, or complained to my local MP in the hope of it becoming government policy because ...

The more I thought about it, under the insistent gaze of my interlocutor, the more confused I got. How on earth did you get a good idea - not just a complaint - before the eyes of decision makers? In the case of MPs, they are supposed to represent their electorates, so why wouldn't they be a valid repository of voters' suggestions? I suspect that my MP's policies are more representative of his party's than his voters'.

You don't have to be too cynical to be of the opinion that sending a suggestion to the CEO of Telstra is probably less useful than having a quiet beer with an acquaintance whose happiness state makes him more likely to agree with you. That's why it's preferable to float such brilliant ideas in alcohol first.

So I have come to the conclusion that everything is my fault. I have solutions to many of the problems we face in day to day life, but I haven't bothered to express them to the appropriate powers that be. Line up & take a pot-shot at me the next time you move house & get slugged with a service charge for your phone, gas, or electricity. I'm also responsible for your mobile drop-outs, broadband data costs, the price of petrol & milk, late trains, the poor bus service, overhead power lines, roadworks, stray cats, & that weird smell down at the park.

Until I get around to telling the people in charge about all my great ideas, you're all going to have to put up with the problems.

The Inside Outside Dilemma

It's interesting to step back & watch a changing of the Government. It's not just the list of promises that will inevitably be broken - because the party that makes the biggest promises generally wins, by definition - but the rapid change in gears from being in Opposition to being in Government, being an outside observer pointing out mistakes to being the one supposedly with the hand on the tiller.

Some new Governments do it well. Some get lucky, so decimating their opposition that there is no-one left to effectively heckle. Some ... just have to grin sheepishly & make excuses as to why statements they made in opposition were based on insufficient information, or that they weren't aware "how bad things were" until they took the reins.

Worse, sometimes there has to be an about-face where politicking gets in the way of governing. Then we see a change from "our economy is stuffed - we will fix it!" to "hey, Mr Trading Partner, our economy is actually a great investment", or "we will force our neighbours to comply with our border protection plans!" to "hey, Mr Neighbour, we're in desperate need of your assistance because we can't actually do anything without you".

It's not naivety that makes an Opposition say stupid things. It is naivety that makes people believe them. That's the sad part. Oppositions will get away with outrageous lies as long as they can - that seems to be their sole purpose after being elected to parliament without being able to form the majority.

We often think that Governments lie because they break promises. The reality is that Governments rarely make promises they don't keep - they are in Government & are empowered to act. It's only Oppositions who can make outlandish claims without any need to back them up with evidence. They just need to make an emotional appeal through the media, who know full well what a good story looks like - & that really correlates with, or contains, the truth.

We - the voting public - are to blame for the quality of our Oppositions as much as for the Government. We elected them all at exactly the same moment.
Perhaps we should have a review of the voting system whereby people could mark off their choices with more than a tick - a truly preferential system, for example (number these for each candidate):

• I think this candidate would perform well as an effective member of the Government
• I think this candidate would bring the Government to task as a member of the Opposition
• I think this candidate is excellent entertainment, but should never be a member of a major party
• I think this candidate should be locked up
• I think this candidate is the least dangerous of the options before me

That would truly turn things inside out.

Skeptics in the House

Much to my wife's shock, I recently made the claim that the Liberal Party is the natural governing party for Australia - not just because we're right of centre politically - just a little bit conservative - but because, fundamentally, we are a nation of skeptics.

There's nothing wrong with those classic Strine responses to any statement (with optional rising inflection):

• "Ya reckon?"
• "Ya think?"
• "Ya don't say"
• "Are you f***ing kidding?"

These are obviously a direct result of a level of skepticism ingrained in the Australian psyche.
But sometimes, you just have to accept that you're talking to (or about) someone who knows more than you, is an actual (recognised) expert in their field, or simply is right.

There's a lot of talk these days about mandates - & I don't just mean in politics, where having the support of a third of the voting population is seen as clearly being able to speak for all. Popularity is not the seal of approval that you are right - only that people will listen to (or watch) you.

Is anyone really of the opinion that, say, Kim Kardashian should be politically active? I have no idea what her politics are, but I suspect that she could run for the Party Party Party Party & people would vote for her.
That doesn't give her a mandate. That doesn't even mean that people agree with her platform. It just means that, say, she's prettier than the alternative.

But I've gotten off track - & I would never suggest that our current PM is pretty. Australia would not vote for KK because she's not a skeptic.
Clive Palmer is a skeptic. Bob Katter is a skeptic. The Democrats were skeptics ("Keep the bastards honest!"). Pauline Hanson was a super-skeptic.

The Liberal party are also conservatively skeptic. Along the skeptic spectrum, a lot of the above were left-wing (radical) - even if they were right-wing from a political point of view. The Liberal Party is centre-right skeptically & politically.
I'm not talking about the actual Liberal Party here, but the theoretical one. Individuals within a party at any time may make it appear more skeptical or more radically skeptical.

Now, for the kicker. Why on earth are we such a nation of skeptics? Why can't we just admit that someone else could be right for once, or could be an expert?
It's not the English overseers that are the experts anymore, it's normal Australians who happen to be highly educated or experienced experts in a given field. They do not hold a position of privilege that has to be undermined simply because it's fun to do so.

If only we could embrace knowledge, wisdom, expertise. If only we could look up to people who have dedicated their lives to some facet of human endeavour who is willing to share that experience. I think that would make us the clever country we always wanted to be.

However, as long as the average Australian is a skeptic, they need fair representation in the parliament(s). Thus, regrettably, the Liberal Party is the natural government.

Class Struggle

An acquaintance of mine is a staunch supporter of the Labor Party because it is the party of the working class person. I almost laughed when he said that, because I have for some time seen it as an amalgam of unionism & socialism - an uneasy alliance. He, however, believes that, by definition, the Party is there to fight for the rights of the common worker, etc, & that the fight is far from over.

On the other side of the coin, the Liberal party is an uneasy alliance between the landed conservatives & the middle class greasy pole climbers.

This is where it gets interesting.

Those who support the Labor Party expect structure - bureaucracy - layers of society or administration, where they start at the bottom, & some lucky few can be hoisted to the heights of political recognition. This takes a party headquarters that works like a war office on the basis that unions are always heavily organised, & therefore the party structure has local & regional gatherings, etc, layer upon layer.
Labor party members believe in their structure. They believe that there needs to be structure. They believe in the public service because it's just another structure. They believe in a sizable government, because that's what it takes to run a country.

Those who support the Liberal Party don't like structure. They believe that it holds them (personally) back, oppresses them, stunts their growth as human beings, impinges on their freedom of expression. They believe that the party structure should be flat, & that government should be small.
As a consequence, they believe that they know better than any structure, because they are cleverer than the working class, & don't need structure to protect them from big bad business.

The independent thinking of a semi-educated middle class will always be its own downfall. Fundamentally, they don't know better, & they refuse to be taught.

I am reminded of C S Lewis' "Forbidden Planet" series, where one of the characters is writing for the newspapers. He only needs to write for papers that aim at the middle class. There's no point writing for the upper class, because they can't be told anything, & writing for the lower class won't be understood. The object was to write in such a way that the middle class was convinced that it was coming up with the ideas for itself, & then they would embrace the notion as their own.

This is the basis of shock-jocks, who are always right wing - they convince middle-class people of what they are thinking, encouraging a particular point of view (only), as if it was a ground-swell of awareness, rather than a version of broadcaster push-polling.

So, my acquaintance is correct - the Labor Party, in all its unionist bureaucracy is the party of the working class - the kind of party that workers can believe in, because it is the kind of structure that they need to believe in, producing the kind of government that they expect to make decisions for them.

Taxing Facts

Sometimes I think of myself as too conservative to be a socialist, or too left-wing to be liberal. Think of that what you will. My politics don't follow party lines, so I'm just being me.

I was thinking about taxes. I don't care how much I get taxed, because I see that as a part of society that I contribute to. I don't like the tax dollars being wasted, but can't see how it is. In fact, I suspect that the professionals in the public service do as good a job as they can.
Make of that what you will.

The fixed price for carbon, which became known as the Carbon Tax in Australia, was considered at first a step in the right direction for bringing down the production of carbon emissions by increasing the cost of producing said emissions.
In theory, this is a direct effect.
The reality is that the increased cost of producing the service that produced the emissions was passed directly on to the consumer, & the consumer was then compensated for the increase by the government that collected the revenue ... but there was no correlation between between the rise in one & the offset of the other.

Fundamentally, although the idea of taxing the polluters is a good one, it doesn't encourage anyone to do anything about it, but shifts the money around. I believe that there was an effect on carbon emissions, but this could be more about people looking for cheaper alternatives & lowering demand, rather than any polluter changing their ways.

To ensure that things really change, you need to encourage investment in, & therefore availability of, alternatives. You can also discourage investment in pollution.
The easiest way to do this is to change the way that people are taxed on the profits in carbon-emission-oriented industries.
That's radical. It's also time-consuming, because it requires an assessment at the polluters end to determine how profitable the carbon-emitting aspect of the business is, & therefore what tax should be applicable to the profit of the company.

This sounds too hard, but the theory goes that people (investors) will move away from those companies who aren't investing their energy into lower-emission alternatives.
Tax concessions in green energy (for example) companies' profits would redistribute that investment appropriately.

Rather than applying a tax to the primary producer, hitting the secondary investor would have less of an impact on the end user, & would seem to be less of an administrative nightmare because there are fewer people involved in the process overall.

The end user would simply see less availability of high-emission products, or else cheaper low-emission products. Do they need to care more than that?

Now you see my political dilemma - I'm fundamentally all for climate change awareness & taxation, but don't believe it's been done right so far.

Government - What's it good for?

Here's a fundamental question, especially in a country that has just gone through elections - what does the parliament do?
You can see that the title I used above is different. At first, that's what I was thinking - "government" - but then I realised very quickly that I didn't mean those that don't get elected. There are public servants, appointments, etc, who get on with the job they were expected to perform (to some degree) with interference only from those that we, the people, elect.

What has evolved as a parliament has a strange history from the two conflicting needs to counsel the monarch & to ensure that the monarch doesn't overstep the rights of the people. Here, of course, "the people" were those with property & money, with things at stake.
As soon as you have reviewing the monarch, you end up with a monarch who is always trying to test their limits, & thus parliament becomes a shaggy dog.
Essentially, we can't get rid of the one we've got. It's also grown since its inception to take over the roles of many other political functionaries.

Direct monarchy doesn't happen in Australia, & even the Vice-Regal has very fine teeth. Therefore, the parliament isn't counselling anyone - it seems to be a self-perpetuating process of navel gazing, that is, reviewing itself.
This is all well & good if it had well-defined functions on which to base its review. It seems to be there just "to rule".

Other things that happened to Australia is the true separation of Church & State, & a theoretically independent Judiciary.
The latter is not quite true, because the laws (the Queen's Law, in fact) come from the parliament.
The interpretation is left to judges, whose experience is relied on thereafter - unless the parliament decides to do something about them as individuals.

There is no Church. There are some left-overs from a once-Anglican dominance (we talk of parishes within an electoral boundary), but there are now so many churches that there seems no relationship between any one of them & a given parliament.
This, to me, means two things - there is no social cohesion on questions of morality & ethics (or even debate), & the parliament thinks that it should step into the gap (heaven forbid!).

I think gay marriage is a classic example here. Why does the parliament decide on the social representation of people's relationships?
Can a church not recognise & perform gay marriage within its separate articles? How can a parliament then say what marriages that church can perform (or will be "recognised")?
Australia is a special case where de facto relationships are already recognised by the parliament (& the government) as equivalent to marriage.
How can the parliament interfere with a church in that way?

If a bunch of ordinary people elected to create laws (or review them) is given the power to determine what a church can do - or the judiciary - then they have too much power, & surely we should have some kind of review on that process itself to ensure that the parliament doesn't overstep the rights of the people (not just those whose support got them there).

This seems to be going around in circles - meet the new boss: same as the old boss.