Democracy is not broken, it is a tool that is being wrongly used

Why don’t we expect more of our elected representatives, such as independence honesty, egalitarianism, transparency and commitment to the common good? Simon Warriner responds to articles by Christine Milne, Tim Dunlop and others . . .

Democracy is a tool. Despite the claims of some, it is not broken. That said, the outcomes being produced by supposedly democratic governments are increasingly despotic and undemocratic in nature.

My observation is that it is just not being used properly. Were it an axe two people would be using it. One would be holding it against the trunk of the tree by the handle and the other beating its head with a rock. Not very efficient and more notable for the fights between the participants than the speed and efficiency with which it cuts anything.

Expecting political party members to produce clear, concise, fair and effective legislative outcomes and to devise and preside over systems of government that place our common good at the forefront and keep vested interests in their proper place is sadly, naïve at best.

It is naïve, at best, because those same political party members who have sworn to serve their party interests simultaneously conduct a campaign to convince the voters in their respective electorates that they are the best person to represent those voters’ interests, often by denigrating their opponents.

They conflict their interests to the detriment of their electorate as a matter of course. A harsh person might call that lying. They ignore any perspective not their own. A wise man knows that to be very stupid. It is up there with the two man method of using an axe.

It is naïve, at best, to expect any person to be able to faithfully serve two masters at the same time. It is naïve, at best, to expect that anyone whose understanding of conflicted interest allows them to see as acceptable the splitting of that interest as their first act of public life as a representative of the people, will be reliable or competent in the task of governing for the good of all those people.

This failure to recognise conflicted interest, or to tolerate it, inevitably leads to the sort of failures we witness as a matter of course. (Travel entitlements being just the latest in a long and outrageous list.)

Over time the party systems become dominated by selfish, short term, conflicted interests and the truly intelligent, community minded people we desperately need in government are repelled by the prospect of associating with this sort of conduct and stay well away. Party politics does clearly does not attract the very people we need to provide a government that pursues the common good.

Spread the greatest benefit among the largest number

There is a way to radically improve the way democratic systems of government operate and thus the outcomes they deliver. It does not require radical change to those systems. It does require a change of attitude on the part of the electorate, and a change in their expectations of their elected representative, and it requires a radical change in the nature of those who fill the role of elected representative.

It is not impossible, there are examples of individuals past and present whose actions closely fit this description. It is no coincidence most of them have been independent politicians and the very few that have been party politicians were around before the endless inbreeding delivered its inevitable result. Think of them as examples of how an axe should be swung.

What is proposed is a change from representatives whose role is as gatekeeper excluding undesirable ideas and interests, to representatives who function first as conduits of the electorates needs, aspirations worries, and expectations to the democratic forum and then as participants in the search for the common good amongst the competing concerns presented.

Rather than being partisan players seeking a victory in a zero sum game our representatives would seek to ensure that the greatest benefit is spread amongst the largest number. This would go a very long way to bringing an end to the reign of the 1% which is concentrating the common wealth ever further up the pyramid and setting the scene for communal woe on a massive scale, if history is any guide.

Expect that elected representatives will tell the truth, or lose their job

On the part of the voter it requires some changes in expectation. The voter needs to change, from expecting a party representative to only present positions that accord with party positions, to an expectation that the representative will present the entire range of positions presented to them by the electorate, faithfully and competently, and without prejudice.

From an expectation that the representative will vote the party line the voter needs to move to an expectation that the representative will exercise their intelligence and education to sift through those competing positions to arrive at an outcome that delivers the greatest benefit over the longest term to the largest number.

From the expectation that they will vote for the least odious party the voter needs to shift to the expectation that they will vote for the most competent and honest representative. From the expectation that every word out a politician’s mouth will be a lie there is a shift to an expectation that elected representatives will tell the truth, or lose their job.

The biggest and hardest change on the part of the voter is that this requires them to concede that all points of view have a right to be heard and that voting for a party prepared to ignore some other point of view is not a response that will deliver a productive outcome.

Taking the independent representative approach does a number of things, not least the following.

• It recognises that the current system of party based democracy favours a winner takes all approach that cannot serve the common good, and it places that concept of “common good” front and centre in the process, instead of the party political contest.

• It restores to the role of elected representative the trust that has clearly been squandered by generations of political corruption in pursuit of party power and political favour. That lack of trust currently ensures that the best minds fail to consider this most critical of public roles a desirable way to spend their time and energy and that failure weakens both democracy and government.

• It restores to the task of government the objectivity and clarity of purpose that have been obscured and distorted by the presence of a system of money laundering under the guise of donations to political parties, the narrow ideological focus of parties themselves, and the asinine competition between the parties at the expense of real work towards the common good.

• It restores transparency to the process of government by returning the fundamental process of fair and just government to the public debating chamber, and takes it from behind the wall of the party room where the debate is more commonly about the interests of the party and its donors than it is about the common good.

• It removes from that chamber the grotesque and unedifying spectacle of personal attack that passes for debate at present and is used by competing parties to pursue electoral success, by crowding out such immature and unhelpful behaviour with the real work of government.

• It diminishes the current immature contest for party political electoral victory and returns it to the electorate, where it rightly belongs. It removes its dominance of the debating chamber and the mainstream media where the agenda is set by the media barons. This leaves room for real issues based discourse based on fact and neuters the media, forcing its return to its proper role as the fourth estate.

• It removes the party as the controlling influence over the representative and returns that control to the electorate. It the representative fails in their role they are simply replaced with another. No more hoping they are not returned to the party ticket based on some byzantine formula involving money, family ties and outright thuggery, as we have been seen so many times.

• It leaves the existing democratic structures intact and builds on their undoubted benefits, while recognising and addressing their equally unarguable flaws and failures.

Power remains with the party donors and the media

For a modern human society to work balance is required. The environment needs to be protected, nurtured and sustained. The individual needs to be gainfully engaged within that society and those individuals who can contribute at a higher level need to have mechanisms that allow that higher level contribution to garner appropriate reward. Those who are employed by others need to be fairly treated and justly rewarded. Communally owned resources need to be wisely managed.

Our present use of the democratic system assigns interest groups political representation and those groups then fight it out in a bizarre battle of proxies in which the winner takes all, until the balance of power apparently shifts at an election. In truth the power now never shifts because it remains with the party donors and the media who manipulate public perception to suit the interests of those who own it.

Hence the insulting spectacle of an elected prime minister trotting obediently to New York to kiss the hem of Rupert Murdoch’s gown as his first act of international diplomacy (Kevin Rudd) and the inexorable slide over time to a point where the notion of a government “of the people, by the people, for the people” is far from the reality of modern “democracy” where extra judicial murder by drone is a weekly agenda item for a president who is loudly proclaimed to be the “leader of the free world”, and locking children in endless detention because their parents fled imminent murder is seen as a fair thing by a government using the word “liberal” as its name.

The time available to attempt this solution is limited and ebbing fast

We can do so much better, and if a fraction of the effort, time and money spent railing against the present party political systems and the outcomes they deliver was spent on promoting this alternative, we could have something much better.

It does not require the permission of the mainstream media and its power crazed controllers, just informed, brave souls seeking a better way of doing democracy.

The alternative is anything but democratic, and is leading rapidly to a place where change will not be so easily won. The time available to attempt this solution is, I fear, limited and ebbing fast.

To those who will argue that what I have proposed is a recipe for anarchy and chaos, I point out that in the system I have proposed intelligence is inherently additive. I give the captain calls made by the Captain of Team Australia as evidence of the alternative.

A clearer and more absolute proof of the subtractive nature of hierarchical systems is hard to find, but the debacle in the Middle East, and the Greek monetary crisis, best summed up as “the flogging will continue until morale improves”, never mind that the country wielding the whip has failed to repay its creditors twice in the last 100 hundred years are further examples.

I further observe that we live on a finite planet, on which we are experimenting simultaneously with a population bubble driven by exploitation of a depleting, massively polluting hydrocarbon resource, while producing novel compounds that pollute and degrade our essential resources, all the while financing that activity with a finance system welded to growth that is impossible in the face of declining energy returns on energy investment and resources and whose collapse looks to be being engineered to deliver even more commonly held wealth to the 1%.

This has taken place under the watchful gaze and alleged supervision of governments composed of the very conflicted individuals you seek to defend. They are entirely responsible for the current state of affairs. Defend it for all you are worth, good luck with that.

Help to fell the tree of greed

Change is possible. Vote differently, start a movement, organise meetings, rallies, protests or whatever you like to inform others. Call it whatever you like. Set up websites. Blog about it. Comment on the subject, write articles and papers, do research, write a thesis on the subject. Challenge the political orthodoxy that claims to be a “science”. If you think I can help your actions in this endeavour drop me an email. I will do what I can afford to do.

If the time is not ripe for something new, right now, it never will be.

The way to swing the axe that is democracy is to make sure the representatives are only working for one purpose: To pursue the greatest common good for their constituents. Swung that way the dead wood will be rapidly cut out of government and something of real and lasting value can be fashioned. The tree of greed can be felled and cut up to fed the fires that warm all humanity. Perhaps something better will grow where its shadow now falls.

May the chips fly thick and fast.

*Simon Warriner has been a tradesman, consultant, infrared thermographer, vibration analyst, business owner, owner builder, metal recycler, sales rep, a barman and a bouncer. He now works on a dairy farm where the bullshit he encounters in the workplace washes off and he loathes wasted effort and bullies. He was taught to love reading and politics by his great aunt while his parents both worked, long before it became the norm. He has written on the corrupting nature of party politics in the past, and explored advancing the cause of independent representation in government. He has enjoyed Bronwyn Bishop’s recent unintentional contribution to that cause and looks forward to many more contributions of a similar nature from what is inevitably becoming a very shallow pool of talent in the political party ranks. He wonders what Murray Kellam would make of a public servant who used his/her department to provide employment to the mother of his bastard child, and then tolerated endless problematic behaviour from that woman at very considerable cost to that woman’s fellow employees and the performance of the office in which she was located. Wouldn’t that meet the criteria for using public office for private gain? Which department? Which officer? Which office?

• ABC: Non-profit, non-partisan initiative offers to train federal politicians in how to do their jobs After the latest round of revelations about politicians abusing their travel entitlements, it’s hard to find anyone with a good word to say about our elected representatives. And there seems to be even less respect for the job they’re supposed to be doing — to make the right policy decisions, even when they’re hard decisions, for the benefit of the country. Indeed, there are plenty of critics of our so-called broken politics — but not too many offering solutions. One organisation, though, is stepping up to the challenge. The non-profit, non-partisan Australian Futures Project is offering to train our federal MPs in how to do their jobs better. It’s even offering an Executive Certificate in Parliamentary Leadership from La Trobe University for those who complete the course.