A New Political System, Time For Change

For those who dont know, Australia had an election over 2 weeks ago, & ever since, 3 men, so called Independants, had been holding the nation to ransom, trying to get as much out of their moment in the spotlight as they can. It has got to the point a majority of us want a new election, & these 3 fools have pushed the nation too far with their game playing. After 17 days, a decision was made, it just took too long. So is there a solution to ensure this absurd situation never happens again ? Heres an idea, I dont know if it can work for other nations, but it would work here.

We have 150 seats in which candidates can run for. A political party needs a majority of 76 seats to win government. Going through the election results I have noticed that there are a considerable number of seats that have been claimed by a candidate who did not get the most votes personally, but had to rely on some other candidate/s to give them their votes via the 'preference' system. This is the first thing we need to scrap, NO preferences.

If a no name candidate has just 1 vote more than someone from one of the major parties, the 'no name' wins the seat, no preferences, the locals have spoken as to who represents their needs the best. Whoever has won the trust of the majority of their electorate, ie the most votes, even if it is just 1 vote, then I think that is a fair assumption that a majority of those voters want that person to represent them in parliament. Therefore, that person should win the seat & not lose it because someone else managed to convince enough of the other candidates to give them their votes.

If I vote for candidate A, I do not expect, let alone want, my vote to go to candidate B. My vote goes to whoever I put a 1 next to, nobody else, & party leaders should not get to decide where my vote goes to. This has been a big problem this past election thanks to people being under the impression a vote for 'The Greens' is a vote against the 2 big parties, when in fact, after preferences, a vote for Green was a vote for Labor, causing this deadlock.

We now have 150 seats where the 150 candidates with the most votes actually gets to represent the people who voted for them. End of story, no more backdoor deals.

This has the potential to leave (as the last election did) no major party having the required 76 seat majority to lead the nation. I dont see this as a problem, if we have 150 independant minds not restrained by party policy, free to vote how they want in parliament, then are we not getting the debate & variety of ideas we need in parliament ? Lets take Penny Wong for example. She is a lesbian, she is Labor, Labor is against gay marriage & therefore she is FORCED by party policy to vote against her own lifestyle. She awkwardly admitted this was the situation on live TV. That is not fair on her & others.

So we now have the 150 representatives that the majority of people in their electorates actually voted for. Nice, next is the issue of the Speaker of the House. The only good thing (that we the people know about) to come from all this blackmailing the 3 independants have been doing these past few weeks is that the Speaker must be an independant. Cant agree more, the past few years with a Labor Speaker has been a farce, with non-labor representatives shot down & shut up by the biased Speaker. He was pathetic & parliament was out of control.

The Speaker of the House should be elected to the seat by the 150 elected representatives WE voted for, they should be an independant, & their position should be performance based. If they cant control the house, then theres a new Speaker voted in. Another option is for the Speaker to be chosen from the judicial system, a high court judge for example, voted into the position with a majority of the 150 votes. If there are 3 people in the running, one gets 50,one gets 49, the other person with 51 votes is the Speaker. No need for 76 votes.

Finally is the hardest, the Prime Minister. The major partys have a leader & deputy. If their party wins the majority of seats (with these preferences) then their leader becomes the PM. As we saw a few months ago, the person WE vote for as PM is not always the person their party wants as leader, & labor & union thugs backstabbed & kicked out our last ELECTED PM while still in office, making his deputy the new, UNelected PM. Not good enough & not what we wanted.

One solution (of many Im sure) is for the political party's to put forward a number of candidates for PM. The number of candidates to be put forward should be determined by the number of the 150 seats that party is running for, eg if you are running for 50-75 seats (33-50% of the electorates) you are required to put up 2 nominees, greater than 75 seats, 3 nominees, less than 50 seats, a single nominee. On election day, we receive 3 small ballot papers (1 extra to now). One is for the senate, one is for your local electorate (ie the person you want to be in one of the 150 seats), and the final one is for the position of PM.

So how would that work ? Simple, each of the nominees for PM will be on the ballot paper, you tick one box only. Each of those ticks goes to that one nominee & them alone, no preferences, no 3 weeks of backdoor deals. The nominee with the majority of the vote from all of Australia is the PM. That means, eg, a Green could be voted by the nation as the PM, but as is likely, the Greens will not hold anywhere near the majority of seats.

How is this better ? Debate, rather than 3 years of argument & counter argument against the opposing partys policy just for the sake of disagreeing with the opposition, the government will be forced to debate & agree on issues for the good of the entire nation, not any one partys policy agenda. No one person can have an agenda & impose it on parts of the nation that need something different.

The major partys wont like this, but do we care ? There are 150 of them & over 22M of us left. They are there to serve us, not us them. If they want their job, this may make them actually do it properly & productively for once, & will hold partys accountable for their election promises.

to be continued;

continued.

I admit, there are no doubt problems with this that would need to be sorted out, that can easily be done via debate & most likely, even if all agree, would not be implemented before our next election (which is looking much closer now), however, as one comedian said the other night to these 3 independants that have been holding us all to ransom for so long, "Make up your bloody minds, WE all did 2 weeks ago !" This farce cannot be repeated.

While the intentions of these 3 may have been good, they were, without doubt, trying to squeeze as much out of the 2 major parties as they could for their small electorates, not for the national interest like they claimed.

Admittedly the likely PM would be from one of the 2 major partys, but that would happen without change to the system anyhow. Look how badly the "Vote Green for change" theory went. They got 1 seat.

I dont know what people will think of this idea, but it is a viable option to the humiliating, let alone frustrating system we have now. The fact a majority of us want to go straight to the polls again (something we hate) suggests that serious change is needed to our sytem. The above may or may not be the solution, but we definately need one, we cannot have this farce happen again.

Why do we need people to represent us?

Second line.

I've been saying something similar for 20 years now.. but most people thought it was crazy. That's their comfort zone speaking.

Scrapping the two part preferred system is a priority. Followed by scrapping party Politics, as you suggested.

I wouldn't stop where you did though.. my idea is a little more radical in one respect. I think our politican's should have a Salary, the average weekly wage plus car and phone costs. That's all.

Now I know a lot of people will say "You pay peanuts, you get Monkeys", but to me that is only the Elite offering justification for their excesses and chosen Lifestyle.

And let us face it, Politics is a Lifestyle choice mostly for the Wealthy and University educated.

With my addition you will have people in governance that are there for what they can do to better our country, and not for the Lifestyle it offers and the Golden Handshake after only 4 short years.

reply to post by Tayesin


I cant argue with cutting the amount they waste, thats another joke.

Id like to see an end to all this junk mail I receive. If these people have actually achieved something, tell it to the news, dont waste my money sending out 50000+ glossy letters to us every month !!

reply to post by SNAFU38


Sadly, I think you are just raising the fact that there is no ''fair'' way to elect people in representative democracies.

Where I am, in the UK, we have the ''first past the post'' voting system.

There is talk of electoral reform, but really, the ''alternative vote'', or ''single transferable vote'' system that you describe, is equally as bad.


I believe the fairest electoral system, would be assigning the number of seats that a party gets, by basing it on the national percentage of the vote, that the party got.

For example, in the recent election in Australia, the fair distribution of the 150 seats should be as follows:

Labor, 57.

Liberal, 44.

Green, 18.

Others, 31.


I think it's ludicrous that we have arbitrary constituencies in our countries.

Originally posted by onequestion
Why do we need people to represent us?

Second line.

What alternative is there?

reply to post by Sherlock Holmes


Aye, Proportional Representation is the only fair way of voting. Of course, it brings with it its own set of problems, but honestly I don't think we can claim to be civilised with such an obviously rigged electoral system.

Originally posted by LeftWingLarry
Aye, Proportional Representation is the only fair way of voting. Of course, it brings with it its own set of problems, but honestly I don't think we can claim to be civilised with such an obviously rigged electoral system.

I think proportional representation is only fair, if it's based on the vote of the country, as a whole.

You can not have democracy, while adopting a voting system that is based on arbitrary constituencies.

To give an extremely hypothetical example: If 649 ( out of 650 ) candidates of a particular party, get elected by 1 vote cast, and another candidate, from another party, wins their seat with 40,000 votes cast; then you've got the party that has scored under 1% of the vote, having 99% of the parliamentary seats, and lording it over the other party, that scored 99% of the popular vote, who only have 1% of the seats !

[edit on 7-9-2010 by Sherlock Holmes]

reply to post by Sherlock Holmes


Yes, this is what I'd like to see.

The constituency method, while I can see why it is like this, is outdated and flawed in this day and age.

Originally posted by LeftWingLarry
Yes, this is what I'd like to see.

The constituency method, while I can see why it is like this, is outdated and flawed in this day and age.

I can understand why electing a representative of your constituency is a good idea, so as they can represent you, and your constituents' wishes, in parliament.

However, in all intents and purposes, people are elected on party lines, rather than anything else, so why do we need to go through this illogical charade of electing people for our constituencies ?

Originally posted by Sherlock Holmes

Originally posted by LeftWingLarry
Yes, this is what I'd like to see.

The constituency method, while I can see why it is like this, is outdated and flawed in this day and age.

I can understand why electing a representative of your constituency is a good idea, so as they can represent you, and your constituents' wishes, in parliament.

However, in all intents and purposes, people are elected on party lines, rather than anything else, so why do we need to go through this illogical charade of electing people for our constituencies ?

It was invented to be this way back when government was more laissez-faire and locally-oriented. Since then it's only really been kept this way due to 'tradition'.

Other than that, I agree with you. A national Proportional Representation system would have the added bonus of allowing smaller parties to break through, meaning less settling for 'the lesser of X evils' and increased choice. In a democratic system this can only be a good thing.

reply to post by LeftWingLarry


Us representing ourselves. Why would there be anything else? Its like having a middle man between the grower and buyer, the only reason we have that is because we haven't worked out a more effecient way for direct to buyer product sales. The middleman is just making a check off the growers and consumers back because the grower couldn't find the buy or vice versa.

Second line.