There are many positives, and a few serious naivetes, about the community independents but I don't think you could actually create and run a government (prime minister, other ministers, etc.) in a Westminster style system without the intermediary structural scaffolding of parties. But that doesn't for a moment mean you need a duopoly and majority governments. The ACT did quite well with a shared Labor/Greens government (and things are going a bit backwards since Labor no longer NEEDS to play cooperatively), the Gillard government did quite nicely with agreements with the Greens and independents, and many European countries do just fine with multiple smaller parties (which might be the optimal scale) forming changing alliances and coalitions.
Hi Nick, I'm a first time reader, and thanks for writing a great article.
On Bob Brown's article, you appear to read this differently to me. I took Brown's proposed strategy to be a direct alternative to Andrew Wilkie's "no deals" strategy. If so, that means that the crossbench has at least these two options available to it, and the Greens will take one strategy and the community independents will take the other.
Brown's strategy is of course predicated on a party that expressly gives confidence to the ALP and no confidence to the LNP. And it requires a formal coalition to be formed to govern, which can increase involvement in governing from the crossbench at the cost of some political freedom.
Wilkie's strategy is to vote on everything on its merits. This keeps the crossbench outside of the government, but keeps them entirely free to accept or refuse policy compromises on their communities' behalf.
Both these strategies appear to have their pros and cons, so I don't think one is inherently better than the other. And of course, depending on the results, the major parties might be able to choose who they work with in minority, or one or the other party might be forced to work with both.
Hopefully, in the future the crossbench might get even larger, and then perhaps more forms of cooperative governance might be enabled. A super optimistic view would be a multi-partisan government of the most honest and collaborative MPs available. Maybe something like that could be the best of both worlds, who knows?
It’s Neoliberalism and capitalism that’s broken. Its failure to deliver has broken the backs of many hard working Australians. Firstly, and obviously, the red and blue teams share the same core ideology believing in free markets and trickle down. The blue team just wants to do it with small government and the red team wants a great big government. As anyone with eyes can see, it hasn’t, doesn’t, and isn’t working. UK, fail. USA, fail. NZ, fail. In each of those countries the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. At the same time their political systems are becoming more and more polarising and divisive.
Seriously, look around.
Oh, one of the catalysts behind all of this mess was the financialisation of the housing market which is slowly destroying Australia’s famous egalitarianism. It is a masterstroke of epic stupidity. A house is not a financial instrument, it’s a home where people live their lives. It provides shelter, it’s a human right. It is not an endless, infinite, growth engine.
On the plus side, we do know a couple of things that might help voters. One, more of the same won’t cut the mustard. Two, actions speak louder than words. Apply that thinking to Albo and Dutton and their respective parties and see where your vote leads you. I’m guessing it might just be down a minority track. Good luck Australia.
ALP and LNP are two wings of the same party. I probably don't agree much with you politically, but I agree that we need desperately to break the chokehold of the major party.
That way it will be a battle between Greens/SA/etc and PHON/LP/etc, and we can actually start making some headway. Maybe one of them will get in and completely mess things up, this is how politics is meant to work. A candidate states what they earnestly believe will make the country better, if the people believe them they get a chance, and maybe they mess it up, maybe it all works out, either way we the people get to over time tend toward good governance.
That's what the ALP/LNP uniparty machine has robbed us of. They are not sincere. They are both just vanilla neoliberal nothing parties. Their only issues are patronage and continued power. They run interference for each other, they protect each other.
I suspect nothing short of a cross bench majority will be effective against the LibLabNat Triopoly; their willingness to team up on those big issues should not be underestimated. They are more alike than different. As you say Albanese detests The Greens and so does Dutton and Littleproud; more coal and gas mines is a raised finger to The Greens and Teals and is the result of successful framing of the climate problem as about 'opposing the extremists' instead of facing up to the climate problem. Saving Australia's fossil fuels from global warming one big parties 'unity' vote at a time, yay.
There are many positives, and a few serious naivetes, about the community independents but I don't think you could actually create and run a government (prime minister, other ministers, etc.) in a Westminster style system without the intermediary structural scaffolding of parties. But that doesn't for a moment mean you need a duopoly and majority governments. The ACT did quite well with a shared Labor/Greens government (and things are going a bit backwards since Labor no longer NEEDS to play cooperatively), the Gillard government did quite nicely with agreements with the Greens and independents, and many European countries do just fine with multiple smaller parties (which might be the optimal scale) forming changing alliances and coalitions.
Hi Nick, I'm a first time reader, and thanks for writing a great article.
On Bob Brown's article, you appear to read this differently to me. I took Brown's proposed strategy to be a direct alternative to Andrew Wilkie's "no deals" strategy. If so, that means that the crossbench has at least these two options available to it, and the Greens will take one strategy and the community independents will take the other.
Brown's strategy is of course predicated on a party that expressly gives confidence to the ALP and no confidence to the LNP. And it requires a formal coalition to be formed to govern, which can increase involvement in governing from the crossbench at the cost of some political freedom.
Wilkie's strategy is to vote on everything on its merits. This keeps the crossbench outside of the government, but keeps them entirely free to accept or refuse policy compromises on their communities' behalf.
Both these strategies appear to have their pros and cons, so I don't think one is inherently better than the other. And of course, depending on the results, the major parties might be able to choose who they work with in minority, or one or the other party might be forced to work with both.
Hopefully, in the future the crossbench might get even larger, and then perhaps more forms of cooperative governance might be enabled. A super optimistic view would be a multi-partisan government of the most honest and collaborative MPs available. Maybe something like that could be the best of both worlds, who knows?
It’s Neoliberalism and capitalism that’s broken. Its failure to deliver has broken the backs of many hard working Australians. Firstly, and obviously, the red and blue teams share the same core ideology believing in free markets and trickle down. The blue team just wants to do it with small government and the red team wants a great big government. As anyone with eyes can see, it hasn’t, doesn’t, and isn’t working. UK, fail. USA, fail. NZ, fail. In each of those countries the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. At the same time their political systems are becoming more and more polarising and divisive.
Seriously, look around.
Oh, one of the catalysts behind all of this mess was the financialisation of the housing market which is slowly destroying Australia’s famous egalitarianism. It is a masterstroke of epic stupidity. A house is not a financial instrument, it’s a home where people live their lives. It provides shelter, it’s a human right. It is not an endless, infinite, growth engine.
On the plus side, we do know a couple of things that might help voters. One, more of the same won’t cut the mustard. Two, actions speak louder than words. Apply that thinking to Albo and Dutton and their respective parties and see where your vote leads you. I’m guessing it might just be down a minority track. Good luck Australia.
ALP and LNP are two wings of the same party. I probably don't agree much with you politically, but I agree that we need desperately to break the chokehold of the major party.
That way it will be a battle between Greens/SA/etc and PHON/LP/etc, and we can actually start making some headway. Maybe one of them will get in and completely mess things up, this is how politics is meant to work. A candidate states what they earnestly believe will make the country better, if the people believe them they get a chance, and maybe they mess it up, maybe it all works out, either way we the people get to over time tend toward good governance.
That's what the ALP/LNP uniparty machine has robbed us of. They are not sincere. They are both just vanilla neoliberal nothing parties. Their only issues are patronage and continued power. They run interference for each other, they protect each other.
Step one is to get rid of them.
Bring on the Independents. Time to break the duopoly of seat warmers and vested interests.
I suspect nothing short of a cross bench majority will be effective against the LibLabNat Triopoly; their willingness to team up on those big issues should not be underestimated. They are more alike than different. As you say Albanese detests The Greens and so does Dutton and Littleproud; more coal and gas mines is a raised finger to The Greens and Teals and is the result of successful framing of the climate problem as about 'opposing the extremists' instead of facing up to the climate problem. Saving Australia's fossil fuels from global warming one big parties 'unity' vote at a time, yay.