The latest Lowy Institute poll contains an alarming statistic for lovers of democracy. Only 39% of young Australians (18 to 29) chose the following statement from a list of three as best representing their opinion: “Democracy is preferable to any other kind of government.”
The two choices they rejected were: “For someone like me, it doesn’t matter what kind of government we have.”
Safe to say the 15% (across all age groups) who ticked that one interpreted “someone like me” as meaning “a complete bonehead”: “In some circumstances, a non-democratic government can be preferable.”
Again, “some circumstances” obviously included events such as the Black Death, Armageddon, or an invasion of gay boat-people as advertised on a poster in Tanya Plibersek’s office. On second thoughts, given the political debate conducted by “straight land-people”, the latter could only be a big improvement.
In older cohorts there were more fans of democracy — 60% of Australians across all age groups still think democracy is preferable to all the other systems.
Of course, in methodological terms, presenting the feckless interviewee with three simple choices skews the result a bit. Support for democracy would be lower in the younger cohorts if the Lowy researchers had included the question: “Should Guy Sebastian rule as almighty King from a throne inside the Opera House?”
But enough jesting. The statement that really should have been on the list is: “Democracy sounds great and I’d really like to try living in one.”
In September last year I looked at this issue by examining the disparity between political party membership rates in China and Australia. The one-party state, to whose teat we are so firmly attached, claims about 6% of its people participate in the democratic votes held at CCP meetings.
In Australia, while something above 90% of voters turn out at state and federal elections, our party membership levels (130,000 in all) are about one tenth the per capita rate seen in China.
After publishing that figure, political operatives from both sides of politics told me with much smirking that the “official” figures I’d added together to come up with that number were grossly inflated.
In short, the number of people putting candidates before the “demos” at election time is very small. Getting the whole country to choose between candidates that have been nominated and preselected by a tiny political elite makes our “democracy” look less than sparkling.
So what’s to be done? Labor’s New South Wales branch is trialling US-style primary elections — starting with the preselection of Labor’s candidate for the Sydney lord mayor election — with some within the party calling to extend the primary system to all preselection races.
Under this system, any voter who is not registered with another political party gets to vote for who should eventually contest a seat at election time.
It sounds much more democratic — not only do the demos choose which of the nominated candidates represents them in Canberra or respective state parliaments, but the people also have the right to say “no” to candidates parachuted in by party power brokers.
This is a particular problem for Labor, whose state and federal executives share the power with affiliated trade unions to overturn any preselection they don’t like. As one of Labor’s biggest power brokers told me last year, it prevents “complete dickheads” being preselected.
Really? The antics in Parliament last week were a good demonstration that several have bypassed this filtering process, matched in at least equal number on the opposition benches.
But let’s stick with Labor for the moment, where the union movement is throwing its weight around on the issue of importing skilled labour to address the nation’s acute shortage of workers with the skills required by the booming resources sector.
Five Western Australian unions have clubbed together to threaten to dump Special Minister of State Gary Gray as preselected candidate for the seat of Brand, if he doesn’t pull his head in and stop supporting the government’s Enterprise Migration Agreements visa program.
Those unions represent their (dwindling) membership bases, but they don’t represent the people of Brand. Democracy, again, is on the rocks.
And all of this in a party who’s parliamentary leader, Julia Gillard, concluded a woefully undemocratic deal in 2010 with BHP, Rio Tinto and Xstrata to water down Kevin Rudd’s original mining tax. The “people” she was representing then were desperate Labor Party MPs, not the demos.
But will Labor with primary elections be any better? The most commonly raised objection is that primaries favour celebrity candidates (didn’t we get those in 2007 with Peter Garrett and Maxine McKew?) or candidates whose primary campaign resources come from rich benefactors — who want policy assurances in return.
“Lobby against the mining tax,” a benefactor might say, “and I’ll help you win preselection.”
Again, given the history of the RSPT/MRRT, it’s hard to see how Labor’s shift to a primary system would change very much at all.
*This article was first published at Business Spectator
It just might be that the 15% or so of young people who thought democracy was not necessarily the best way intuited probably correctly that our democratic processes afforded them as good as no possibility to influence decisions taken that will influence their lives. What about their ability to vote? I’m 65 and I suggest that our vote only helps to decide which politicians are told what to do by which members of the group of unelected wielders of economic power that so strongly influence our collective future. Rather than brushing them aside, perhaps the 15% should be taken as a warning that something is seriously wrong with our democratic processes. Labor’s experiment with primaries means only that some candidates are chosen by a group already considerably smaller (and still shrinking) than a modestly successful AFL club.
Do they “hate democracy”? Or just not understand that it’s more than just some “two-horse popularity race”?
Consider our “views” environment – dumbing down by an unbalanced media dominated by a political player = “Conditioning”?
Democracy really doesn’t work – especially with just two parties and for mine compulsory voting – it is much democratic to let the public to decide if they want to vote rather than force them to – i think we would get a much better public debate if such was implemented.
also right now – and on both sides of the fence – the quality of leadership and policy debate is rock bottom – we need strong leadership – little wonder there is disillusionment out there about democracy – but the alternatives could be a lot worse – better the devil you know!
Anyone who thinks putting the proposition “Should Guy Sebastian rule as almighty King from a throne inside the Opera House?” would lower support for democracy amongst the young has no business commenting on the views of the youth of today. Or anything else for that matter. Ever.
I wouldn’t accuse most young people of wasting good partying time to stock up on a decent sample of the interactions of historical events with national and other group cultures and pretty well invariable aspects of human nature but, strictly speaking, it is surely true that “In *some* circumstances, an non-democratic government can be preferable”. Even supposing you are excluding the remoter past when most people were illiterate and a democratic Confederacy would have gone on maintaining slavery when the old aristocratic constitutional monarchy they had got rid of in the 1770s would have already abolished slavery you can’t really set aside Hitler’s Germany where he was elected and re-elected by the demos. Even Queen Victoria’s idiot grandson little Willie and his Prussian Junkers would have been more civilised.
As for the “boneheads” who didn’t think the form of government mattered to them, the author lacks imagination. For a smart egoist the reasoning could be “just let me work out what the rules are from time to time and who has power and I’ll find a way of making it all work for me – especially relative to the way that it works for everyone else in what I see as a highly competitive state of existence. As someone has already pointed out, the response is in fact much more likely to be just a way of indicating “a plague on all their houses”.