By Tim Dunlop Friday 17 October 2014

Photo: Whether it's the media or the MPs that trivialise politics isn't the point. The point is it enforces the status quo. (Alan Porritt: AAP)

There are three drivers in Australian politics - the parties, the voting system and the media - that are all connected and self-supporting. And all are conspiring to hollow out our democracy, writes Tim Dunlop.

To listen in on any halfway serious discussion of politics these days is to eavesdrop on a cacophony of dissatisfaction. Issues come and go, but the underlying unease remains no matter how much we vent or how many logical arguments we make about a given issue.

The reason the whole kabuki is so unsatisfactory is because we spend too much time worrying about the day-to-day issues rather than addressing the underlying drivers of our problems.

There are a number of these drivers, but three in particular need our attention if we are ever to move out of the rut we are in. All three are all intimately connected.

The party system

Political scientist Peter Mair said it best in his book, Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy:

The age of party democracy has passed. Although the parties themselves remain, they have become so disconnected from the wider society, and pursue a form of competition that is so lacking in meaning, that they no longer seem capable of sustaining democracy in its present form.

He was talking about Europe, but the same applies here. This is why survey after survey shows people not just alienated from the parties, but from democracy itself. Once, the parties connected us to our sovereignty; now they trade it away to corporations and transnational organisations like the World Bank.

In so doing they compromise their very reason for existing. Economic management is no longer aligned with the will of the people but with demands of global capital. Services - from health to education to unemployment benefits - are reduced in order to fund tax cuts for the wealthy.

The inherent lack of political authority that arises from all this manifests, on the Labor side, in endless leadership changes as they look for a messiah rather than tackle structural reform. On the Coalition side, it increasingly means an obsession with discipline and punishment as they seek relevance in those areas where they still have some traction, such as border control, surveillance, and terrorism.

We, the people, don't so much disengage as despair.

The voting system

Our voting system in the Lower House, the place where government is formed, is specifically designed to channel votes, via the preference system, to the two major parties.

In other words, the method we use for choosing our elected representatives has as its primary feature a mechanism that gives our votes to two of the weakest links in the democratic system. Once, you could argue, preferential voting provided stability. Now it just reinforces mediocrity and rewards stasis.

What about the Senate? The point about the Senate is not that it throws up fringe players, as elites incessantly argue, but that it shows that given the choice (via a different voting system), people almost never choose to give the two major parties outright control. This is not "anti-politics"; it is an indication that people want alternatives. 

The media

Is there an industry democratic citizens ask more of than the media? We expect them to be watchdogs, to hold power accountable, but we steadfastly refuse to pay for the service they provide. And yet, what are they asking us to pay for?

An increasingly debased coverage where analysis is replaced by Photoshop. As revenue dwindles, so does depth and breadth of coverage. But as coverage decays, we are less likely to pay. It's a death spiral. And there is another death spiral, one into which the media and the politicians are locked.

In his book Sideshow, Lindsay Tanner argued that politicians trivialise issues because this is the only way the media will pay any attention. The media argued back that they are simply reporting what the politicians are doing. It's a chicken-and-egg argument, and from a citizen's point of view, it doesn't matter which came first. We all suffer. To quote Anthony Painter from the British think tank, Policy Network:

The modern state is designed around competing elites who are insiders in the system. The electoral system maintains this duopoly. Around this elite contest, a media is constructed and organised, party organisations exist to manufacture majorities to serve it. This system is replicated over time. The state, the party system, the media are all tied together in an enduring status quo.

By the way, complain about journalism and you are likely to hear something to the effect of, "But not all journalists!" True enough, but that cri de coeur misses the point. And that point is: the enduring status quo. The death spiral.

These three areas - the parties, the voting system and the media - all connected and self-supporting, conspire to hollow out our democracy.

It doesn't matter what the day-to-day issues are, each is necessarily dealt with within this degraded environment. Is it any wonder that our frustration is never dissipated?

It is like driving your car on a road full of potholes: you can change cars as often as you like, but until you fix the road, the ride will be bumpy.

Is there a solution? Can we fix something when the tools to do it are the very things causing the problems?

Under such circumstances, there is only one way forward, and it is the same one that has ever got anything done ever: agitate. Fight for your cause, protest, make life uncomfortable for the keepers of the status quo. Demand better tools.

Even that stalwart of conservative British respectability, The Telegraph, ran a piece recently that asked the question: "Why aren't the British middle-classes staging a revolution?" In it, journalist Alex Proud notes:

Our financial elite is now totally out of control. They learned nothing from the crisis, except that the rest of us were stupid enough to give them a second chance. And, now, having plucked all the "low hanging fruit," they're destroying the middle classes for profit.

The point is, our political system is no longer capable of addressing this sort of thing. In fact, it actively encourages it. How long do our elites imagine that that can go on?

Tim Dunlop is the author of The New Front Page: New Media and the Rise of the Audience. He writes regularly for The Drum. You can view his full profile here.

Three things must change for a healthier democracy - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)