There are some things that are quite endearing about Australian political culture. Dubbing a consequential event with a name like 'The night of the long prawns' is just so Australian.
Thank you for the perspectives on Australia’s political system. Yet I’m deeply troubled by suggestions that emboldened by reelection the Albanese government might ram the Indigenous Voice through legislation, bypassing the referendum that Australians rejected in 2023. This smells of undemocratic overreach and could be a disaster for Australia, much like the divisive Māori privilege in Aotearoa. New Zealand’s Māori wards and special representation have fueled resentment by prioritizing one group over others, as seen in ongoing public backlash. Pushing the Voice without public consent risks fracturing Australia’s social fabric and undermining fairness.
If such to occur, it will be nearly impossible to reverse.
Interesting. Voting is also compulsory in Brazil, which also ensures that poor working class people are not driven from the poles, which then certainly ensures that nothing will change that will make them less poor.
I would have been interested in joining your Zoom speech on May 5, but checking the AEST converter to EST (and corrected to EDT), I see your 6pm is my 4am, and so I will not kid myself that I can get up at 4am when I go to bed at midnight.
It looks like you are going to be packing quite a bit into this speech, so perhaps you can provide a recorded or written version later? Interesting that you also push back against Daniel Pipes as a well respected historian of this general topic, although I presume our Western knowledge of Islam has been improving from 1980 to now.
I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Pipes a year or two ago. I asked him if he thought the growing body of Western knowledge and "clarification" about the real history* of Islam could be used to "reform" Islam. He did not think so. What do you think about that potentiality? I am naive enough to think it should make a difference, but I also realize it might not happen in my lifetime.
Also, there is a You Tube segment out there with Douglas Murray, where he suggests Islam will fall/fail because the disconnect is too great between the observed social, political, and military reality vs. the grand promise of total dominance portrayed in the Quran.
*Syriac precursors to the Quran, potential for Petra vs. Mecca as the initial city of activity, lack of real early manuscripts, "Christian" indicators on the Dome of the Rock and coinage, etc.
The problem with Islam is no different than with any religion: fundamentalism. In the case of Islam, fundamentalism appears to aggravated by being based in Arab honor culture and practices like cousin marriage. Outside pressure mitigates against internal reform, which again is no different than with any other religion. It seems to me that the way to deal with Islamic fundamentalism is to somehow defuse the negative aspects of the culture - the religion will adjust accordingly.
Actually, Islam has some very particular problems, especially Islam in the Greater Middle East (Morocco to Pakistan). The long term consequences of polygyny, centuries of cousin marriage, clan group systems, frustrated aspirations of dominance …
It seems to me that the mindset of fundamentalism is what is toxic in any religion. That’s why attempting to return to an “original” version doesn’t work - it winds up as fundamentalism. I think that what we think of as “reform” is really something quite the opposite of reform.
I do have a couple of quibbles with the Australian system, its advantages notwithstanding. First, while compulsory voting does help reduce extreme politics, it also means that a significant number of people are voting based on little more than vibes, or what their family or peers thinks, or in various ways that don't involve any serious form of assessment of what each political party is offering. Second, while better than First Past the Post, Australia's preference system still entrenches a two party hegemony despite their combined primary vote barely being above 50-60%.
In my view, these two shortcomings seem to lead governments to believe that, because their 2PP vote was 50% + 0.0001%, they have a mandate to undertake not just their election platforms, but additional reforms that have not received genuine consent from the electors. But if your primary vote is somewhere around 30%, do you 'really' have a mandate to impose extreme net zero policies, or make Welcome to Country mandatory across every organisation in the country, or give unions (or business groups or NGOs or minority groups) a whole lot of perks for their loyalty?
I don't think they do. While other countries might only have a 50-60% turnout, you can at least argue that those who didn't vote made a deliberate choice to opt out and leave people interested or knowledgeable to make the decision as to who governs. While removing compulsory voting might not be feasible, I'd like there to be an option to opt out of voting. Yes, you can just spoil the ballot if you want, but I'd like a system where my right not to choose any candidate in the first place is respected, rather than going through the charade of pretending to pick somebody.
The experience of the Starmer Government suggests what counts is numbers in the Parliament, not share of the popular vote.
Having low engagement voters voting turns out to be an advantage. You get a certain wisdom of crowds effect and you do not get the politics of driving people away from the polls. Australian migration policy pays far more attention to popular preferences for precisely that reason. Compulsory voting is, in fact, a key element in Australia being better governed overall.
If the consent of the governed is expressed by voter turnout, then the Starmer Government skates on the thinnest of ice. On the flipside, mandatory voting makes said "consent" not very consensual; that said, if a binding "none of the above" were on the ballot, I could accept the mandate for the electorate to participate.
Mandate claims are over done. Elections are ways of picking legislators and, in Presidential systems, executive officeholders. It turns out, compulsory voting with preferential voting, and a proportional upper House the Government does not control, works due to the incentives and feedback systems it creates.
Sorry, mandate to vote, not mandate as an election result. And I'm dead serious about rejecting all candidates as an option on the ballot. I want that even in our case so the disgust is properly registered.
Let's caveat it that it works in Australia. No one else in the Anglosphere has compulsory voting.
Preferential voting, but Labor always wins that particular seat. You see, this is where the US proponents of Ranked Choice lose me - if you live in a constituency that is guaranteed to produce a predictable result, what use is RCV versus first past the post?
Same with popular election of senators. Going back to the original model, the Roman Senate, it was the body of the aristocracy. We Americans originally believed our state governments matter in our federal system and so appointed two representatives of each state (which going back to the Articles of Confederation was the entirety of Congress, with no House). If a Senate is to exist it should have a "constituency" not represented in the House that is elected directly by the people. An Australian Senate makes even less sense than an American one.
Single-member seats mean that territorially concentrated views get representation. Proportional representation upper house means that territorially dispersed views also get representation. It turns out to be a good balance.
Preferential voting takes the “guessing game” out of voting. It also means that the results align a lot more closely to the pattern of opinion.
The territorial attachment in proportional doesn't make sense. If you want to represent all the views (or as much as is practical) then it should be for the entire polity. And then it is strictly a party vote, not for any person. Our system was hoped to be immune to partisan politicking - not that that notion wasn't soon disabused.
Voting is always a guessing game, just as it is always a game of winners and losers. Whether via internal party factions (witness American political parties) or explicit coalitions of parties without a majority (all parliamentary systems I can think of) you end up with the winners in control and everyone else the losers. Look at Germany - AfD could be the plurality leading party but no one will go into coalition with them. Those voters aren't going to simply disappear or confess their sins, and that is going to be a problem for the legitimacy of the German system.
This seems to be another “it may work in practice but not in Theory” objection. I am far more interested in whether things turn out to work or not than whether they conformed to some pre-conceived Theory.
Being able to reflect both locally concentrated and dispersed opinions turns out to be an advantage.
As for the deformities of German politics, well, I am not advocating the German system.
Oh no, I have big issues with Theory, particularly with all things political. Theory is 100% out to lunch on that. It does seem you are arguing that the Aussie system works, and is therefore one to be emulated/exported. We did copy your ballots after all.
The district issue, where single winner, doesn't seem to provide a benefit from preference over FPTP (whether via plurality or run-off), unless you can point to an example where everyone's second choice ends up flipping the result against the initial front-runner. If anything the preference seems to be the fancy of those (in these parts) overly fond of Theory.
Happens regularly that an initial front runner loses. Also enables people to vote for minor Parties without wasting their vote. It further forces the major Parties to seek to appeal beyond their base. It is a very practical system. If the UK had preferential voting, a lot less Labour MPs would have been elected in 2024.
I agree that our 17th Amendment reduced, if not removed, an important check on the national government via state level federalism. They are now too easily bribed by national "return funding". [Phillip Hamburger has a 2021 book on that: Purchasing Submission: Conditions, Power, and Freedom.] While the intent was for our Senate to be the more deliberative body of "wiser" members, to help cool the passions of the people for a given potentially unwise policy (SS anyone? Great Society? Headstart?), it is failing in that capacity. Our current senate does have a few wise heads, but all too many are now just arrogant party hacks no wiser than the worst House Rep.
Seeking a Senate with a different "constituency" is probably part of the checks and balances in the original design [a good point], but I would say the deliberative cooling down element is the greater need. As we know, the establishment of "independent" colonies, becoming proto-states, is something of an accident of history. The whole caboodle could have been governed as a single body without those sub-governments. Conversely, the Church provided an example of a 5 level hierarchy of subsidiarity governance, but i am not aware of what different Church sub groups might have fought about enough that they could have counterbalanced bad policy from the Papacy. Plus, given the corruption leading to the Reformation, maybe that is thus not the best early example of federalism? :-)
"... appointed two representatives of each state (which going back to the Articles of Confederation was the entirety of Congress, with no House..." For some reason I had not fully appreciated that truncated aspect of the original Confederation Congress. Thank you for mentioning that.
The practical result of no Government majority normally, so it can act as an actual house of review turns out to be a considerable advantage of the Australian Senate.
While I agree that the 17th amendment undermines federalism, the Supreme Court permitting the use of federal funding “strings” to circumvent the restrictions on the activities of the federal government has had a much greater impact.
Can you clarify what "Welcome to Country" means? I suspect it is not quite the equivalent of the US Welcome Wagon for new arrivals in a given neighborhood. :-)
"... leave people interested or knowledgeable to make the decision as to who governs." I agree that sounds preferrable to have the "aware" folks doing the actual selecting, and if you are unhappy with the result, then "get off your backside and show up". I still do appreciate the counter argument that neglecting your "civic duty" can and does lead to the ideologues taking control over other (usually too few) rational voices. An example is Lorenzo's continued emphasis on "theory" and the "imagined future" leading to continued Marxist (or Marxist like) positions being retained when logic and history shows how deficit they really are.
Part of me thinks passing of laws that restrain freedoms really should require a super majority (60 to 70%?) to help ensure that that law will actually be truly accepted and obeyed. Not much point in having a law that is routinely ignored. And on the down side, when said law proves eventually to be unworkable, it may be very difficult to repeal or reform it. Reducing the number of laws passed in the first place is probably a benefit, as well - enough law for civil order but not for special favors.
"... I'd like a system where my right not to choose any candidate..." Yes, it would be informative if we had "none of the above" options. Then again, I am not sure how that would have played out in the Biden vs. Harris change over, and the Harris vs. Trump contest. Fevers are running high right now.
NO system where the police were dragging people from their cars and beating them in the street and then forcing a suffocation muzzle on them for not wearing a mask alone inside their car with the windows up is "the best" of anything.
I used to think I'd maybe want to visit there someday, but after I saw that footage, I'd sooner visit the Kremlin. As an American. While the stupid and needlessly bloody Ukraine war is going on and it's obviously a terrible idea to do so.
A single policy does not determine whether a country is well-governed or not. Moreover, federal system will have variation, for good or ill. Victoria, for instance, is the worst-governed State with the worst police force.
Sorry, but I must disagree. It determines who governs, and if those people consistently govern badly, then in a way, it kind of does determine whether a place is well-governed or not.
Here in the states, everywhere with ranked choice/instant runoff voting veered hard left and became somewhere between much worse and a miserable dumpster fire. Even Maine, which used to be okay-ish. And I have an issue in that if there are 4 candidates some psychotic communist idiot finds acceptable while there's only 1 that I even find tolerable, they effectively got 4 votes to my 1.
A better system would allow for "none of the above" as an option, and require 50% to win. And maybe if you lose to NOTA, you can't run again for some period of time.
But the Australian system does require 50%+1 of formal votes to win. (Informal votes don’t count, but that is fair enough.)
The reality is Australia is better governed, often much better governed, than the US. The trouble with Covid is that it interacted with Australia’s very strong views on quarantine with its very majoritarian (not libertarian) political culture. Australia is not immune to some of the problems of modern politics, including media conformity, though it suffers from the last distinctly less than Canada does, for instance.
Majoritarianism is as dangerous as elitism. "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner." Or, as I say it, "Democracy is when 51% of the people want pinapple pizza, and it's then force-fed to the other 49%." (although with our low voter participation it's more like 30% feeding 70%, fair enough, although that's also a problem).
There's no real reason why 1,000,000+ people in a city 300 or even 30 miles away and especially 3000 miles away should rule almost everything anything in my large, sprawling town of 40,000. It's just conditioning, the way things are.
If you can't get out of the hole of tyranny, you're not well governed. And with no arms, you've got no chance. We don't have much of one either with everyone's face in their phone, but at least there's still enough left in North America (or at least the USA; Canada's probably boned) to push back.
We'll have to agree to disagree. It's not just theory; I've seen the videos, I've seen the results, and my response steadfastly remains at "Thanks, but no thanks."
Not that I'm saying our poop storm is much good, but it managed to stand up to that stuff somewhat better. Eventually. Sort of. It sure took a long time to get there, though.
I am a 2 decades-long non-voter now, which is ironic since I started my working life at the Aus Electoral Commission... Spent Sat carefree cycling on the Yarra Boulevard instead. Just looked to see the news now! I expected the outcome but shocked by the scale. Libs only had to do 2 things to win this election: say they will limit immigration and shut up. They seem addicted to creating idiotic speed-humps for themselves like the nuclear thing.
As for voting - I spent much of my life pronouncing superiority of prop-res, but I recently came to the conclusion that UK style PFF single-member electorates is the better system. What you get in Europe is "perpetual oligarchies" as a result of the inevitable middle-ground coalitions. Great thing about Aus/UK/Canada is that even party leaders can get kicked out of parliament whereas in propres they basically live as political parasites. What the pref system here does is entrench the 2-party duopoly, so I prefer the Brit system.
For the unfamilar I recommend discovering the Canadian Senate system, which is partly-proportional like ours, but non-elected. They have their own malapportionment issues but seems better than ours from far away at least.
I disagree with all of that. The Canadian Senate has all the disadvantages of the House of Lords with none of its advantages. Having the Starmer Government with such a huge majority in the Commons on 34% of the vote is both ridiculous and dysfunctional. Britain is much worse governed than Australia, so clearly their system does not work better. Canada may be lucky to still be united in four years time, not a great recommendation.
Our system is flawed because of compulsory voting. As someone mentioned here, most people vote because of a vibe on the day, or a last minute sound bite on the car radio on their way to the polling booth. Or, the old favourite: "my dad, his dad, and his dad before him voted for x.." As a people we are far too apathetic and we are just going to keep paying for it.
This is a “it may work in practice but not in Theory” objection. It turns out, forcing low engagement voters to at least turn up (and mostly vote) generates a “wisdom of crowds” effect, leads to less polarised politics (you cannot drive people away from the polls) and means that, in particular, working class interests are much less systematically discounted.
You make a good case, but it all depends on the wording. "Wisdom of crowds" effect seems to me a really kind way of saying that voters here just follow the herd. I don't doubt you're correct in many cases, but democracy here is generally not held in sacred esteem. I think we've seen in recent years that crowds can be the opposite of wise.
You are absolutely correct, sir! Voting should be on a first-come, first-vote basis. The number of total possible votes should be set at a fraction of the total eligible population, and it will be set AFTER polling is closed, by spinning a wheel. It can be as low as one percent! The first one percent of voters in the queue will then have determined the outcome. This will make the queueing much more lively!
At uni I took a unit of polsci (tutored by a later-almost-Greens-senator). There are many fanciful electoral systems including random-conscription of MPs. I like that one, as we'd get a more representative and competent chamber.
Absolutely. Some allowance should be made to the fact that the average voter engages through drama spectacle. That´s why, on average, most voters do NOT vote, when given the option. As it is on the pitch, an element of chance adds to the overall show. Furthermore, by the way, I make it a point to take seriously not being entirely serious.
As it is, the system of compulsory voting here is essentially rendered meaningless when taken into account the fact that many, many people here just vote informal because they just don't care. In essence it means that of all the votes cast here, the percentage of meaningful votes (by people actually voting with purpose) is greatly watered down. Whoever gets in gets in not because of party faithful, but because of the fact that most Auatralians see it as a chore, and just follow what the most recently heard ad or handed out pamphlet says. The landslide result we've seen here is not because Albanese knows what he's doing. It's because 1: Labor voters are notoriously one-eyed, tribalist and generational voters. 2: Labor and the Left in general for some reason are just better with their use of media and advertising. Much better. 3: Australia is at its core an artifially rich, micro managed socialist country. When a politician throws around the promise of pay rises, power bill cuts and lowering the cost of living and housing, people lap it up. Keeping the devil you know is more important than vision or change here. Most people here live hand to mouth. That mindset does not equate to a desire for change.
I don't get what happened here, but at the same time I wholly expected it. Liberal kicked a whole lot of own goals with this one. After the economic holocaust Albo has committed these last three years I now see what democracy in Australia is worth. The fact that someone so roundly criticised and not respected got such a landslide win shows that the act of voting at a polling booth is not democracy. It's just lip service to the concept here. Otherwise, Australians just don't give a shit. Most of them.
I was in Australia once in my entire life, way, way back in July of 1982 when I was nineteen and on the USS Brewton and making a port of call in Bunbury WA. While stranded in a very dusty and freezing and empty Bunbury on a Saturday morning, I was eventually picked up by the police, who then took me to a local gymnasium where I was then told to play volleyball with a flock of Australian schoolgirls. Why go back. It´ll never by that great again.
There are some things that are quite endearing about Australian political culture. Dubbing a consequential event with a name like 'The night of the long prawns' is just so Australian.
I'd join your seminar at 6pm AEST - except that's 4pm New York time, a bit inconvenient.
Thank you for the perspectives on Australia’s political system. Yet I’m deeply troubled by suggestions that emboldened by reelection the Albanese government might ram the Indigenous Voice through legislation, bypassing the referendum that Australians rejected in 2023. This smells of undemocratic overreach and could be a disaster for Australia, much like the divisive Māori privilege in Aotearoa. New Zealand’s Māori wards and special representation have fueled resentment by prioritizing one group over others, as seen in ongoing public backlash. Pushing the Voice without public consent risks fracturing Australia’s social fabric and undermining fairness.
If such to occur, it will be nearly impossible to reverse.
That was not the messaging on the night. Albanese talking of an “orderly” government and Treasurer Chalmers discouraging Voice talk.
I hope this holds. After all, there was no rational reason—only woke ones—for attempting the referendum, which they were surprised to lose.
Interesting. Voting is also compulsory in Brazil, which also ensures that poor working class people are not driven from the poles, which then certainly ensures that nothing will change that will make them less poor.
I would have been interested in joining your Zoom speech on May 5, but checking the AEST converter to EST (and corrected to EDT), I see your 6pm is my 4am, and so I will not kid myself that I can get up at 4am when I go to bed at midnight.
It looks like you are going to be packing quite a bit into this speech, so perhaps you can provide a recorded or written version later? Interesting that you also push back against Daniel Pipes as a well respected historian of this general topic, although I presume our Western knowledge of Islam has been improving from 1980 to now.
I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Pipes a year or two ago. I asked him if he thought the growing body of Western knowledge and "clarification" about the real history* of Islam could be used to "reform" Islam. He did not think so. What do you think about that potentiality? I am naive enough to think it should make a difference, but I also realize it might not happen in my lifetime.
Also, there is a You Tube segment out there with Douglas Murray, where he suggests Islam will fall/fail because the disconnect is too great between the observed social, political, and military reality vs. the grand promise of total dominance portrayed in the Quran.
*Syriac precursors to the Quran, potential for Petra vs. Mecca as the initial city of activity, lack of real early manuscripts, "Christian" indicators on the Dome of the Rock and coinage, etc.
And yes, I will try to write it up as a post at some stage.
Any reform of Islam has to come from within. Experience of the outside world may certainly feed into that.
The trouble is, again and again “reform” of Islam due to outside pressure has meant attempting to return to the “original” version.
The problem with Islam is no different than with any religion: fundamentalism. In the case of Islam, fundamentalism appears to aggravated by being based in Arab honor culture and practices like cousin marriage. Outside pressure mitigates against internal reform, which again is no different than with any other religion. It seems to me that the way to deal with Islamic fundamentalism is to somehow defuse the negative aspects of the culture - the religion will adjust accordingly.
Actually, Islam has some very particular problems, especially Islam in the Greater Middle East (Morocco to Pakistan). The long term consequences of polygyny, centuries of cousin marriage, clan group systems, frustrated aspirations of dominance …
It seems to me that the mindset of fundamentalism is what is toxic in any religion. That’s why attempting to return to an “original” version doesn’t work - it winds up as fundamentalism. I think that what we think of as “reform” is really something quite the opposite of reform.
I do have a couple of quibbles with the Australian system, its advantages notwithstanding. First, while compulsory voting does help reduce extreme politics, it also means that a significant number of people are voting based on little more than vibes, or what their family or peers thinks, or in various ways that don't involve any serious form of assessment of what each political party is offering. Second, while better than First Past the Post, Australia's preference system still entrenches a two party hegemony despite their combined primary vote barely being above 50-60%.
In my view, these two shortcomings seem to lead governments to believe that, because their 2PP vote was 50% + 0.0001%, they have a mandate to undertake not just their election platforms, but additional reforms that have not received genuine consent from the electors. But if your primary vote is somewhere around 30%, do you 'really' have a mandate to impose extreme net zero policies, or make Welcome to Country mandatory across every organisation in the country, or give unions (or business groups or NGOs or minority groups) a whole lot of perks for their loyalty?
I don't think they do. While other countries might only have a 50-60% turnout, you can at least argue that those who didn't vote made a deliberate choice to opt out and leave people interested or knowledgeable to make the decision as to who governs. While removing compulsory voting might not be feasible, I'd like there to be an option to opt out of voting. Yes, you can just spoil the ballot if you want, but I'd like a system where my right not to choose any candidate in the first place is respected, rather than going through the charade of pretending to pick somebody.
The experience of the Starmer Government suggests what counts is numbers in the Parliament, not share of the popular vote.
Having low engagement voters voting turns out to be an advantage. You get a certain wisdom of crowds effect and you do not get the politics of driving people away from the polls. Australian migration policy pays far more attention to popular preferences for precisely that reason. Compulsory voting is, in fact, a key element in Australia being better governed overall.
If the consent of the governed is expressed by voter turnout, then the Starmer Government skates on the thinnest of ice. On the flipside, mandatory voting makes said "consent" not very consensual; that said, if a binding "none of the above" were on the ballot, I could accept the mandate for the electorate to participate.
Mandate claims are over done. Elections are ways of picking legislators and, in Presidential systems, executive officeholders. It turns out, compulsory voting with preferential voting, and a proportional upper House the Government does not control, works due to the incentives and feedback systems it creates.
Sorry, mandate to vote, not mandate as an election result. And I'm dead serious about rejecting all candidates as an option on the ballot. I want that even in our case so the disgust is properly registered.
Let's caveat it that it works in Australia. No one else in the Anglosphere has compulsory voting.
I would have to think about “none of the above” as an option.
Preferential voting, but Labor always wins that particular seat. You see, this is where the US proponents of Ranked Choice lose me - if you live in a constituency that is guaranteed to produce a predictable result, what use is RCV versus first past the post?
Same with popular election of senators. Going back to the original model, the Roman Senate, it was the body of the aristocracy. We Americans originally believed our state governments matter in our federal system and so appointed two representatives of each state (which going back to the Articles of Confederation was the entirety of Congress, with no House). If a Senate is to exist it should have a "constituency" not represented in the House that is elected directly by the people. An Australian Senate makes even less sense than an American one.
Single-member seats mean that territorially concentrated views get representation. Proportional representation upper house means that territorially dispersed views also get representation. It turns out to be a good balance.
Preferential voting takes the “guessing game” out of voting. It also means that the results align a lot more closely to the pattern of opinion.
The territorial attachment in proportional doesn't make sense. If you want to represent all the views (or as much as is practical) then it should be for the entire polity. And then it is strictly a party vote, not for any person. Our system was hoped to be immune to partisan politicking - not that that notion wasn't soon disabused.
Voting is always a guessing game, just as it is always a game of winners and losers. Whether via internal party factions (witness American political parties) or explicit coalitions of parties without a majority (all parliamentary systems I can think of) you end up with the winners in control and everyone else the losers. Look at Germany - AfD could be the plurality leading party but no one will go into coalition with them. Those voters aren't going to simply disappear or confess their sins, and that is going to be a problem for the legitimacy of the German system.
This seems to be another “it may work in practice but not in Theory” objection. I am far more interested in whether things turn out to work or not than whether they conformed to some pre-conceived Theory.
Being able to reflect both locally concentrated and dispersed opinions turns out to be an advantage.
As for the deformities of German politics, well, I am not advocating the German system.
Oh no, I have big issues with Theory, particularly with all things political. Theory is 100% out to lunch on that. It does seem you are arguing that the Aussie system works, and is therefore one to be emulated/exported. We did copy your ballots after all.
The district issue, where single winner, doesn't seem to provide a benefit from preference over FPTP (whether via plurality or run-off), unless you can point to an example where everyone's second choice ends up flipping the result against the initial front-runner. If anything the preference seems to be the fancy of those (in these parts) overly fond of Theory.
Happens regularly that an initial front runner loses. Also enables people to vote for minor Parties without wasting their vote. It further forces the major Parties to seek to appeal beyond their base. It is a very practical system. If the UK had preferential voting, a lot less Labour MPs would have been elected in 2024.
I agree that our 17th Amendment reduced, if not removed, an important check on the national government via state level federalism. They are now too easily bribed by national "return funding". [Phillip Hamburger has a 2021 book on that: Purchasing Submission: Conditions, Power, and Freedom.] While the intent was for our Senate to be the more deliberative body of "wiser" members, to help cool the passions of the people for a given potentially unwise policy (SS anyone? Great Society? Headstart?), it is failing in that capacity. Our current senate does have a few wise heads, but all too many are now just arrogant party hacks no wiser than the worst House Rep.
Seeking a Senate with a different "constituency" is probably part of the checks and balances in the original design [a good point], but I would say the deliberative cooling down element is the greater need. As we know, the establishment of "independent" colonies, becoming proto-states, is something of an accident of history. The whole caboodle could have been governed as a single body without those sub-governments. Conversely, the Church provided an example of a 5 level hierarchy of subsidiarity governance, but i am not aware of what different Church sub groups might have fought about enough that they could have counterbalanced bad policy from the Papacy. Plus, given the corruption leading to the Reformation, maybe that is thus not the best early example of federalism? :-)
"... appointed two representatives of each state (which going back to the Articles of Confederation was the entirety of Congress, with no House..." For some reason I had not fully appreciated that truncated aspect of the original Confederation Congress. Thank you for mentioning that.
The practical result of no Government majority normally, so it can act as an actual house of review turns out to be a considerable advantage of the Australian Senate.
While I agree that the 17th amendment undermines federalism, the Supreme Court permitting the use of federal funding “strings” to circumvent the restrictions on the activities of the federal government has had a much greater impact.
Can you clarify what "Welcome to Country" means? I suspect it is not quite the equivalent of the US Welcome Wagon for new arrivals in a given neighborhood. :-)
"... leave people interested or knowledgeable to make the decision as to who governs." I agree that sounds preferrable to have the "aware" folks doing the actual selecting, and if you are unhappy with the result, then "get off your backside and show up". I still do appreciate the counter argument that neglecting your "civic duty" can and does lead to the ideologues taking control over other (usually too few) rational voices. An example is Lorenzo's continued emphasis on "theory" and the "imagined future" leading to continued Marxist (or Marxist like) positions being retained when logic and history shows how deficit they really are.
Part of me thinks passing of laws that restrain freedoms really should require a super majority (60 to 70%?) to help ensure that that law will actually be truly accepted and obeyed. Not much point in having a law that is routinely ignored. And on the down side, when said law proves eventually to be unworkable, it may be very difficult to repeal or reform it. Reducing the number of laws passed in the first place is probably a benefit, as well - enough law for civil order but not for special favors.
"... I'd like a system where my right not to choose any candidate..." Yes, it would be informative if we had "none of the above" options. Then again, I am not sure how that would have played out in the Biden vs. Harris change over, and the Harris vs. Trump contest. Fevers are running high right now.
Australian democracy is majoritarian, not libertarian.
Welcome to Country is the Australian version of land acknowledgements
Australian academics had a pioneering role in such toxic nonsense. https://lawliberty.org/australias-dangerous-export/
A law requiring a man to vote is totalitarian. Totalitarian means do not lead to being “better” governed. The ends do not justify the means.
NO system where the police were dragging people from their cars and beating them in the street and then forcing a suffocation muzzle on them for not wearing a mask alone inside their car with the windows up is "the best" of anything.
I used to think I'd maybe want to visit there someday, but after I saw that footage, I'd sooner visit the Kremlin. As an American. While the stupid and needlessly bloody Ukraine war is going on and it's obviously a terrible idea to do so.
A single policy does not determine whether a country is well-governed or not. Moreover, federal system will have variation, for good or ill. Victoria, for instance, is the worst-governed State with the worst police force.
Sorry, but I must disagree. It determines who governs, and if those people consistently govern badly, then in a way, it kind of does determine whether a place is well-governed or not.
Here in the states, everywhere with ranked choice/instant runoff voting veered hard left and became somewhere between much worse and a miserable dumpster fire. Even Maine, which used to be okay-ish. And I have an issue in that if there are 4 candidates some psychotic communist idiot finds acceptable while there's only 1 that I even find tolerable, they effectively got 4 votes to my 1.
A better system would allow for "none of the above" as an option, and require 50% to win. And maybe if you lose to NOTA, you can't run again for some period of time.
But the Australian system does require 50%+1 of formal votes to win. (Informal votes don’t count, but that is fair enough.)
The reality is Australia is better governed, often much better governed, than the US. The trouble with Covid is that it interacted with Australia’s very strong views on quarantine with its very majoritarian (not libertarian) political culture. Australia is not immune to some of the problems of modern politics, including media conformity, though it suffers from the last distinctly less than Canada does, for instance.
Majoritarianism is as dangerous as elitism. "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner." Or, as I say it, "Democracy is when 51% of the people want pinapple pizza, and it's then force-fed to the other 49%." (although with our low voter participation it's more like 30% feeding 70%, fair enough, although that's also a problem).
There's no real reason why 1,000,000+ people in a city 300 or even 30 miles away and especially 3000 miles away should rule almost everything anything in my large, sprawling town of 40,000. It's just conditioning, the way things are.
If you can't get out of the hole of tyranny, you're not well governed. And with no arms, you've got no chance. We don't have much of one either with everyone's face in their phone, but at least there's still enough left in North America (or at least the USA; Canada's probably boned) to push back.
This is all Theory ignoring experience. It is a simple fact that Australia is a well governed, peaceful country where things just work.
We'll have to agree to disagree. It's not just theory; I've seen the videos, I've seen the results, and my response steadfastly remains at "Thanks, but no thanks."
Not that I'm saying our poop storm is much good, but it managed to stand up to that stuff somewhat better. Eventually. Sort of. It sure took a long time to get there, though.
I am a 2 decades-long non-voter now, which is ironic since I started my working life at the Aus Electoral Commission... Spent Sat carefree cycling on the Yarra Boulevard instead. Just looked to see the news now! I expected the outcome but shocked by the scale. Libs only had to do 2 things to win this election: say they will limit immigration and shut up. They seem addicted to creating idiotic speed-humps for themselves like the nuclear thing.
As for voting - I spent much of my life pronouncing superiority of prop-res, but I recently came to the conclusion that UK style PFF single-member electorates is the better system. What you get in Europe is "perpetual oligarchies" as a result of the inevitable middle-ground coalitions. Great thing about Aus/UK/Canada is that even party leaders can get kicked out of parliament whereas in propres they basically live as political parasites. What the pref system here does is entrench the 2-party duopoly, so I prefer the Brit system.
For the unfamilar I recommend discovering the Canadian Senate system, which is partly-proportional like ours, but non-elected. They have their own malapportionment issues but seems better than ours from far away at least.
I disagree with all of that. The Canadian Senate has all the disadvantages of the House of Lords with none of its advantages. Having the Starmer Government with such a huge majority in the Commons on 34% of the vote is both ridiculous and dysfunctional. Britain is much worse governed than Australia, so clearly their system does not work better. Canada may be lucky to still be united in four years time, not a great recommendation.
Our system is flawed because of compulsory voting. As someone mentioned here, most people vote because of a vibe on the day, or a last minute sound bite on the car radio on their way to the polling booth. Or, the old favourite: "my dad, his dad, and his dad before him voted for x.." As a people we are far too apathetic and we are just going to keep paying for it.
This is a “it may work in practice but not in Theory” objection. It turns out, forcing low engagement voters to at least turn up (and mostly vote) generates a “wisdom of crowds” effect, leads to less polarised politics (you cannot drive people away from the polls) and means that, in particular, working class interests are much less systematically discounted.
You make a good case, but it all depends on the wording. "Wisdom of crowds" effect seems to me a really kind way of saying that voters here just follow the herd. I don't doubt you're correct in many cases, but democracy here is generally not held in sacred esteem. I think we've seen in recent years that crowds can be the opposite of wise.
You are absolutely correct, sir! Voting should be on a first-come, first-vote basis. The number of total possible votes should be set at a fraction of the total eligible population, and it will be set AFTER polling is closed, by spinning a wheel. It can be as low as one percent! The first one percent of voters in the queue will then have determined the outcome. This will make the queueing much more lively!
I am unsure whether you are being serious. I don't know how other democracies work, so I need some further elaboration on your point.
At uni I took a unit of polsci (tutored by a later-almost-Greens-senator). There are many fanciful electoral systems including random-conscription of MPs. I like that one, as we'd get a more representative and competent chamber.
Absolutely. Some allowance should be made to the fact that the average voter engages through drama spectacle. That´s why, on average, most voters do NOT vote, when given the option. As it is on the pitch, an element of chance adds to the overall show. Furthermore, by the way, I make it a point to take seriously not being entirely serious.
As it is, the system of compulsory voting here is essentially rendered meaningless when taken into account the fact that many, many people here just vote informal because they just don't care. In essence it means that of all the votes cast here, the percentage of meaningful votes (by people actually voting with purpose) is greatly watered down. Whoever gets in gets in not because of party faithful, but because of the fact that most Auatralians see it as a chore, and just follow what the most recently heard ad or handed out pamphlet says. The landslide result we've seen here is not because Albanese knows what he's doing. It's because 1: Labor voters are notoriously one-eyed, tribalist and generational voters. 2: Labor and the Left in general for some reason are just better with their use of media and advertising. Much better. 3: Australia is at its core an artifially rich, micro managed socialist country. When a politician throws around the promise of pay rises, power bill cuts and lowering the cost of living and housing, people lap it up. Keeping the devil you know is more important than vision or change here. Most people here live hand to mouth. That mindset does not equate to a desire for change.
I don't get what happened here, but at the same time I wholly expected it. Liberal kicked a whole lot of own goals with this one. After the economic holocaust Albo has committed these last three years I now see what democracy in Australia is worth. The fact that someone so roundly criticised and not respected got such a landslide win shows that the act of voting at a polling booth is not democracy. It's just lip service to the concept here. Otherwise, Australians just don't give a shit. Most of them.
I was in Australia once in my entire life, way, way back in July of 1982 when I was nineteen and on the USS Brewton and making a port of call in Bunbury WA. While stranded in a very dusty and freezing and empty Bunbury on a Saturday morning, I was eventually picked up by the police, who then took me to a local gymnasium where I was then told to play volleyball with a flock of Australian schoolgirls. Why go back. It´ll never by that great again.