For about 2 years now I’ve been mulling about writing a book on how undervalued the Australian voter is.
Odds on I’ll never get around to actually writing the book, so I thought I’d share with you the cliff notes. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the value of the Australian voter too if you’d like to comment.
My general hypothesis is this: there is far too many aspects of the Australian electoral and political system that are stacked against the voter. Far too many factors that put party ahead of constituency, Government ahead of people. Systemic ways that strip the voter of their democratic value.
Some may think that is the way it is supposed to be. Ok, even if I were to accept that, which I never will, do we perhaps need to define the value of the voter so that value may not be eroded?
Can we possibly even agree that every little move to take value away from the vote, no matter how small, all contribute to destroying the fabric of our democracy by way of a thousand cuts? And agree that isn’t optimal?
Or can we at least make the case that in order for our nation to grow and prosper as a democracy then all reforms in the system should be towards empowering, not dis-empowering, the voter?
So far I’ve identified 12 areas in which I feel the Australian voter is devalued. As that is a fairly sizeable chunk of stuff to read, I’ve split it up in to 12 posts. (I’ll link as each one is finished.)
Part 1 – called elections and long set terms
Part 5 – unprofessional campaigning
Part 7 – lack of issue campaigning
Part 9 – the challenge of anonymous speech
Part 11 – stupid voters (not)
Part 12 – top down
Many of you will disagree with these thoughts. A couple of you may agree. Hopefully you will all agree that the role of the voter in the Australian system is at best poorly defined and at worst progressively being devalued. Whether we need to fix that or not is completely open for debate.
Begin Rant: 