How do we get back to politics based on truth and trust?

Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, Australian Financial Review Jan. 4th 2019 This time of the year makes you reflect. I’m 64, a Baby Boomer/silver-spooner. My Italian immigrant parents did the heavy lifting, building the patrimony that I now enjoy. This year, I spent the Christmas holidays in Tasmania with my wife, son and daughter. We visited Port Arthur and, in one...Continue reading

How polling is wrecking democracy

Mike Seccombe, The Saturday Paper, Dec 22 2018 There can be few tasks in the life of a political journalist as tediously demanding as the writing up of opinion polls. Most of the time it involves the conjuring of an illusion of news. In the vast majority of those surveys of electoral support, nothing really...

Canberra’s churn just isn’t cutting it with voters

Dr Andy Marks, Daily Telegraph, 9 April 2018 We can give the thumbs-up. Heck, we can even be angry, sad, surprised, ecstatic or loved-up, but Facebook will never grant users a thumbs-down button. Why? Because the embattled social media goliath wants us to have “more meaningful interactions” with each other. Of course it does. But...

Why Voting Needs To Be Reinvented

Picture a candidate out on the hustings today. In Western Sydney, he or she visits a kindergarten and shares messages about spending public money on teachers and after-school care. Later that day the candidate dons a hard hat and talks about a commitment to jobs and making sure the engine room of industry is there...Continue reading

Inquiry looks to random jury model to resolve section 44 citizenship crisis

Dealing with disqualifications will require constitutional amendment, says head of panel on electoral matters. The inquiry examining the citizenship crisis in Australia’s parliament is considering the use of a random assembly to decide how best to repeal or replace the constitution’s disqualification of dual citizens. Linda Reynolds, chair of the joint standing committee on electoral...Continue reading

Why democracy doesn’t deliver. AFR

Many of us believe that democracy delivers our collective wisdom. The ascendancy of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States has jolted that faith. Trump’s victory epitomises the challenge of the popular vote.

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