SUMMARY

There are pressing reasons to seek changes to the way our governments are created and how they function. Among them, are that we have:

. extravagant and deceptive election campaigns inviting corruption through “donations”,

. a virtual oligarchy comprising the leadership of the two dominant political parties,

. messianic party leaders offering opportunistic, impracticable election promises,   

. passive, “echo-chamber” parliaments of professional, career politicians,

. avoidance of controversial issues and decisions and

. an electoral system that provides minimal representation of minority views.

Our 1901 Constitution, which defines the powers of the Commonwealth and the states, was created under the assumption that the Westminster tradition of government would prevail. Among other things, that valuable tradition reinforced the status of parliamentary government as an alternative to civil war in 18th century England. This paper argues for a modification of the remnants of the Westminster tradition through reform of the federal parliament, so that:

The national parliament would be elected from multi-member electorates by a simple and transparent voting system and it would, in turn, elect a composite government by proportional representation.

A familiar, but crucial, element of our political process is the ‘winner-takes-all’ discipline applied to the selection of our governments. Because it is used world-wide, it appears normal and inevitable to many. It does not have to be so. The most significant effect of this proposed reform would be to end the winner-takes-all discipline of selecting a government and with it, the motivation for most of the excesses listed above. To complement the inclusion of subsidiarity in the Constitution, the winner-takes-all tradition should be abandoned. In the past, when the major parties represented radically different political philosophies, it was reasonable to offer voters, one party or the other through a winner-takes-all choice.  Now, the two parties compete like rival corporations, on brand-names, which typically includes the name of the charismatic leader;  philosophy is so boring to the voters, it is hardly ever mentioned. The proposed changes may frighten some of the horses, but not all; and it is reversible.

ELECTION CAMPAIGNS

The concept that democratic elections should be about deciding how we are to be governed has been subsumed into a race to select a winner, a familiar idea in our political landscape. Because the winner of the election takes all and the loser gets nothing, the incentive to win elections invokes the fury of a civil war.  The temptation to win at any cost leads to extravagant and deceitful election campaigns, designed to distinguish two parties that are barely distinguishable except by their history. Further, about one year in three is an election year, when no one seriously expects rational action from the government, even by the relaxed standards of rationality that apply to politics in general.

Because voters are becoming better informed and increasingly sceptical, the parties have to continually refine their campaign strategies at each election. Usually this involves targeted advertising, particularly by the incumbent government, and the development of catchy slogans that voters can adopt as a rationalization for their vote. The cost of elections increases at each event and consequently the opportunity for corruption through financial backing is increased. Most of these costs arise from TV advertising aimed at the paradigm of an ill-informed twelve-year old, a surrogate for swinging voters in marginal electorates. These advertising messages are frequently interpreted as promises.

Without doubt, the underlying driver of election behaviour is the winner-takes-all convention that applies to the allocation of power in our parliaments. Other aspects of public affairs, for instance, the business world, have different rules. The same governments that enjoy the winner-tales-all rule in politics, forbid it in the world of business. Similarly, the laws relating to divorce and inheritance dictate a balance between winners and losers.

But politics is different because our parliamentary system of government is based directly on the 18th century English model that was, and still is, a preferred alternative to civil war. Like the outcome of a war, it has winners and losers and on election night, the tradition of victory and defeat is closely followed. In front of the television cameras, the leader of the defeated side is dragged from his tent [usually erected in a multi-star hotel] to concede defeat at the hand of a superior enemy. He and his dejected supporters then slink away, while the winner claims to be humbled by victory.

The conventional wisdom, actively reinforced by the politicians, is that the two sides of the game are  irreconcilable on everything except their emoluments. Therefore, they claim that all governments must be either pure tweedle-dum or pure tweedle-dee. The rationale behind this proposition has more to do with power-play by the party leadership than real life; both sides have to adopt similar tactics to confront the world.

One-sided government also tends to have a tendency towards the extreme, sometimes due to the prejudice of the leader, sometimes to “folie à deux” in the executive. In theory, the parliament is expected to correct this tendency, but that is not likely, when it is under tight control by the prime minister and his cohorts.

The net result is that we get governments that look to the short term, avoid unpalatable action, disregard promises in their election platforms, back donors that contribute to election expenses and then claim credit for any good luck that comes their way. There are rare exceptions.

Without doubt, a case could be made that elections are a stimulus to the economy; the 2007 federal election cost tax-payers $163 million, including public funding for candidates, while the major parties received “donations”  of $215 million from generous and charitable commercial organizations, $378 million in all.

Recent elections in Austria and Switzerland illustrate the effect of the winner-takes-all regime on election expenses and, therefore on the potential for financial supporters to influence political parties and governments in their favour.  In Austria, where the leader of the majority party forms the government and election campaigns are government-funded, the budget for the federal election in 2008 was €220 million, about $A 345 million.

In the 2007 Swiss federal elections, the total budget for campaigning was €20 million, roughly  $A 31 million. Of this total, the Swiss Peoples Party [SVP], backed by the very rich Christoph Blocher, spent about $A 17 million, and incidentally became the largest party in ‘le Parlement’. After a federal election, a joint sitting of the two houses of the Swiss parliament selects the Executive Council and the SVP thus gained an extra seat to achieve two seats out of seven. Austria and Switzerland are neighbouring countries with comparable populations, but Austrian federal elections cost roughly eleven times those of the Swiss. The major difference in governance is the method of selecting an executive government: allowing the majority party ‘winner-takes-all’ rights leads to much higher election costs and hence a greater propensity for corruption.

VIRTUAL OLIGARCHY

Australian politics operates as an oligarchy composed of the two major parties. One major party or the other is virtually guaranteed electoral victory by the system of single-member electorates for the crucial house of the parliament. Thus, it forms the government. There is little chance that one of the two parties will not be elected to every seat, because even with compulsory preferential voting, minority candidates cannot usually achieve more than half the votes in any one. Except for compulsion, most of the major democracies have similar arrangements. And they suffer a similar set of disadvantages on account of them. In Australia, the problem seems more acute, perhaps because of compulsory voting, which conceals the alienation felt by voters and probably exaggerates support for the major parties.

As recently as the 1970’s, the major parties had a basic philosophy and a large membership. In addition to supporting their party at election time, party members participated in developing policies and selecting candidates from their numbers to stand for election. Now, membership of the the major parties has contracted to insignificant numbers and the parties are controlled by self-perpetuating elites. Ordinary party members have virtually no say in framing the policies or electoral platforms of the parties, which are prepared by in-house professionals with occasional advice from interested outsiders. The outcome is that members of parliament are almost entirely restricted to people endorsed by the party leadership and are typically party officials or affiliates with little experience of the world, but who have shown a talent for winning elections; thus, by the common definition, we have an oligarchy. In the AFR Magazine for Feb 2010, on page 2, John Colvin CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors has warned of the dearth of business and agricultural experience among parliamentarians; the high concentration of party professionals leaves less scope for broad experience of any sort.

The traditional democracy, in which people felt they were represented by a member of parliament responsible to them, has been replaced by branded politics run by virtual corporations, though being virtual, they are not subject to the legislation that the parliament sees fit to apply to real corporations. Instead, they are secretive organizations with special privileges appropriate to oligarchy.

In the parliament, the discipline imposed on their career-oriented members is an important aspect of oligarchy. Advancement is not given to those who express unapproved opinions and these members, frustrated and ostracized, tend to seek other avenues of public service.

POTENTIAL NEED for a REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

If the Constitution were amended to include the subsidiarity principle, the Commonwealth would have a subsidiary power over all national issues. In this circumstance, selection of a national government by the simple parliamentary majority rule [i.e. winner-takes-all] would have the potential to create a crucial imbalance and potential abuse, of political power. Although it appears small, such a risk makes a better balanced form of parliament highly desirable.  And to provide balanced judgements and decisions, the federal parliament should be transformed into a representative and inclusive national parliament which elects an executive government by a proportional voting system.. The most prominent example of this form of governance is the Swiss Confederation, although there have been others from time to time. But it requires a level of political maturity that is not only rare, but also easily undermined and there must be some doubt as to whether the Australian people and particularly, the political establishment, possess the necessary maturity to allow such a system to work.

A parliament bold enough to adopt the reforms proposed here may eventually become brave enough to carry out its fundamental, but neglected role of monitoring the government’s performance and taking action when needed. A representative parliament and a power-sharing executive would also help to remove the motivation for the unwanted characteristics of our political scene that are listed above. However, it is probable that the prime minister who would willingly agree to this sort of reform is yet to be invented, or perhaps yet to be born.

Some who completely misunderstand the concept, will call this sort of executive a coalition, others a power-sharing government; but a more appropriate description is cooperative government, because it requires the groups or parties represented in the parliament to cooperate, to work together for the well-being of the Australian people, rather than for the good of the party. The conventional wisdom holds that politicians of different parties are mortal enemies; they like to give that impression for the supposed benefit of their supporters. In reality, most politicians are reasonable people committed to making a difference for the ‘better’; it is the precise nature of what is better that divides them into camps, sometimes artificially and rigidly.  Another way of looking at the concept of cooperative government is that it puts meaning into the label, “Commonwealth”. Corresponding reforms to state parliaments are also desirable, but their declining influence will probably be enough reform.

MESSIANIC LEADERSHIP and OpportuniSM

Among the other consequences of the winner-takes-all regime are theatrical election campaigns. For each election, the major parties are motivated to promote a messianic party leader to sweep the party to victory on the basis of an opportunistic election platform under the party brand-name. Under messianic leadership, there is an ever-present danger that the nation’s policies are beholden to the limited understanding or naked ignorance of the chosen leader.

Opportunism is manifest in their election platforms, which use slogans about topical issues to advertise their brand names in a quest for office. Recent experience suggests that the parties don’t try very hard to implement the promises contained in their platforms; one prime minister coined an apt description of them, ‘non-core promises’. The net outcome of this approach is that the elected prime minister is saddled with the task of fulfilling the unrealistic expectations generated by the election campaign. Some people are happy to believe they are electing a public benefactor; others, with a better understanding of the world, recognize the danger of entrusting government to a theatrical leader following a fictional script.

ECHO CHAMBERS  AND THE NEED TO  ACHIEVE BALANCE

Our national parliament suffers a virtual dictatorship under a dominant prime minister; the parliament tends to echo the views either of the prime minister or of the leader of the opposition, in solidarity with the leadership. This behaviour is justified by the aphorism ‘disunity is death’.

Outside the sphere of “Peoples” republics, few other democratic governments in the world are as centralized as that in Australia; nor are their representative assemblies as compliant to the government of the day as the Australian parliament. Consequently, the recommended expansion of the powers of the federal government to manage all issues of national significance may be questioned by a sceptical public, which has every right to be sceptical. The idea of trusting a government, elected under the existing rules, with greater power is likely to be rejected by at least, a significant minority of voters. Until recently, the states were widely regarded as providing desirable “checks and balances” to the potential excesses of federal governments, thus providing a powerful argument for retaining the status quo. In reality, the states’ power to counter the federal government is now very much diminished from its heyday, but the mythology lives on.

Should the proposal for a cooperative government be adopted, it is likely that parliament would attract a more independent, diverse and active membership, willing and able to evaluate the performance of the government objectively and constructively. In addition, a more diverse membership will provide a better basis for the parliament to select a competent executive that can govern the country rather than play politics with it. Now, the predominance of members are drawn from party employees or affiliates whose most prominent accomplishments are running political campaigns, rather than governing. At the same time, the number of politicians meddling in the day-to-day detail of government as ministers, parliamentary secretaries etc. has expanded to record numbers.

If the proposed reforms were adopted, the juvenile antics that comprise so much of parliamentary behaviour would be history, though their passing may be lamented by some in the press gallery.

AVOIDING CONTROVERSY

An important aspect of the winner-takes-all regime is that governments, fearful of losing office, are strongly motivated to avoid controversy. More often than not, our single-party governments are afraid to make rational and necessary decisions on controversial issues, because their actions can provide a basis for the other side to create popular outrage at the next election; two examples are ‘border protection’ , [Australia has a coastline, not a border and the nation is NOT threatened by an annual intake of a trainload of refugees arriving in boats] and the ‘war on drugs’ [an outcome of the most spectacularly unsuccessful and counter-productive brace of laws ever invented]. Prohibition of drugs has created enormous criminal empires that now rival the power of most sovereign countries and threaten others, while the production, sale and use of drugs proliferates.

The ineffective prohibition of these potentially lethal substances, leads to unnecessary risks to users due to the uncontrolled, variable formulation of the drugs for sale. In addition, the availability of reliable information on the pharmacology of drugs, on the capability of drug-takers [such as  Andrew Johns] to lead normal lives and other matters is severely restricted because of the threat of savage legal penalties. Due to panic and official revulsion at the mere mention of the word “drug”, mythology has replaced informed policy on the subject. Probably the most important aspect of prohibition laws is that the market prices of basically cheap substances, like heroin, are inflated to astronomical levels, which create profits for the drug traders that would embarrass American merchant bankers. Speaking of which, it is ironic that without the laundering of $US 312 billion of cash through the banking system by the ‘drug barons’ in 2008 and 2009, the global financial crisis would have been much worse and the bankers’ fortunes much less.

If the directors of a public company neglected to seek and assess vital information to the extent that the government does with respect to drugs, they could be prosecuted for negligence. Company boards take some trouble to gain accurate information on their affairs and they act cooperatively, because they know that the alternative spells ruin. We need our governments to do likewise.

MINORITY OPINION

It is our good fortune, that every three years, we get to chose the less-worse party leader to form a government. It is our misfortune that the choice makes little discernible difference. Although we have preferential voting in our single-member electorates and a distorted form of proportional voting for the Senate, one of the major parties will form the government. The two-party oligarchy is enabled by the single-member electorates for the crucial house of the parliament in which the majority party selects the government.  Whatever the outcome of the election, roughly half the voting public will not want to be governed by the winning half of the oligarchy.

Where we do have a form of proportional representation in Senate elections, 90% of voters reject it: they chose to vote for the computer program, based on back-room deals, that allots preferences from a single tick, rather than rank the seventy or more candidates in order of their perceived merit.  As the candidates are almost completely unknown to the voters, this behaviour is an entirely reasonable reaction to an entirely unreasonable expectation. The system of proportional voting used in the Australian Senate elections, while impeccably fair, is probably the worst in the democratic world.  Votes for minority groups that might threaten the oligarchy are virtually discounted in the computerized process of allocating surplus votes.

In this regimen, minority opinion can be ignored, but at the cost of unrelieved political tension. Because Australians are not prone to protest or agitate against the government of the day, the oligarchy appears to believe that minorities are merely annoying; to be eliminated rather than taken seriously. However, it can be argued that the increasing apathy or even antagonism toward political parties and their politicians stems largely from this neglect.

It is observed here that inclusion of minority groups in the parliament and the government is a much lesser evil than the shadowy presence of vested minority interests that intrude into government via the practice of ‘donations’ at election time and lobbyists in between.

CORRECTIVE ACTION

A central thesis of these draft specifications is that the executive government should be responsible through the parliament, to the people. As of now, 2010, people have to rely on the media to discipline the government. The media consists of a privately owned sector, the public broadcasters, the internet and sometimes, the government’s own publicity agents; by default, they all make valuable contributions to the process of government that, in a fully functioning democracy, would include continual active review of government by the parliament.

The single chamber parliament proposed in these specifications would include representation from a wider range of political opinion than is possible in the existing institution. It would be a radically different kettle of fish from a parliament consisting of the Queen, the House of Representatives and the Senate that is laid down in the 1901 constitution. However, amendment of the Constitution to include that proposal is, for the foreseeable future, a step too far. 

Parliament consists of the Queen’s representative, 76 Senators and 149 Members, 226 in all. As an interim measure it is proposed that the House of Representatives be recast as twenty nine multi-member electorates in the six states, five, six or seven per electorate, with each territory an electorate electing two members, as now. The Senate would continue to elect six Senators at each election [except for a double dissolution] and one for each Territory, making 38.  However, both houses would use a voluntary, proportional voting system, wherein each voter is asked, but not compelled, to select one or more House candidates and one or more Senate candidates from a list delivered by, and returned through, the postal service. At government expense, the election papers would also provide the candidates’ pleas for the voters’ support. No other tax-payer funds would be available to support candidates election campaigns.

Although there would be five candidates for most electorates, it would be necessary to construct a few odd-sized electorates electing more candidates, so that the state quotas can be fulfilled according to the Constitution and each member can represent a similar number of voters.

The point about all this cutting and pasting is to establish a parliament that represents a wider range of the political spectrum than is possible under the single-member electorates of the House or the ”tick-a-box” system applying in the Senate. It is a first step in creating a representative democratic government to replace the existing two-party oligarchy.

Assuming that the pressures arising from an expanding population in a stubbornly finite world, will give rise to intensely difficult future circumstances, such a parliament may be induced to demand that it should elect the executive government from their members by a proportional ballot, so that it could include the more talented individuals from all the major political groups. That is to say, a cooperative national government, rather than a partisan one. Under this circumstance, the size of the executive government could be reduced, because without the need to insult and ridicule the other party, ministers would be able to devote all their time to their duties, instead of some 25% to 30% of it.  Such a  regimen should also reduce the propensity for ministers to play politics with ‘their’ departments.

The remaining parliamentarians could then revisit their role as critics of the executive, rather than as its slaves or ritual opponents. Parliament could reinforce the over-stretched media in its unenviable task of reviewing the work of government, particularly by expanding the role of its committees to cover such neglected aspects as objectively investigating reports of unethical or immoral behaviour in government and its agencies.

If a pattern of collaborative or cooperative government were to be established and accepted, the claim that the States are needed to provide essential “checks and balances” to the concentration of power in Canberra begins to look a bit weak. Consequently, there will be much more support for denying the States their traditional baleful influence in upsetting the national agenda.

In due course, under this scenario, State parliaments may come to be seen as redundant, making the idea of a new constitution more attractive. Whether or not state parliaments would survive the sort of transition outlined here is probably not of major significance. The essential administrative machinery of the states would become available to regional authorities controlled by elected local governments. The most important outcome from empowering local government and creating a cooperative form of national government is that the essential tasks of government would be undertaken at the proper level with vastly increased efficiency.   

Under a voluntary, proportional voting system and a cooperative government proposed above for Australia, each major party would have roughly equal numbers of members and the executive government would reflect that. Therefore, an extra vote here or there, would be of no great significance, certainly not worth extravagant expenditure on election campaigns, even with other people’s money. Nor would it be necessary to fabricate propaganda to convince ignorant or disinterested voters, because they would likely not bother to vote. Therefore, the scope for manipulating government policies and actions through ‘donations’ to the parties’ election campaign funds would be much reduced.

In addition, related practices such as government propaganda and pork-barreling in marginal electorates would be less rewarding and consequently much diminished.  Cooperative governments along the lines proposed here would obviate the motivation for the parties to compose extravagant and deceptive elections platforms, with the subsequent need to deny them. Rather, candidates could simply promise to act in the interests of voters in their own particular way and seek election on the strength of their abilities.