Protecting our democracy by reforming Parliament
Protecting our democracy by reforming Parliament
Former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer puts forward 12 reforms of Parliament that would help restore and strengthen our democracy
He makes a lot of good points. I seem to recall having discussions here on Lemmy about some of these, but the details are lost in my memory.
For the proposal to require registration of lobbying and limit individual donations - why do we allow companies to lobby at all?
Indeed. Might be worth mentioning Lobbying is not limited to corporations of course, but special interest groups, advocacy etc. No fear for those groups having their work on public record along with the corpos and who they met with, assuming nothing nefarious is going on. The more out in the open the better.
I’m a fan of more civics education as well.
Yeah, I think the most well known group is probably the Taxpayers Union, which allows people to donate to right wing parties without their name on the record. Over the years my opinion has been growing in the direction of banning all political donations and bumping up the public money given to political parties. The devil is in the detail but it seems better than allowing companies to donate millions.
I’m a fan of more civics education as well.
Yes, I like this idea as well. The proposal was clear this is about how the government system works, rather than about individual political parties, which I think is a good thing. I've got to be honest, I've read about our three branches of government time and time again and yet I still have to look it up each time it's mentioned - and it's not even complicated 😆
These items are a nice proposal, but unfortunately it's not anyone with the power to change things. Hopefully the various items will get picked up by future governments.
Something that's not on the list, and in my view should be, is either lowering the threshold for a party to enter parliament, or switching to a transferable vote for the party vote.
The current system makes it very difficult for another party to enter parliament, TOP have been trying for how long now?
To me, this is critical must-have if the term is extended. Extending it without this is practically locking in the current parties.
Oh yes, one of the recommendations from the review... 5... (10?) years ago, was to lower the threshold to 4%. That never happened for some reason.
Don't want to put the ladder down.
TOP have been trying since 2016, so three elections....
I voted for them each time. Evidence based policy, it really is what we need.