Australia: democracy in decline

Who are we?      We are ordinary Australians of diverse political backgrounds who are VERY concerned about what is happening to our democratic process, descending as it is - as veteran political commentator Rob Chalmers observes - into an elected dictatorship.

This trend is true for Local, State as well as Federal governments. No party is immune, and it seems the longer in power, the greater the corruption of the democratic ideal - government of the people, by the people, for the people. Poor process, political donations, presidential-style campaigning and leadership, centralisation of power, and 'consultation' reduced to selling decisions already made, shows power indeed corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

New South Wales is of particular current concern.

What do we believe?      We believe an informed and involved electorate will find better solutions than some elite group who feel only they know what is best. We believe our Aussi complacency has allowed political deception to become the norm. We believe we need a new political culture beyond ideological left versus right, tit for tat, micro managed spin politics that appeals to our fears or back pocket for votes.

These are difficult times for Australia - truly major decisions need to be taken for our future and they need to be made with the full participation of all Australians. Our inspiration for participatory and deliberative democracy comes from traditional Aboriginal political culture, the principles of respect, and dialoguing through issues on the basis of shared values - represented in our AIC logo 

So what are our policies?      We formed in 1994 in NSW out of concern for the erosion of democracy in Australia. We are not a political party trying to win government in the House of Representatives. Our focus is on process. We want the Senate to work as an independent house of review and public input, and to work well.

So what is your role as a member?      As a member you contribute to debate on issues online via our members forum. We also network with grassroots groups who have a track record of making a difference. We will process all legislation by 5 tests:

• Integrity in the process:      open, transparent and accountable government

• Sustainability:       environmental, social, economic - the triple bottom line

• Fairness:       city and country, mainstream and vulnerable, employer and employee

• Dealing with historical injustices:       beginning with Aboriginal Australians

• Building community:       family, neighbourhood, nation and world

Much recent legislation would fail one or more of these tests. Watershed legislation should go to a referendum, utilising the media to put the debate.

Our urgent need is for democracy – it is not what we have now. Today we see an unprecedented centralisation of power taking place - within politics, corporations, the media – away from the ordinary person. We need to re-engage with the political process to restore:

confidence in parliament... did you know...

• crossing the floor can mean expulsion or party censoring.
• in 2006 Senate committees, where legislation is reviewed in detail and public input made, were slashed from 16 to 10.
• the real decisions are made behind closed doors, especially in the case where both houses are controlled by one party – as now.

Parliament must be restored to its true function as the place of debate.

confidence in the political process... did you know... 

• the main funding source for both major parties is corporations/developers.
• since 2005 donations not needing declaration have increased many-fold.
• hundreds of thousands of voters will be disenfranchised in the 2007 elections due to the week of grace to register being removed.
• since 2000 there has been very serious erosion of freedom of speech. Australia now rates 35th, behind Bolivia. There are 500 prohibitions on freedom of speech, and 1,000 court supression orders at any given moment, up from 100 ten years ago.

• our democracy is in serious jeopardy from reduced Senate debate; politicisation of the public service, military and intelligence; increased restrictions on press and academic freedoms; financial manipulation of NGOs and universities; political appointments and character assassinations; los of a sense of ownership of the political process. 

Martin Luther King said ‘The ends are pre-eminent in the means’. Transparent, open and accountable process alone produces the best outcomes for all.

confidence in politicians… our need is not for more polished performers. We need statesmen and women of vision, free from the fear of party censorship, or favour to repaying old debts.

confidence in the ordinary citizen… we can make a difference. In the words of Vaclev Havel, imprisoned for his stand and later President of Czechoslovakia, ‘…a single seemingly powerless person who dares to cry out the word of truth and to stand behind it with all his person and all his life, has surprisingly greater power, though formerly disenfranchised, than do thousands of anonymous voters.”

confidence in Australia… we are not destined to be subservient followers of any nation, but setting a world lead by our example.

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	Climate change ...the crisis of policy short-termism

 

As Australians the bigness of climate change confronts our smallness, our short-term thinking - and living. What confronts us is a challenge that requires a fundamental change in direction, something more than rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

The AIC believes to respond adequately we all must grow…

bigger than our consumerism… our pursuit of wealth and possessions for their own sake. There is enough for everyone’s need, but not greed.

bigger than our denial… Solzhenitsyn back in 1973 said our obsession with ‘endless progress’ was a blind dash into a dead-end alley. Global warming is but one symptom of a breakdown in the eco-systems that support life.

In Australia, once a leader in renewable technology, we have lost at least a decade. As Californian Republican Governor Arnold Schwartznegger said in 2005, ‘I say the debate is over – we know the science, we see the threat, and time for action is now.”

bigger than our ideology… the left-right antagonisms of a past era. Climate change is bigger than ‘only we know best’. The environment is no-one’s sole claim. In the words of the British conservative party, what we are seeing is nothing less than the ‘green industrial revolution.’

bigger than government… Only government sets targets. Only government legislates incentives and priorities. Only government regulates initiatives. Yet government is not god. The market and individual response are crucial.

bigger than markets… carbon trading is but one enormous potential for markets to drive greenhouse gas reduction, the possibilities as numerous as they are innovative. Yet markets also are not god. Markets fail to address the needs of all those outside the market, who have no purchasing power (most of Africa). Markets can also be distorted by government protection and trans-national corporate greed.

bigger than institutions… the ultimate driver behind change is the individual, the power of one. Change starts with me, right where I am.

bigger than Australia… we live in a global village.
 

	Test two for all legislation: is it sustainable?

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Australia - the land of the ‘fair go? Richard Eckersley in ‘Measuring Progress' (1998) tells us: "8 in 10 (Australians) said they would prefer a greener, more stable society, where the emphasis is on cooperation, community and family, a more equal distribution of wealth, and a greater economic self-sufficiency." – all aspects embodied in traditional Aboriginal cultures, a community who today die seventeen years before the rest.

Historically both Labor and Liberal had founding visions centred on a ‘fair go’ for the ordinary person - Labor to stand up for and assist the disenfranchised; Liberal to create opportunity to better oneself. Both, at best, incorporated something of each, yet arguably those visions have been compromised through pursuit of power.

The AIC believes the principle of fairness must underlie all policy….

fair to country and city… economic value is not the only measure of worth. Rural and regional communities are suffering greatly from diminished health and other services, drought, and population decline. Markets alone cannot address all the needs of such towns with their ‘uneconomic’ isolation and smallness. Proactive government policy action is essential. Cities meanwhile are crying out for a sustainable urban development framework.

fair to vulnerable and mainstream…  The mainstream seems to be prosperous, but hidden are the unprecedented, unsustainable levels of personal debt. Our national debt has reached 60% of GDP. Side by side with this are those locked out of the economic good times, the capital poor who do not have the resources invest in shares or to buy property. The result has been a massive wealth shift to the ‘haves’.

fair to employee and employer… in a framework that embraces, not demonises, all the players: individual workers, unions, small business, corporations, government. In our global economy, corporate structure necessitates maximising shareholder return. Yet for true fairness the first obligation cannot be to shareholders in isolation, who have no liability for decisions made, but to the stake-holders of any nation’s future – all its citizens, and especially its children.

fair to local government, states and Commonwealth… the Federal Government has an increasing abundance of revenue while most states, and most local governments, are struggling to provide our basic social infrastructure: health, education, police, roads.

fair to our global village and Australia… It is not fair Australia with most of the third world faces a level playing field for manufactures, but not agriculture. It is also not fair Africa, the continent of slavery, has more money leaving by way of debt repayments than goes in through aid and investment. The poorest of the poor are still subsidising the rich – us. Australia's 0.3% of GDP aid contribution falls well short of the 0.7% target.

	Test three for all legislation: is it fair?

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	Historical injustice ...the crisis of denial

Jefferson, U.S. founding father and slave-owner, penned the words ‘all men are created equal’. Most nations have a story of themselves that is less than the whole story. The AIC shares Australian historian Inga Clendinnen’s concern that when you “teach grown men and women a nursery version of their history…(you make) babies of them when it comes to grasping the workings of their own society, and of their nation and wider world.”

For Australia’s future to unfold our denial needs to be addressed…

addressing our indigenous history denial… the path to Australia’s future passes through its past. The only people who could welcome us to this country, we profoundly rejected along with 60,000 years of culture and learning - through massacres, the stolen generations, shunned war veterans, trying to ‘fix them’ – leading in many communities to despairing self-rejection. This denial is foundational to all our Australian denials. The AIC consciously draws on Aboriginal culture as a source of inspiration for future directions.

addressing our racial denial…  those from colonial times excluded from the great Australian ‘fair go for all’ – Chinese, ‘Afghans’, ‘Kanaks’, a blindness leading to later trauma for each new wave of immigrants.

addressing our class and gender denial… failing to own the brutal convict culture as part and parcel of the new Australia, ignoring subsequent have/have not divides.

addressing our foreign policy denial… our poor judgements in WW I, East Timor, Vietnam, Iraq through not reading the true nature of events because of our fears, our demonising those who disagreed or were different.

addressing the roots of terrorism denial… the legacy of our own very troubled history of Western involvement in the Middle East. We feared communism, and now terrorism, but the ultimate enemy of any civilisation is within.
 
addressing our denial of the good… the legacy of all the many of all backgrounds who refused to be silent in the face of injustice, who created community, who sought to improve life for their families, who lived and died with courage, who refused to give up, who were not afraid to move beyond the blindnesses of their age.

We will seek to know and acknowledge our historical responsibilities, starting with an apology to Aboriginal people. We believe time and money – and human life – can be saved, and solutions made possible, simply through such acknowledgement, saving us from repeating the tragedies of the past.

	Test four for all legislation: have historical injustices been addressed?

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Community creation  ...the crisis of relationship breakdown

What marks a truly successful country - an increasing share index? But what about a quality of relationships index? Margaret Thatcher may have said there is no such thing as society, only individuals, but every individual is formed and shaped through relationships with others.

Community is built over time through relationships of trust. Nothing is quite like me-first consumerism for undoing community. We all are on a community journey – from apathy about others, to ‘let’s fix the problem' sympathy, to empathy, that fairly rare ability to try to walk in another’s shoes.

creating community starts with the family… our family is our first community, the cornerstone community of any society.

It is not rocket science to see that when families break apart, society break-up follows. Dealing with the pressures on families needs to be a policy priority, whilst at the same time supporting early enough those damaged through family distress. The cost otherwise is incalculable, both in human and economic terms. Such hidden social costs need to be factored into all economic policy.

creating community reaches out to the other… our multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-cultural national family. Australia has a unique chance to show how people of different backgrounds can live and work together for the common good. Respect for the other, and genuine dialogue, replace scapegoating minority groups - a tragic pattern throughout history. The role of schools; religious, social, sport bodies; and voluntary work in community creation is vital.

Again the foundational relationship for all Australians is with the Aboriginal people.

creating community embraces our vulnerable… the integrity of  any society is shown by the way it values its vulnerable: the young, elderly, sick, depressed, homeless, unemployed, dispossessed, those caught in addictions.

creating community embraces our global village… we live also in a global family. As Australians most of us are in a very privileged position. Many of our global brothers and sisters are suffering terribly. Not to listen, not to care, diminishes us all as human beings. Australia has particular geographic, historical, and economic relationships and responsibilities embracing both developed and developing nations. Our ultimate best defense is the goodwill of our neighbours.

	Test five for all legislation: does it build community?

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