What would be required for Australia to change to an electronic democracy?

So they would probably be ice skating in Hades before it happened but as a thought experiment how would Australia be able to change it's system of governance from it's current parliamentary system to some hypothetical electronic democracy where any informed citizen could cast there vote on all pollicies of interest to them.

Referendum? How would the referendum be initiated? Would it require individual politicians, parties or bypartisan support? Is it something that could be legally achieved at all with the current political structure?

 

If you are interested. The Swiss have a fantastic democratic model and system demonstrating how easy it is for the people to vote regularly on all sorts of issues using referendums without bankrupting their country. Every time someone here calls for a referendum, the first thing the scum-bag pollies say - its too expensive. But its OUR money, and if we want democracy through the power of referendums, then we should be allowed to spend OUR money on having them.

 

I looked at this tears ago when I was running for a federal seat, it would be a difficult thing to do, we cannot even get electronic voting.

Now CD's comment is very valid, I believe that it would be less expensive to have referendums on major decisions. Take the "Carbon Tax". The cost of setting it all up, doing the figures etc, then the cost of dismantling it, then the cost of setting up an alternative action, all would cost a lot more then a referendum, so why don't they do it, because they may not like the results.

For example, I believe that if we had a referendum on whether or not we should have a Carbon Price (or tax for the Libs since they don't know the difference) ... or one as to whether or not the one we have should be scrapped .... We would still have the Carbon "tax".

Abbott and his followers will say he had a mandate to scrap it, I disagree. Just because something was said it would be done, and they are voted in, does not give them a mandate. Yes something caused the lapse of sanity in the voting public, but I believe it was solely the lie that they would get rid of the debt, and he would stop the boats. Both matters relying the electorate being misinformed.

Don't forget, terrorist only win if they instill terror.

 

I'm wondering - I read on wikipedia that there have been nine referendums sofar this year in Switzerland. What is the preception of the general population, is it a privalage or a burden to them? While I read that number with jealousy I can't help but think of a voting public that would consider it a burden to have to vote more than once every three or four years

 

tick... we just lost that game then

While regular referenums would be a dream after what we have seen sofar of the Abbott rulership I'm wondering no matter how pie in the sky what the technicalities are of changing the system?

 

I think that a good programmer (I was a systems architect for the Dept of Health for 10 years) could write a good secure system in a few months. The government are trying to force people to use computers for everything anyway so I don't understand why not. For example, my father always has to get me to contact Centrelink if he has a problem as he does not even understand the phone system that you have to use. I brought this up at Centrelink once and they said he could just take the operator option and talk to a real person, but I couldn't even find out how to do it. They do however heavily push you to use the web site, usually by making you wait on the phone for hours listening to a recording saying it would be quicker to use their web site.

 

We have thanks to the government and media. Take propaganda

The key word is promote, we love to promote them, every video they make we splash across every station every hour of every day, and it doesn't cost them a cent, but if I want to promote MY business, it would cost me millions.

This morning on TV a woman wrote to the morning show saying her 8 year old son said "Mummy, I don't want anyone to bomb us." Terrorist - 1, Sanity - 0. Thank you television

 

The Swiss people demand their democracy and right to referendums, so I believe that voting on important issues would be no burden to them. We could have the same style referendum system here in Australia based on the individual identity of our medicare numbers. I don't think it would be too difficult for a decent programmer to write a code into the data to only allow a person to use the number once when voting.

There are electoral offices in every town within Australia. It wouldn't cost that much to hire staff to man these offices for a few weeks when a referendum was being held. After all it would be our money that is being used to hire the staff to give us back our democracy, and I personally don't think the majority of people would object to that process.

 

The cost would be nothing compared to the cost of them doing something we didn't want, then kicking them out (if we could) then electing someone who would (again if we could)

 

But how could you get a parlament full of entrenched polliticians to hand back the rains to the people peacefully?

 

Replacing the entire system would be impossible. Parliaments can have several votes a day so replacing that with direct democracy would take up vast amounts of everyone's time (and that's before the time and effort of actually understanding what you're actually voting on).

Increased direct democracy could be achieved via referendums on key issues and electronic voting could be a way to make that easier (though isn't vital and brings its own problems). I'm not convinced that should be on specific legislation or laws though, but concepts. Running a large nation is ridiculously complex these days, with every decision potentially impacting countless other things down the line. The boring details, technical details and difficult compromises all have to be considered and I don't think the general public would do that (I don't think elected politicians always do it very well either, but that's why our nations are really run by civil servants and not parliaments).

 

So have the civil servants report directly to the forums - instead of to the ministers. I find it hard to believe 10 concerned citizens couldn't out perform a soletery lying bag of politician. With an additional 100 semi concerned citizens watching in the wings for checks and balances.

 

Forums? Like this one? Are you serious!?!

So you want to replace government with a selected group of citizens who make decisions on behalf of the wider population? I'll let you think that one through for a while?

 

I just used the word 'forum' as a generelisation - I'm thinking of a more perpose built platform where participants are all held accountable for there words and actions by full transparency of discussions on the matters at hand.

I have been thinking - the hand full of citizens would be doing all discussions in electronic transparency and there input would only remain valid while it was still backed by the onlookers in the 'forum'

 

The word you're looking for there is "parliament" or, if you prefer, "congress".

And that would be "government" or "administration".

The bottom line is that you're not really proposing anything new, you're just imagining the same kind of thing working better because your version ignores the realities of human nature.

 

My 'proposals' were simply stated to stear the conversation back towards the original question of if and how a change of governance is theoretically possible. Under a different conversation/thread we could argue how/if that system would work and how different from the current system this hypothetical electronic democracy would actually be but in this conversation your insistance on pigeonholing my words to fit the current system is a moot point and seems like your arguing for the arguments sake [I appologies if the previous communications genuinely were that unclear].

 

My answer to that question was no. That's a little boring on it's own which is why I expanded on why I thought it was impossible (and which elements of what you're talking about could be introduced).

This whole forum is about arguing for arguments sake.

 

Democracy only works when the voters are participants in the process.... ie stakeholders, otherwise it becomes a popularity farce where expected outcomes are disconnected from realistic outcomes... like Rudd promises, every child will have a laptop, high speed broadband for everyone etc etc... whoever promises the most tasty treats gets elected and everything gets messed up for some poor bugger down the track to try and fix. Current system tries to use local representatives to have that bridge to voters being stakeholders in local causality. Making it electronic and spread beyond that to include 'everyone' for everything being decided will be a fast train wreck to waste and failed policy - like an ALP government LOL

 

Are you getting paid by the Libs for this scribble? Of course everyone is entitled to have an opinion, but yours is party talk, Liberal Party talk.......
Blablablablablablablabla and so on and so on.....
Regards

 

That's how people on the right feel about most all of the posts of quite a few left aligned folks here, believe it or not, its natural to develop a positive valence to things you agree with and a negative valence to those you do not.

Taking to the level of paid conspiracy though is a bit of a reach, the only anti-ALP bit in my post was a clear joke (at the end referenced by the LOL and wink emoticon). The ontopic point of the post had nothing to do with party politics at all. Unless you think its not suitable to use party politics as an example of a point - noting we are in a political forum. Dont let your party bias make you too sensitive about hearing different viewpoints, it might hinder discussion!!!

 

WOW did you say that, pity you don't follow your own advice.

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Like getting rid of the debt, reducing red tape (see TPG thread), like no new taxes, like .. like .. like ..

 

That's why they keep fooling the sheep into believing that referendums are too expensive and don't work.

 

It more along the lines of the people (sheep) demanding they want referendums and their democracy back to make decisions for themselves. The power for people to have referendums is already written into our Parliamentry laws, and its just a matter for the people to come together and start DEMANDING their freedom, rights & democracy back.

 

It certainly works in Switzerland. Why couldn't the same democratic process work here?

 

I didn't say it wouldn't work as such, only that it brings its own problems as well as benefits. The system hasn't brought Switzerland to collapse but nor has it raised it to shining glory.