Elections-a-plenty amid democratic decline

Each paraded as democratic while concentrating power. Trump, by turning the White House into an unaccountable circus and Morrison by becoming the ultimate inside player.

Scomo, we learned after the fact, hadn't believed in Westminster accountabilities secretly duplicating his colleagues' powers.

But why? We learned that too via a speech delivered to the Pentecostal Victory Life Centre after the election.

"God's Kingdom will come. It's in His hands. We trust in Him. We don't trust in governments. We don't trust in the United Nations, thank goodness," he had said. Strewth.

Typically, Trump was less subtle as in his norm-wrecking last-days appointment of a religious zealot to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

"You may get Amy Coney Barrett on to the Supreme Court but you will never, never get your credibility back," fumed the Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer.

Yet the climax of Trump's contempt came after he lost in the form of the deadly January 6 insurrection.

For both leaders, it seemed the national capital had become synonymous with self-serving elites.

This, in essence, is the populist project - to position the machinery of parliaments and elections and the impartiality of the courts and the public service as enemies of ordinary people.

Of course, this is a monstrous con. The populist political leader invariably emerges with more power, not less. The promise of pure representation quickly shifts to new grievances. Usually these involve demonising minorities like migrants. Or the transgendered.

Does this mean that everything the populists complain of is wrong and that the institutionalists are right? Certainly not. No system is impervious to being gamed, which is what political parties do - their exclusionary behaviour resembling that of cartels.

Anyone who thinks representation is equal should consider Parliament House during sitting weeks. The building is crawling with industry bodies, special interests and their professional lobbyists. Access is both privileged and secret.

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Official decision-making urgently needs re-imagining to sharpen the representation of voters' interests, both long and short term. Yet this is where populists fail. By definition, they cannot think long-term - their focus is as immediate as it is simplistic and bogus.

But tell that to households trapped in debt, precariously employed and facing soaring costs while the rich get richer.

If institutional democracy is to survive its practitioners must acknowledge that it is failing voters. The way governments operate has left too many behind. The system must adapt and adjust.

Media conservatism is important, too. A personal confession demonstrates this point. In July 2010, a senior minister gave me a pre-release briefing on Julia Gillard's answer to the climate policy deadlock. Gillard, you'll recall, had cited Rudd's loss of momentum as a key justification for her successful challenge, and had promised to make progress.

But when it was laid out - a 150-person citizen's assembly - I felt her fix was more of a fudge.

I said so, remarking cleverly to the minister that 150 was precisely the number of MPs in the House of Representatives - shouldn't you just all do your jobs rather than build in more delays with yet another talkfest?

Other media also criticised the proposal.

I have since realised that Gillard was right and I was wrong.

Enhanced community engagement is precisely what democracies should be undertaking in order to unlock complex or "wicked" policy problems. Drawn from the wider community - perhaps like jury duty - citizen's assemblies are increasingly being used around the democratic world to rejuvenate representation, and to secure community buy-in for thorny questions over which populists seek only to divide and profit. In 2018, ultra-Catholic Ireland used such a mechanism to navigate abortion. A subsequent referendum voted by 66 per cent to 34 per cent to allow first trimester terminations funded by the national health system.

There are different versions but one approach is that where a citizen's assembly disagrees with a law passed by the parliament, it can be returned for review. Some CA advocates even favour expanding our bi-cameral (two house) parliaments to become tri-cameral. That's right, a third chamber. Heresy, right?

Next year, there could be 40 elections globally covering four in 10 citizens of the world. But a record year for ballots may prove a reckoning for democracy itself.

While the return of Donald Tusk as Poland's new centrist prime minister has lifted spirits, sharp right wing turns elsewhere in Europe (The Netherlands most recently) and the Americas (Argentina) suggest dangerous democratic dysphasia.

When America and Britain go to the polls in 2024, it will be the first time in 60 years since the two Anglophone powers held national elections in the same year.

Britain seems likely to follow Poland and shift back to the centre with Keir Starmer's Labour Party consistently leading by double figures. But the riven and desperate Sunak government could yet cave in to burgeoning populist instincts as British living standards plummet. With a certain madness in the air, one rumour features a leadership duo of the chief Brexit vandals, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.

In the US, Trump might even be favourite now - a status actually enhanced by a court in Colorado ruling him ineligible to stand in the state's presidential ballot.

Australian democracy is comparatively sane and stable but we'll probably need to do more than merely vote, to keep it that way.