For true democracy, rules of the game must change
The problem with modern elections is that they are designed to actively prevent community debate about the big issues. It is not an accident, it is not the media’s fault (well not entirely), and it is not the fault of new technology and the 24- hour news cycle. It is simply the consequence of two major parties that are determined to ‘stay on message’. But it doesn’t need to be that way. Imagine if all political parties had to put all of their policies on the table four weeks before the election. Imagine if rather than dribbling little bits and pieces of policy out day after day they instead had to put forward their entire policy agenda at the beginning of the campaign.
Related documents
Between the Lines Newsletter
The biggest stories and the best analysis from the team at the Australia Institute, delivered to your inbox every fortnight.
You might also like
There is no such thing as a safe seat | Fact sheet
A notable trend in Australian politics has been the decline of the share of the vote won by both major parties at federal elections. One effect of this is that there are no longer any safe seats in Australian politics: minor parties and independents win more “safe” seats than they do “marginal” ones. The declining
Eight things you need to know about the Government’s plan to change Australian elections
And eight ideas to improve it
Women still underrepresented in Australian parliaments
The Australia Institute has crunched the data on women’s representation in Australian parliaments.