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.