The Victorian Government has recently launched an advertising campaign aimed at seatbelt awareness, using testimonies from car accident victims and those gory accident recreations they like to do. The whole reason for this is that 40 years ago, the Victorian Government was the first in the world to make seatbelt wearing mandatory. They play this message at the end of those ads, as if to brag, using, "40 years ago, something clicked," as the tag line.
As an avid opponent of the idea of a "nanny state", these ads annoy me incredibly. It should not be considered an achievement to have to force people to be safe in their cars. It should be considered an educational failure. Unfortunately, this is just one example of many paternalisms which the state and federal governments have inflicted on the people. I will continue to maintain that as long as these laws and policies are in effect, that we are not living in a free society. It's time people woke up to this fact and started doing something about it.
Sunday, 29 August 2010
Sunday, 22 August 2010
Hung Parliament
With yesterday's likely result being a hung parliament, the people of Australia have sent a massive message to the two major parties. They're not going to stand for backroom deals by faceless men, religious fundamentalism, shallow politicians, nanny state policies, or fascism. They can't continue to treat the Australian public like children (and that's far from hyperbole), and they surely have to realise that now.
Hopefully the parties will hear this message and smarten up their policy making, otherwise we may be in for more than a little swing in votes.
Hopefully the parties will hear this message and smarten up their policy making, otherwise we may be in for more than a little swing in votes.
Friday, 20 August 2010
The Election
Tomorrow is the day where the Australian public is forced to choose between two parties, both of which are corrupt policy failures, and are generally hated. Of course, one of them will win, despite the fact that there are more than 50 other political parties, and a whole raft of independants. They like to project the image that they only have one opposition (which is exactly what they were doing by not inviting Bob Brown to any of their debates or forums), which helps keep Australians ignorant to the fact that they actually do have a choice.
The main factor that precipitates this happening is this utterly demoralising, defeatist attitude that most people have when it comes to politics. Everyone I meet seems to be a cynic, and that's only compounded by the fact that our former government and opposition are utterly corrupt, and morally bankrupt. This is the most frustrating thing, especially when you realise that the only reason that people are cynical, is because people are cynical. Change can happen, and as cliche as it sounds, you just have to believe that it can happen.
That being said, my prediction is that Julia will win. Why? She's the only candidate with ovaries.
The main factor that precipitates this happening is this utterly demoralising, defeatist attitude that most people have when it comes to politics. Everyone I meet seems to be a cynic, and that's only compounded by the fact that our former government and opposition are utterly corrupt, and morally bankrupt. This is the most frustrating thing, especially when you realise that the only reason that people are cynical, is because people are cynical. Change can happen, and as cliche as it sounds, you just have to believe that it can happen.
That being said, my prediction is that Julia will win. Why? She's the only candidate with ovaries.
Sunday, 15 August 2010
Debut Part 2
My last post was dedicated to the flaws of our constitution, but I don't think I really covered my views on our political system fully enough, so I'm going try and fill those gaps with this post.
Along with our various Constitutional flaws, there are also more ingrained flaws. Flaws that we take as given in a political system. Namely: Politicians. Not that politicians in themselves are the flaw, mind you. The way they act is the reason I so completely loathe them.
We all know to never trust a politician. All they ever do is lie and cheat, just so they can get your vote, stay in power, and do the whole thing over again. It's got no end purpose, it's just a perpetual motion machine. We all know this to be true and it disgusts me that people can be so selfish and arrogant in the first place. But it disgusts me more that we just lay down and accept it.
There is the overarching feeling in this, and other democracies, that the people work for the government. This couldn't be further from the truth. The exact reverse is what is actually true, or at least what should be true in a healthy democracy. The word democracy is derived from the Greek "demos", meaning people, and "kratos" meaning power. Literally, power to the people. How can a government which controls it's citizens be called democratic? Once we break down this way of thinking, we can start to take back our political system for ourselves.
Another thing we often take as given is the way our parliament works. We elect a specific member to represent our electorate, in our case one of 150, to make decisions based on the wishes of that electorate. Sounds fine, right? Well, political parties make that almost impossible. You see, a political party will decide which way it wants to vote on a bill, and then instruct all it's members to vote that way. They're not legally bound to, of course. That is unless they're in the Labor Party. The ALP is so strict on floor crossers, that the last two Labor MPs to cross the floor - senator George Georges in 1986 and Graeme Campbell MP in 1988 - were both suspended from the party for their actions.The most adequate description of this policy I can think of is fascist. Continuing to accept such norms may very likely result in Australia becoming the next Third Reich. When you take into account the recent actions of the ALP power brokers in firing Kevin Rudd, placing a lovable, motherly (Fuhrer?) figurehead in Julia Gillard at the helm, and the fact that Labour plans to censor the Internet, this seems like the only logical destination.
Something I 've taken special note of during this election campaign is the distinct lack of positivity in that two main parties' advertisements. All the ALP seems to be able to come up with is, "Don't vote for Tony Abbott, he'll bring back the Howard years!", and all the Liberals seems to be able to come up with is, "Labour hasn't changed, they're wasting $100,000,000 a day," and "We're going to stop the evil boat people, so you'd better vote for us." It's this kind of bullshit fear mongering that the Nazi Party used to get into power. "We're going to stop the evil Communists", etc. Nothing at all about policy. Perhaps because they know that under any scrutiny, their policies will fall down like a tower of cards in a light breeze.
How can we call our country a democracy when the government controls it's people, the parliament represents the parties, and the leader's rule through fear? It sounds more like the Third Reich to me, and as long as we keep accepting these practises, then that's the only way I can see it turning out.
Along with our various Constitutional flaws, there are also more ingrained flaws. Flaws that we take as given in a political system. Namely: Politicians. Not that politicians in themselves are the flaw, mind you. The way they act is the reason I so completely loathe them.
We all know to never trust a politician. All they ever do is lie and cheat, just so they can get your vote, stay in power, and do the whole thing over again. It's got no end purpose, it's just a perpetual motion machine. We all know this to be true and it disgusts me that people can be so selfish and arrogant in the first place. But it disgusts me more that we just lay down and accept it.
There is the overarching feeling in this, and other democracies, that the people work for the government. This couldn't be further from the truth. The exact reverse is what is actually true, or at least what should be true in a healthy democracy. The word democracy is derived from the Greek "demos", meaning people, and "kratos" meaning power. Literally, power to the people. How can a government which controls it's citizens be called democratic? Once we break down this way of thinking, we can start to take back our political system for ourselves.
Another thing we often take as given is the way our parliament works. We elect a specific member to represent our electorate, in our case one of 150, to make decisions based on the wishes of that electorate. Sounds fine, right? Well, political parties make that almost impossible. You see, a political party will decide which way it wants to vote on a bill, and then instruct all it's members to vote that way. They're not legally bound to, of course. That is unless they're in the Labor Party. The ALP is so strict on floor crossers, that the last two Labor MPs to cross the floor - senator George Georges in 1986 and Graeme Campbell MP in 1988 - were both suspended from the party for their actions.The most adequate description of this policy I can think of is fascist. Continuing to accept such norms may very likely result in Australia becoming the next Third Reich. When you take into account the recent actions of the ALP power brokers in firing Kevin Rudd, placing a lovable, motherly (Fuhrer?) figurehead in Julia Gillard at the helm, and the fact that Labour plans to censor the Internet, this seems like the only logical destination.
Something I 've taken special note of during this election campaign is the distinct lack of positivity in that two main parties' advertisements. All the ALP seems to be able to come up with is, "Don't vote for Tony Abbott, he'll bring back the Howard years!", and all the Liberals seems to be able to come up with is, "Labour hasn't changed, they're wasting $100,000,000 a day," and "We're going to stop the evil boat people, so you'd better vote for us." It's this kind of bullshit fear mongering that the Nazi Party used to get into power. "We're going to stop the evil Communists", etc. Nothing at all about policy. Perhaps because they know that under any scrutiny, their policies will fall down like a tower of cards in a light breeze.
How can we call our country a democracy when the government controls it's people, the parliament represents the parties, and the leader's rule through fear? It sounds more like the Third Reich to me, and as long as we keep accepting these practises, then that's the only way I can see it turning out.
Debut
Now that I've resurrected my blog, I may as well give people a reason to read it. These are sort of my overarching views on the Australian political system. Enjoy.
Our political system is almost irrepairably flawed, which is entirely unsurprising considering the level of interest afforded to it by most people in this country, and particularly young people. There are the usual suspects, corrupt politicians, the aforementioned uninterested voters, both of which are taken as given when it comes to politics, but there are some other, subtler, aspects of our political system which might not initially come to mind.
Our Constitution is inadequate. In fact, it's so completely flawed as to deny us many of the rights that we take for granted, and are taken for granted in other countries. For instance: we do not explicitly have the right to free speech. The closest we get to that is an implied right to freedom of political communication. The High Court decided, in the case of Australian Capital Television Pty. Ltd. v. The Commonwealth that the right to freedom of political communication is implied, since an open political forum is vital to an informed vote, it is an essential part of an effective representative government. The problems with this are a) the High Court could change that at any time, and we'd be left with state sponsored censorship and b) even if the High Court doesn't suddenly go all Stalin on us, that right only extends to political communication. That essentially means the media's reporting on the political news, and debate on such matters, etc. I do not have the right to speak my mind on, say, religious matters, or philosophical ones. The only reason it's generally accepted is because our politicians gift them to us, but only out of wanting to be seen as a true democracy. That's not the kind of country I want to be living in. The second we get a government that decides it wants a tighter grip on what the people say, then there's nothing stopping them from doing that.
And then, we have these meaningless power struggles between our state and federal parliaments. To clarify, let me say that the individual state parliaments and governments are an utterly redundant form of governance. The states were born out of greed. The governments of the original colonies didn't want to lose the power they had, so come federation, they lobbied for, and were granted certain concessions. They were allowed to keep their existing parliaments and governments, constitutions and most of their powers. They are at worst, a level of bureaucracy created by power hungry men, for power hungry men, and at best, a superfluous holdover from a bygone era. Their continued existence is nothing but a sham.
Then we have the only-half-thought-through "right" to vote. It's not a right. It's an obligation. Sure, it sounds like a good idea at first. How else do you get an accurate representation of what every voter wants? Really, what it does is provide a warped representation of society's wishes, always skewed in favour of the two major parties. An undecided voter under the compulsory voting system will do one of two things: 1) vote informal, in which case he's just wasted 15 minutes of his time, or 2) he'll vote for one of the two major parties, in this case, either Labour or Liberal. This means that those parties don't have to spend as much effort on policy making, or good governance, because they know they can count on the corrupt political system to save them. You cannot force freedom onto someone.
Of course, the problem with those issues is that they are constitutional. The only way they can be changed is via a referendum, which are notoriously failure prone. Out of the 44 referendums in Australia's history, only eight have been approved. You need both houses of parliament to approve the amendments, as well as a majority of the citizens in a majority of the states, and a majority of citizens overall. This is why we'll likely never see the large scale changes we need to see in order for our political system to become *slightly* less corrupt.
That was a brief introduction to my political views. Please, I encourage anyone who bothered to read that to leave feedback, and help me on my continued quest for self improvement.
Our political system is almost irrepairably flawed, which is entirely unsurprising considering the level of interest afforded to it by most people in this country, and particularly young people. There are the usual suspects, corrupt politicians, the aforementioned uninterested voters, both of which are taken as given when it comes to politics, but there are some other, subtler, aspects of our political system which might not initially come to mind.
Our Constitution is inadequate. In fact, it's so completely flawed as to deny us many of the rights that we take for granted, and are taken for granted in other countries. For instance: we do not explicitly have the right to free speech. The closest we get to that is an implied right to freedom of political communication. The High Court decided, in the case of Australian Capital Television Pty. Ltd. v. The Commonwealth that the right to freedom of political communication is implied, since an open political forum is vital to an informed vote, it is an essential part of an effective representative government. The problems with this are a) the High Court could change that at any time, and we'd be left with state sponsored censorship and b) even if the High Court doesn't suddenly go all Stalin on us, that right only extends to political communication. That essentially means the media's reporting on the political news, and debate on such matters, etc. I do not have the right to speak my mind on, say, religious matters, or philosophical ones. The only reason it's generally accepted is because our politicians gift them to us, but only out of wanting to be seen as a true democracy. That's not the kind of country I want to be living in. The second we get a government that decides it wants a tighter grip on what the people say, then there's nothing stopping them from doing that.
And then, we have these meaningless power struggles between our state and federal parliaments. To clarify, let me say that the individual state parliaments and governments are an utterly redundant form of governance. The states were born out of greed. The governments of the original colonies didn't want to lose the power they had, so come federation, they lobbied for, and were granted certain concessions. They were allowed to keep their existing parliaments and governments, constitutions and most of their powers. They are at worst, a level of bureaucracy created by power hungry men, for power hungry men, and at best, a superfluous holdover from a bygone era. Their continued existence is nothing but a sham.
Then we have the only-half-thought-through "right" to vote. It's not a right. It's an obligation. Sure, it sounds like a good idea at first. How else do you get an accurate representation of what every voter wants? Really, what it does is provide a warped representation of society's wishes, always skewed in favour of the two major parties. An undecided voter under the compulsory voting system will do one of two things: 1) vote informal, in which case he's just wasted 15 minutes of his time, or 2) he'll vote for one of the two major parties, in this case, either Labour or Liberal. This means that those parties don't have to spend as much effort on policy making, or good governance, because they know they can count on the corrupt political system to save them. You cannot force freedom onto someone.
Of course, the problem with those issues is that they are constitutional. The only way they can be changed is via a referendum, which are notoriously failure prone. Out of the 44 referendums in Australia's history, only eight have been approved. You need both houses of parliament to approve the amendments, as well as a majority of the citizens in a majority of the states, and a majority of citizens overall. This is why we'll likely never see the large scale changes we need to see in order for our political system to become *slightly* less corrupt.
That was a brief introduction to my political views. Please, I encourage anyone who bothered to read that to leave feedback, and help me on my continued quest for self improvement.
Saturday, 14 August 2010
My underwhelming return to blogging.
So, I used to blog on a site called Whitepage, before it got renamed or changed or something. Now for some reason it's here, and I've got the urge to get it going again now that I've formed some opinions.
I'll start by telling you a little bit about myself. I live in Werribee, Victoria, I come from a working class family, I'm agnostic, I'm unsure about whether eating meat can be considered ethical and am very opinionated.
I'm straight out of high school, last year, and I'm now studying Jazz at Gordon TAFE in East Geelong. I don't know if that's what I want to do, though. I recently aquired an interest in journalism, which is part of the reason why I decided to resurrect this blog. I generally have a "wait and see" kind of attitude towards my long term future.
I expect this blog to become a repository of editorials, opinions and hopefully some good arguments. Until then, see you around.
As if anyone read that....
I'll start by telling you a little bit about myself. I live in Werribee, Victoria, I come from a working class family, I'm agnostic, I'm unsure about whether eating meat can be considered ethical and am very opinionated.
I'm straight out of high school, last year, and I'm now studying Jazz at Gordon TAFE in East Geelong. I don't know if that's what I want to do, though. I recently aquired an interest in journalism, which is part of the reason why I decided to resurrect this blog. I generally have a "wait and see" kind of attitude towards my long term future.
I expect this blog to become a repository of editorials, opinions and hopefully some good arguments. Until then, see you around.
As if anyone read that....
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