Thursday, July 29, 2004

Seperate Your Powers

It's the one thing that makes the Australian system of governance different from the english 'westminster' system, and it's flawed in that the judiciary is chosen by the executive, which is taken from the legislature. If you're going to have 'separation of powers' it's not enough that no one person can hold a position in more than one office - a little something called a 'Political Party' among the other interests involved, like hello?

So while in theory it works, so did communism, and look how that turned out. Just because something looks good on paper, doesn't mean it is good. Mandate of the people to implement a GST? Mandate my ass. you didn't even get the majority of votes, which is the basis of democracy really, but with all this geographical distinguishers, who can tell? What if it was voted on along socio-economic factors? each percentage from the bottom 1% to the top 1% got one member of parliment each - some how Mr Packer would find himself in a abused minority...

Separate the Powers if you're going to separate them - have the Bar select the judiciary, every practicioner of law voting for the best candidate, have a separate election for the executive, and lets see a GST get through that muck.
posted by Keegan at 10:15 am

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