Why Australian leaders don't lead

People seem to be scratching their heads and wondering why the standard of our political debate has reached an embarrassing low and our politicians are unpopular and uninspiring. 

Liberal blames Labor and Labor blames Liberal but our political discourse is only as good as the average of its parts. It takes two to tango.

Maybe the politicians blame their audience. Maybe they think the Australian people are too stupid to understand complex political debate or ideological principals. Well, they’re partly right because compulsory voting means it’s only the disinterested swinging voters who decide our election outcomes. But that’s not the worst of it.

Under compulsory voting our politicians don’t need to inspire people to vote. They don’t need to motivate support from the people. They don’t need to lead, or at least not in the democratic way. Our leaders rely on force to compel people to attend the polling booth whether they support the candidates or not.

This oppressive system leaves us with a large part of the electorate who file into the polling booth like donkeys to avoid a fine.

In democracies around the world, voting is democratic. This means the leaders need to motivate support from the people using peaceful means. Democratic means.

In true democracies, the people hold the supreme power—which means that to earn support leaders must sell themselves and even sell the very notion of democracy, because if they don’t they won’t be elected. A more inspiring candidate could take their place.

It would be better if our leaders needed to inspire & empower people to vote rather than relying on threats and fines.

We’d get better leaders if our decision to vote were democratic.

Jason Kent

Free Our Right To Vote

Comments

[Grantley]

1.

I have to dis-agree (again) Jason. Firstly (after a lot of thought and soul searching) on the issue of non-compulsory voting.
I maintain you would send a louder and clearer message to politicians by turining up to vote and then puting a line through the paper...if the informal vote jumped to 30 or 40% (similar to the non turn out under your scheme)....politicians would be very quickly taking notice.

However that off topic....to your issue of leadership.....again I have to dis-agree. In my humble opinion John Howard showed tremendous leadership, examples: GST, Guns, Industrial relations, Indonesia/Asia relationship, job & wealth creation and debt reduction, to name a few....none of which you have to like....but he took on some truly difficult tasks....is that not leadership?

And then was un-ceremoniously dumped by virtue of a political campaign against him primarily because the media had had enough of him and thought it was time for change.

Thats gone well.

[Georgina]

2.

I have to say that I believe non-compulsory voting is the best way to go. I lived in the UK for 14 years and it was always first past the post. Politicians had to convince the electorate to vote for them by putting down their policies and convincing the electorate to vote for them on those policies. One could only vote at a certain polling booth with a card sent by post, telling one to which to attend The card was stamped and the voting papers given. No one could vote at multi polling stations.

As far as leadership, this is the worst government I have known in my long life time and the sooner they go the better. There is no leadership just a bunch of politicians biting each other, a dictator of a PM, failed policies, dreadful waste of taxpayers' money and utter incompetence. Hopefully they will be gone on 14 September.

[kraka]

3.

Jason-IMHO the large part of reason for lack of leadership is the mainstream press. They attack both parties from the left and seeing as most people get their views and opinions from the nightly news,daily newspapers they are informed from a leftist point of view.

A politician cannot talk about aboriginal issues without fear of being called a racist-by the press.

A politician cannot talk about the science of AGW without being branded a denier who wants to destroy the environment etc etc-by the press.

A great example can be found in todays "womens" poll. Women are still going to vote for Abbott by two to one but are concerned about his views on abortion-huh?
His view is that it should be safe,legal and rare.

Nothing wrong with that-does anyone know what Gillards view on abortion is-I'll bet London to a brick, if pressed, her view will be the same as Abbotts, ditto for Rudd-yet the press will not press her on it.

The media is half the problem-IMHO.

[John Mc]

4.

Could you imagine Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard being the PM of the UK let alone POTUS? We would have to have some of the lowest quality politicians in the First World.

[John Mc]

5.

As good as Howard was by Australian standards he was just another big-government conservative in the British mold who ultimately, by the end of his time, grew government and raised taxes (and new levies). The GSTwas good but could have been simpler, but his great achievement would have been Workchoices which he failed to get over the line. He then refused to move over to let the party move beyond him, costing the Libs any chance of the election and handing victory to the KRudd debacle.

Seriously if this country is going to go anywhere we have to go beyond his backward-looking top-down big-government legacy.

[kraka]

6.

Again though Jmc-as dissapointing as Howard ended, he still had to compete against the press.

If he cuts the public sector of jobs and explains why in terms that are defendable-too much beauracracy, no efficiency, we can't afford it etc-do you think the Canberra press galleries would lead with "Howard does what is right for the country" or "Heartless Howard cuts 20000 Jobs"

Whether you like it or not-a very large percentage of voters are naieve, gullible, self interested idiots (abou 41% according to latest polling).

Until such time as kids are taught self sufficiency from first their parents, and then the teaching fraternity, we will move tirelessly towards larger and larger government and more and more "what will government do for me" voters.

It is depressing but true I'm afraid.

[John Mc]

7.

On the upside, as Europe proves, the system is self-correcting if you let it run far enough. It just means a lot of pain for a lot of people during that correction.

[phil sattler]

8.

is this john mctiernan from the prime ministers office bye bye john

[kraka]

9.

Its taken 30 yrs though John, and nothing in our recent history tells me we learn any quicker from other countries mistakes.

Lets face it-for the last 3 years-Germany, France etal have been back pedaling away from multiculturalism and calling it a failure and still our leaders have not followed suit.Why? Because they are scared of the media head lines.

[Grumpyoldman2]

10.

Rhetorical Headline. There are no leaders in parliament. Whether elected under duress or not, we don’t elect them to be leaders. We elect them to be our representatives in the particular parliament they stand for. None of them are asked to prove leadership qualities or experience when they go for party preselection.
They are supposed to be followers, if anything. Followers of the wishes of their electorate, not dictators of party policies. They can’t see that for our style of party political democracy to be effective, the parties must cooperate to make parliament effective in developing our nation. Now that would be real leadership.

[Selim]

11.

Compulsory voting: a solution to an inability of Politicians to convince the electorate to vote for them. It's a reality despite all the rhetoric of Civic duty. The fact that people are still tricked into casting a validvote (read: Valid vote). I believe that if we are really concerned about making our voices heard, Voluntary voting is the way to go because people can consciously reject the candidates they don't like. It's only a real democracy if you know what you're voting for. Sadly many don't and some simply don't care, so they simply mark preferences for any candidate.