Government of the people, by the powerbrokers, for the mates
TedMack is credited by Wikipedia as “the only person ever to have been
elected and re-elected as an independent to local, state and federal
government in Australia”. While Mayor of North Sydney (1980-88) Mack
sold the mayoral car and set out to improve accountability. In 1981 he
was elected to the seat of North Sydney in the NSW Legislative Assembly.
He served until 1988 retiring days before he would have qualified for a
parliamentary pension, as a statement against the excesses of public
political office. In 1990 he won the federal seat of North Sydney
defeating the Liberal party incumbent. As an independent he opposed the
Gulf war, the sale of Qantas and the nuclear industry.
This is an excerpt from a speech he presented in October last year titled The State of the Federation. It’s long but worth it. In fact, I would highly recommend reading the whole speech.
“In 1992 the former secretary to the Office of Governor-General, Sir
David Smith, wrote: There is much that is wrong with the way this nation
is governed and administered: never before have we had so many Royal
Commissions and other inquiries; never before have we had so many
office-holders and other figures in, or facing the prospect of prison;
never before have the electors registered their dissatisfaction with the
political process by returning so many independent and minor party
candidates to Parliament.
In the Mackay Report of July 2001, social researcher Hugh Mackay
stated: Australia’s contempt for federal politics and its leaders has
plumbed new depths. If it (the Mackay Report) was a family newspaper, we
would scarcely be able to print the things Australian’s are saying
about their politicians … In the 22 year history of the Mackay Report
political attitudes have never been quite as negative as this.
On 16 June 2013 in The Australian newspaper Tony Fitzgerald QC (who
chaired the 1987 Queensland Royal Commission) wrote an article The Body Politic is Rotten. He stated: “There
are about 800 politicians in Australia’s parliaments. According to
their assessments of each other, that quite small group includes role
models for lying, cheating, deceiving, “rorting”, bullying,
rumour-mongering, back-stabbing, slander, “leaking”, “dog-whistling”,
nepotism and corruption.”
He states in effect, that the dominance of the major parties by
little known and unimpressive faction leaders who have effective control
of Australia’s democracy and destiny… might be tolerable if the major
parties acted with integrity but they do not. Their constant battles for
power are venal, vicious and vulgar.
Over the last 30 years there has been a plethora of minor and major
scandals, misuse of most forms of parliamentary allowances, interstate
travel, overseas travel, telephone allowances, comcars, taxis, air
charters and stamp allowances in addition to the revelations of major
Royal Commissions. It seems that almost anything can and has been
rorted. The number of resignations of ministers of state and federal
parliaments shows that something is wrong with the selection process or
the talent pool. One problem is that the ability to become a cabinet
minister has often nothing to do with ability to be a minister.
The 2010-13 Federal Parliament saw the major parties virtually
eliminate any real form of democratic debate substituting little but
character assassination of opponents. It was a three-year election
campaign of personal abuse and fear mongering. It was debased even
further with aggressive bullying by the media and special interests at
unprecedented levels.
The same period saw both state and federal governments pandering to
special interests allowing massive increases in the promotion of
gambling and alcohol. Pandering to the development and mining industries
and the seemingly endless privatisation of public assets often creating
private monopolies, continued irrespective of public opinion
The last decade has also seen a substantial escalation in the endless
commonwealth-state “turf wars”. This seems to bedevil almost all main
areas of government activities such as health, education, transport,
agriculture and water policy. This massive overlap of functions results
in huge increases in bureaucracy. The expansion of government,
particularly the costs of expanding political staff and salaries, seems
to be in inverse proportion to the levels of public satisfaction.
Recent increases bring the basic salary of the Prime Minister to
$507,000 compared to the American President at $400,000, and the English
Prime Minister at 142,000 pounds. Salary packages for MPs have
escalated at federal level with steady creation of new positions and
extensions of fringe benefits. So much so that only a handful of
backbench members of the government receive the lowest salary package.
State governments have followed suit.
Salary packages for Federal government members now range from around
$325,000 to some $475,000/annum for ministers. However extremely
generous superannuation schemes can effectively double that depending on
age at retirement. For example, recently retired after nine years in
the NSW Upper House, Eric Roozendaal aged 51 receives a pension of
$120,000. This is indexed to future politicians’ salaries. Given his
life expectancy, this works out at around $500,000/year for his nine
years of office. Together with his annual salary he was rewarded with
almost $1,000,000 for each year in parliament. This is for a job that
the officials of political parties can bestow on people with no
experience or qualification.
The ten ex-Prime Ministers and Governors-General each averaged around
$500,000 a year in public costs for 2010-11 or around $10,000 per week
in retirement but the annual appropriation available for the current
Governor-Generals’ office is approaching $13 million.
Over the last 30 years politicians’ staff has increased dramatically.
At federal level there are now some 17 hundred personal staff to
ministers and members. The states probably account for over two thousand
more. Add to this the direct political infiltration of federal-state
public services and quangos with hundreds more jobs for the boys and
girls, there is now a well-established political class.
This has provided the political parties with a career path for
members. In many cases it often produces skilled, partisan, “whatever it
takes” warriors with a richly rewarded life through local state and
federal governments to a well-funded retirement. Unfortunately while
this career path, as Tony Fitzgerald states, does include principled
well-motivated people … it also attracts professional politicians with
little or no general life experience and unscrupulous opportunists,
unburdened by ethics, who obsessively pursue power, money or both.
Since the 1990s there have been endless calls by federal and state
government for increased efficiency, no wage increases unless matched
with productivity, for restructuring, downsizing and deregulation all in
the name of increased competitiveness and facing the international
community in the 21st century. Many thousands of jobs have
disappeared particularly those in federal and state bureaucracies at
middle and lower incomes and in the general workforce.
Now there is little doubt some restructuring of the country is
necessary but it is strange that the political-administrative structure
and the legal system are somehow excluded from any need for reform.
Given both the massive costs and level of public dissatisfaction. It is
surprising that while the media regularly exposes major and minor
political misdemeanours, it rarely proposes any serious need for reform
let alone suggests possible solutions.
Our many publicly funded schools of Government and Politics also seem
to be largely silent on the need for political or constitutional reform
with some individual honourable exceptions.
In an effort to increase public confidence in the political system a
huge amount of legislation has been passed over recent years to
ostensibly promote such things as open government, public participation
and reduced reliance on private donations. Effectively the open
government legislation has mainly meant freedom from information. Even
this year the Labor government and the then opposition quietly combined
to sneak through legislation that completely exempted the three
government departments that supervise the running of the Federal
Parliament from answering Freedom of Information requests.
As for public participation, virtually all government decisions are
made in private by small groups of people who are in many cases not in
parliament. Public funding of elections was first introduced into NSW in
1981 and federally in 1984 on the basis that it would reduce private
donations. Neville Wran presented the Bill and concluded his speech by
saying this Bill will remove the risk of parties selling political
favours and declares to the world that the great political parties of
New South Wales are not up for sale.
Since then an escalating “arms war” of election spending has
developed with public funding steadily increasing and private funding
increasing even faster.
The taxpayer cost of federal elections has increased from $38 million
in 1984 to $161 million in 2010. Of the latter $53 million was public
funding to parties and candidates. Currently, in spite of massive
increases, public funding is less than 20 per cent of about $350 million
total election spending. We are now effectively the second best
democracy money can buy.
There is an overwhelming need to reduce overall election spending.
The United States democracy has been largely destroyed by the huge
amount of money dedicated to this purpose and Australia is accelerating
down the same tollway. Maximum spending limits must be applied to all
elections. At present freedom of speech is only effectively available to
the rich and those using other people’s money. The Electoral Commission
should produce booklets setting out candidates’ biographies and
policies as was done for the 1999 Constitutional Convention elections
with all advertising banned.
Political parties as they have developed over the last century seem
like two mafia families seeking control of the public purse for
distribution to themselves, supporters, the special interests who fund
them and for buying votes at the next election. Political parties are
not mentioned in the Constitution. They are effectively unregulated
private organisations but they now control government treasuries.
When they unite with common interests, for example funding
themselves, the public are mostly powerless except on the rare occasions
when public outrage is too great. For example the attempted 60 million
dollar virtually secret increase in public funding for the parties
earlier this year.
Both parties have rightly suffered huge reductions in membership over
the last few years almost in direct proportion to the centralisation of
power in their organisations. Public election funding and huge
allowances have reduced the party’s need for workers for elections.
Candidates now can rely on direct mail, general advertising and paid
help.
By centralising power as Tony Fitzgerald puts it: The public interest
is subordinated to the pursuit of power, party objectives and personal
ambitions, sometimes including the corrupt acquisition of financial
benefit. Branch stacking has become endemic and as Fitzgerald says “The
parties gift electorates to family connections, malleable party hacks
and mediocre apparatchiks”.
The views of people like retired judge Tony Fitzgerald QC, Hugh
Mackay, possibly Australia’s leading social researcher and Sir David
Smith, Official Secretary to five Governor-Generals, should be taken
seriously. They have a long and rare experience of government in
Australia. Their views are considered and well founded. They demand
examination of the many problems of our system of government in order to
establish directions for reform.
Today the Constitution is not only obsolete but is an expensive
handicap to the wellbeing of Australian society. In essence it was a
parochial compromise between the States based on an amalgamation of the
British system and the American Constitution. We followed English
parliamentary practice but without accepting English traditional
restraints. For example in Westminster the Speaker is fair, in Australia
fair Speakers are quickly dispensed with. The Government must always
win. This is why Question Time in Australia often descends to a
schoolboy rabble. We have a system where the opposition almost always
loses and has virtually no role in legislation. This forces members to
extremes to magnify differences – often reaching levels of mindless
partisanship only seen at football matches.
The two-party system of government and opposition where the
“winner-takes-all” has inevitably resulted in mutual denigration with
little or no sensible parliamentary debate. Frankly, in Australian
parliaments opposition is a form of political death. The thought of it
colours all decision-making. It entrenches the philosophy of “whatever
it takes”. It even means less salary for the members of the opposition –
shock, horror.
The election of governments by parliamentary members in the absence
of fixed terms, means a rigid parliamentary discipline must be enforced
to achieve stability. Extreme partisanship takes over and the public
interest is irrelevant. Parliament can never be a check on executive
government except in rare situations. The domination of parliament by
Executive Government effectively means it is an “elected dictatorship”,
except in the rare cases of hung parliaments.
The two-party system stifles ideas, debate and decision-making within
the parties. The faction system often ensures minority views triumph
within both party rooms. In the case of the government, the minority
view will then be taken into parliament and become an even greater
minority law. Hence the shocking derailing of democratic government in
NSW in 2007-11. Voting within parties is often based on what faction
members belong to, who wants to become or stay a minister or who wants
to be party leader. What the electors think is at best a secondary
consideration. Party members almost always follow the party line and are
often voting against what they really believe or what their electorates
would want
After 112 years the functions of commonwealth and state governments
as well as the financial arrangements are in chaos. It has resulted in
endless dispute, waste and inefficiency between state and federal
governments and their bureaucracies. A century of debate and confusion
over these issues shows that these problems are impossible to resolve
without a rewrite of the constitution.
Electing parliaments by voting for single members then have the
elected members elect a government is a democratic travesty kept alive
by politicians, academia and the press. The single-member electorate
system results in only accidental relationship between seats won and the
total actual votes. For example, the 2012 election in Queensland
produced the bizarre result that the state government won 88 per cent of
seats with 49.7 per cent of the vote. The other 50.3 per cent of voters
were rewarded with 12 per cent of the seats.
This system also largely eliminates minorities unless their vote is
concentrated in particular electorates. That is why such parties as the
Australian Democrats and Greens get almost no lower house seats with
often twice the vote of the National Party, while the latter generally
receives around ten members and three or four ministers and Deputy Prime
Minister.
So why do we keep the single-member electorate system – because only
the major parties can change it. But why should they? It helps preserve
the two-party duopoly. It largely prevents the election of third party
candidates. An incumbent lower house federal candidate today has
effectively $400,000 worth of facilities and money to ward off
challengers. Major parties can transfer a million or so extra dollars
from safe seats if they really want to stop an outsider. It also enables
the government parties to “pork barrel” specific seats. It is hardly an
equal opportunity for challengers whether they are individuals or new
parties.
The Senate is also fundamentally flawed as a democratic organisation.
In each election 42.3 per cent of the vote will elect 50 per cent of
senators in each state for a start. Then there is the voting system that
allows parties to transfer preferences effectively without the voters’
knowledge. We now have some five senators with no democratic legitimacy
all because the major parties are so venal and are prepared to treat
voters as mushrooms to obtain power. It is to Australia’s shame that at
least 99 per cent of voters at the recent elections had no idea where
their Senate vote really went.
The unequal state and arbitrary territory representation is
fundamentally undemocratic. It cannot be democratically acceptable to
have for example, one Hobart vote to be equal to 14 Tenterfield votes or
one Darwin vote worth almost three Bendigo votes when voting on issues
that affect all Australians equally.
As things stand Australian democracy consists of voting in a rigged
system every few years to elect others to make decisions for us. The
voters mostly know little or nothing about most candidates after the
“faceless men” and “branch stackers” have had their way. We are rarely
permitted to have any say on policies. Cabinet ministers, premiers and
prime ministers come and go without reference to us. We go to war and
sign treaties without even our parliament having a say let alone the
public. When the major parties agree, as they do when funding
themselves, and their mutual friends, we have no say whatsoever. It is a
pretty minimalist democracy and a long way from Abraham Lincoln’s
Government of the people, BY the people, for the people.
We seem to have achieved “Government of the people, by the powerbrokers, for the mates”
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