Looks like us Aussies could be headed for another election! HELP! I don't think I could bear another six weeks of endlessly screened over-the-top campaign ads and those irritating automated phone calls. I feel sorry for my U.S. counterparts - six weeks out of every three years is bad enough, but you have to put up with it all year round! President Obama still has two years to go in his first term, but you have to have mid-terms and pre-selections and sometimes run-offs... And your campaign ads are more over-the-top than ours. Our campaign ads have to be heavily regulated but some of your politicians are quite extreme and out-there! How do you cope?
6 weeks --- 6 lousey weeks of campaigning???? I'll tell you how it works HERE. First there can be a very long and big PRIMARY campaign battle that lasts for 3-4 months. And then from August until the first Tuesday of November comes the barage (sp?) of garbage (sp)..................that is if you have MONEY to bombard the airwaves with more lies than anyone has a Constitutional Right to hear!!! Good luck with your election! How many millionaires are running????
Seriously, if our election process was only six weeks we'd be psyched. Politicians over here start campaigning for congressional seats the moment after the previous one is finished. They insinuate, double talk around the issue and campaign like they are without ever muttering the exact words. And as Mensch1351 eluded to, let's not even get started on the amounts of money people are spending these days just on primaries. It can all be resolved by stricter rules on campaigning finances & time limits. But then people would twist this into an attack of the 1st Amendment, ignoring the fact that the current system already denies certain people their voice based on nothing more than monetary status. How do I cope with the BS? Besides creating a detailed log of celebrity and political stupidity to reassess when it's time to vote (kidding, of course), I watch cartoons and drink vodka. Primarily Grey Goose & Pravda. :wink:
Really? is there any real difference between the two parties so that if they chose they couldnty just sit down and draw up a compromise set of policies between them? Would it make any real difference to outcomes if they did it the civilised way?
Because we're at a state where money & access does more to determine the politics then good policy, the mass majority of civilians with good ideas can't get their voices heard or reach people as effectively. Someone who is only able to raise & spend $10,000 to campaign but may have the best economic strategies, will lose out to someone who was able to raise & spend $1,000,000 with a worse plan just because they have more access to major media outlets. That's regardless if someone is Democrat or Republican. As for the two sides collaborating? It would be nice, wouldn't it? But career politicians all pander to the same major money sources on various levels based on their supposed affiliations and ideologies. Perhaps that's a wordy way to say that it's choosing between the best of two evils? IMO, it'll take a true independent or the emerging of a viable third party before we'll ever see some kind of compromise between the two major political factions. They could look at the issues from both sides and provide a platform that really is a collaboration of ideals from Democrats & Republicans. But since very few of these middle thinkers can't raise the capital to make a difference, I'm not holding my breath.
It's always worth a visit - if only for an extension of the facts, if not the truth. VB - I'm staggered - I agree with everything you've said.:biggrin1: Fair play sir.
The problem with this civilised approach would be that almost every MP would be part of the governing party and there would be no opposition. Democracies need an opposition.
you mean, political parties need an opposition so they have a cause to ask people to vote for (er, against). You mean, two (or more ) parties which each have a minority share of the vote, which refuse to compromise with the other and insist based on getting just a few more votes than any one of the others on an absolute right to do anything they please without discussion? Surely democracies need that about a much as they need to cross jurassic park with a documentary on the last days of hitler.
Grand coalitions take away accountability. If the two main parties in Australia were to do a deal for the good government of Australia they could surely come up with a programme of agreed measures good for everyone. But there would be no-one to cry foul when something goes wrong. I don't like the yah boo politics of the two-party system, but it is a whole lot better than a one party state. In the UK a coalition between Conservative and Labour - which was technically a possible way forward following the last election - would create a similar one-party situation, with a tiny Lib Dem "opposition". It wouldn't have worked. If it didn't fall to bits it would have been too strong, in effect a one party rule. In the UK scenario the only thing that works is a coalition between one of the two big parties and someone else, probably Lib Dems (in theory Unionists or Nationalists). The Grand Coalition of the EU parliament is a form of one-party rule. Here the Eurocrats have seized power making elections just a rubber-stamping exercise. The polite way to speak of this is as a "democratic deficit". Australia's present position is a problem - it truly looks like a hung parliament. Presumably there will need to be another election very soon.
One of our major two parties is already a coalition (Liberals and Nationals) and the three main independents each "side" are trying to sway are former Nationals. However, if they disbanded the coalition, it wouldn't make any difference because the other main party (Labor) would have more seats than Liberal (the MUCH bigger half of the coalition) but still not enough to rule outright.
