Direct Democracy in Australia.

Malcolm Turnbull has come out against a growing protest vote on the right, that he perceives as an attack on his rather sensible superannuation changes.

I broadly agree. You should not use your vote to “protest” a parties policies, by voting for another party that simply threatens them. This is a clear waste of your democratic rights.

However, if there is a policy that a minor party supports, that your regular major party doesn't even give time to, I believe that you can and should vote for the party that most represents your views. If the major party gets up anyway you have lost nothing. However the best case scenario is that you get a representative that makes your particular concern a public issue.

If you have views on the following policies (either way) the current parties will not acknowledge your view whether you vote for them or not;

• Strong secure encryption as a component of freedom of speech.
• Freedom of the press.
• Whistle-blower protections.
• Data Retention.
• Government transparency.
• Corporate transparency including taxation.
• Federal Government Corruption.
• Serious economic and taxation reform.
• Copyright.
• Internet Filtration.
• Our role in the US economic\trade hegemony.
• Our role in the US military hegemony.
• Our role in the UNHCR and with refugees.
• Marriage Equality.
• Ethics in Not For Profit Governance.

If you believe that the above issues are irrelevant and that your favoured party 100% represents your views, don’t bother reading on.

A lot of these issues rate highly in the community as important issues when they are polled. However the major parties (Greens included) do their best to solve the ice cream stand problem and they stand closer and closer together.

A lot of people tell me that people aren’t interested in these issues because generally people don’t vote very differently because of them. I do not believe this is true. People vote for the party that they believe most closely represents their values. At the moment, this has to be on a best effort basis. People who can find a party that 100% represents their views are a minority, as ABC’s vote compass often demonstrates. However, if parties only allow certain policies to come into the public debate, they never have to justify their positions on any other topics, especially where they agree. Liberals who vote Liberal for their economic record have no choice but to accept their positions in every other area. Labor supporters who vote Labor believing that the Labor party will protect their wage and entitlements do so having to accept all their other positions. No matter which party you vote for, you will get all the policies they agree on. The reality is that we currently let the political parties make a lot of important decisions in many areas, usually because they have a good record of management in a single area. I do not believe that this is sustainable, especially as the last 9 years have unmasked our political class as serially incompetent.

What this delivers is what futurist Charles Stross refers to as the ‘Beige Dictatorship’. Effectively, our democratic rights have been limited to the point where voting only influences the outcomes of the thin end of the wedge. Effectively, if both of the major parties continue a slow, steady march towards a dictatorship, even if we change governments every election we could not stop them. Just like a boiling frog, our human rights are slowly eroded on whatever justification is currently available to the government, at the moment this is Terrorism. The parliament is also slowly blockaded, the parties in power are very slowly pulling the ladder up behind them. The obvious end game is to make it very difficult for any new populist party to emerge and challenge them. The media has long since given up fighting these issues, and is now itself a victim. Without other parties to drag these serious issues back into the spotlight there is effectively no challenge. Then we have the voting populace, who are so used to the two party system being functional (something that I now believe is purely a historical truth and is not representative of the future of any two party system in Australia) that they refuse to accept that the only vote that increases their future political outcomes is any vote that diminishes the power of the duopoly.

The Westminster system was founded on a very simple idea. You vote for a person to represent your region in the core political body. This person promises to try and implement a set of policies that are broadly beneficial for your region. Fantastic. The issue we have is that this person these days is likely to put their party and ideology before the best interests of your region. For instance, the NBN is a massive shambles in Brisbane. Realistically any reputable candidate for Brisbane should form their own view regarding the rollout of the NBN in Brisbane. They should consult experts, and if they had they would understand that a large part of the issue in Brisbane is in the premises. We have lots of ageing copper that ideally should be removed. However, the Labor candidate doesn't even mention it as an issue on his website, and the party does not promise any specific technology on their website. Neither does the Liberal candidate but his team released flyers trying to conflate the speed of the rollout with the speed of the network. Neither of these views indicates an understanding of what is best for Brisbane. So how anybody can confuse these people with representatives of the Brisbane region is beyond me. Simply they are only there to echo their party’s policies, and do their best not to anger the people who put them there. Best case scenario they get 1 good photo opportunity unveiling something important to their region, but in the main they represent their party first, their campaign financiers second, their local branch third and their electors last. There are a lot of issues that lead to this outcome. And the causes aren’t unique to either party.

So who do you vote for when you don’t have access to representatives in a representative democracy?

The common misconception is that a single vote is worthless. It is only worthless to the major parties, and even then only if you are in a safe seat. I have had conversations with representatives of the smaller parties, and I have found them to have a lot of time for anyone with an open mind. But to get the most out of your vote, you might have to do a bit of work. You can very easily find a party that more closely supports your views, and support them with your time and energy. Don’t simply be a passive participant, get in there. We have a unique opportunity in the double dissolution, in that the senate will become quite the battlefield. Your favourite minor party has a very good shot at getting a senator in, and with the polls so close they will have influence.

We need a more representative system in Australia.

My most favoured resolution is Direct Democracy. Multi party (Three or more large parties) democracy scares a lot of people. There is a lot of very legitimate criticism regarding the efficacy and representation of multi party systems and despite my advocacy for them there is a better way. In the short term Australians need to be able to bind their representative to their views. If the majority of the burghers of Brisbane want fibre NBN, it is nothing short of Tyranny that their representative would vote against that wish, no matter which party’s candidate is elected. I invite debate on this point, when is it ever be acceptable for a representative to vote against the will of their electorate? Our system is critically flawed. When we have a referendum the bar for acceptance is that the majority of people in the majority of states votes yes, but in parliament we only need a majority of representatives in both houses, even when we know that these “representatives” owe much more to the members of their branch for selection and their party and contributors for funding. (Sam Dastyari even boasted about stacking his branch when he was in grade 11 on Kitchen Cabinet)

Because of a lack of a Bill of Rights in our constitution, the Executive Branch wields enormous power to limit our freedom

Eventually we should remove the representative entirely. Blockchain technologies are likely to present a very viable path to electronic voting with a credible public ledger that anyone can check. Surely Australia with its “innovation” and ‘growth” agenda can beat Ukraine to this? Many people are researching democratic applications of current blockchain innovation leader, Ethereum.

Another application for blockchain technology is voting. By casting votes as transactions, we can create a blockchain which keeps track of the tallies of the votes. This way, everyone can agree on the final count because they can count the votes themselves, and because of the blockchain audit trail, they can verify that no votes were changed or removed, and no illegitimate votes were added.

With the ability to securely vote from home on any policy that you wish, why pay people to do the job? A computer is not going to take a helicopter to a party fundraiser.

A very short list of issues that would have been resolved years ago with any form of Direct Democracy:

• Marriage Equality.
• NBN.
• NDIS.
• Whistleblower Protections.
• Freedom of Speech/Press.

And whats great, is that people are generally supportive of education reform, and an educated populace makes better decisions.

Direct Democracy is a modern update to the core principles of the Democracy. Westminster, founded on regional representation, has been hijacked and no longer serves the populace.

But how could we possibly change things?

As I outlined above, do everything you can for the parties you support. If your party supports at a minimum a Federal ICAC, this will go a long way towards reducing the power of the major parties. Both majors owe the populace serious answers for their behaviour. There are big questions over the way the Liberal Party accepted donations under Tony Abbot, and their relationship with organised crime. There are serious allegations around Bill Shorten and the way he acted as a union leader, and the Labor party relationship with the union movement in general.

Once the parties are dragged out into the light, and have the senate set up as an effective filter, we can begin to demand as a populace that we get the representative part of the representative democracy. Australia is in no way required to be the way it is, and with a not insignificant amount of effort it can be turned from its current direction.

And if you can, boost the signal. Let everyone know that there is a better way, and we need to effect change while our system still allows change.