In what should come as a surprise to absolutely no-one in the entire nation there’s some less than positive results in a new joint study by the Museum of Australian Democracy and the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis at the University of Canberra on ten years of attitudes toward the way democracy works in Australia.
And the gist of it is this: more than half of our proud, sea-girt nation are over it.
Australia, 2007-present.
The decline in faith in our central institution has been stunning, though.
In 2007 – the year Labor’s Kevin Rudd won a landslide federal victory which ended the eleven year rule of the Coalition under John Howard – 86 per cent of Australians were satisfied with the way democracy worked in Australia.
In 2010, though – after Rudd was replaced by Julia Gillard and the recriminations were beginning to kick in – that number had dropped to 72 per cent. Still good, but that’s a big drop.
There it hovered for three years until 2013, the year Rudd came back and was then beaten by the Coalition and Tony Abbott. After that, the percentage of happy Australians went into freefall.
In fact, thanks to the less-than-entirely-productive governments of the Abbott/Malcolm Turnbull/ Scott Morrison years, Australia’s zeal for government is now sitting at a disturbingly low 41 per cent.
However, participants were also asked what would give them more faith in democracy – and the suggestions are all pretty awesome.
1: limiting money donated to parties and spent in elections;
2: the right for voters to recall ineffective local MPs;
3: giving all MPs a free vote in parliament;
4: co-designing policies with ordinary Australians; and
5: citizen juries to solve complex problems that parliament can’t fix.
So it sounds like Australians have some ideas of what sort of democracy would work. Even if the government appears not to.
cough *federal ICAC* cough.
In the meantime, can’t we institute a radocracy, under which Australia is governed by the most rad people?
It’s no dumber than what we’ve got, and would at least be a real conversation starter at international summits where participants are wondering who the hell our PM is.
As Australia's fifth prime minister since 2013, Scott Morrison could probably forgive German Chancellor Angela Merkel for doing some quick study before their first meeting.https://t.co/VJxsX0Ud1d
— VG (@vg123e) December 3, 2018