One of the great problems with representational government is that some -very necessary- reforms are just never going to happen, and others will take a ridiculously long time.
Why? Because in our system, we have career politicians, and they ain’t ever gunna vote themselves out of a job, or vote themselves less money, or vote themselves less power.
Witness the Republican Debate. I would suggest a clear majority of Australians are in favour of an Australian Republic. So why did we vote against it? Because the only models on offer were those favoured by our pollies, and which supported their status quo.
We might consider Australia to be one of the most over represented nations on Earth, with pollies at the local, state and federal level, at a huge cost to tax payers.
Why not get rid of the states? Because our career politicians will never vote themselves out of a job.
Hence this category. People’s Initiatives. We the people need to be able to make demands of our representatives about what we want.
You want the world to change? You think the world needs to change? Well get off your butt and make it happen, cause no one’s gunna hand it to you.
Feel free to make a suggestion here. Who knows, if you tell enough people about it, and they agree with you, we might be able to put together a petition.
It’s high time average Aussies stopped just laughing about how useless and corrupt our pollies are, and started doing something about it – even if it’s only pressing a ‘vote’ button.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
I would like to start by protecting the children in Australia, specifically the foster children.
I have seen no accountablity within the child protection services,which includes DoCS and its siblings in other states, the NGO’s, Ombudsman…
I have found no one in this system as yet who takes any responsiblity.
I am however at a complete loss as to how to move forward although as per advice from OLO I will write to Kevin.
Jewely,
It sounds like a very difficult problem and although most of those involved probably have their hearts in the right place they are simply covering their *rses in case of liability claims etc.
Those in control of government agencies are likely motivated more by ambition than a genuine concern for the plight of the children and those at the coal face lack the authority to take meaningful action off their own bat.
Call me a cynic if you like but I doubt very much if writing to Kevin or petitioning for a better deal or any other approach to politicians will achieve anything. I daresay you may manage to get specific incidences addressed by this approach but not the underlying causes for the problem.
Believe me. I and many other environmentally concerned people have time and time again tried petitions, letters etc with absolutely no meaningful results even on no-brainers like introducing a container deposit scheme where the overwhelming majority of people in the state (WA) are for such a system. Explain that?
I honestly believe we are a little ahead of the game, here.
The Getup site has claimed some fairly serious wins, particularly before the last election. The only problem I have with them is that their admin panel chooses their battles, with little or no input from contributors.
As I’ve said, I want a little more grass roots democracy.
Call me an optimist (with a name like ‘grim’?) but I believe online polling is the way of the future. Ozzies are notoriously apathetic, but surely just clicking on a ‘vote’ button isn’t asking too much.
I believe the net has given us the opportunity for the closest thing to true democracy since the ancient Greeks first invented it.
We just have to get out there, and keep pushing it, until we do get the results we want.
There’s no way I can carry this torch alone. (I’m a bloody awful salesman.) If you want to make it happen, you’re really going to have to help me out here, and spread the word.
Grim,
I am interested to know what successes Getup has had, genuinely I’m not being facetious.
On the online polling thing I think you have a point. The easier you make it for people to express an opinion or take action the greater will be the response I should think. But we have to make governments respond and in the end we can only do that through our vote ie punish them for not listening to us and reward them for doing so.
In Australia, as elsewhere though we suffer badly from the two party system of government where both parties pursue more or less the same, neo-conservative ideologies and both parties take the views (and money) of big business more seriously than they do those of the voters.
In the end we have to convince voters to take the risk and support an alternative party. The voters in Fremantle have done just that in voting in the Greens to the lower house for the first time ever. While I don’t support every Green’s policy they at least represent a departure from the status qou, are not beholden to business interests and have an ethical base for their stances.
Kulu, I agree. As to Getup, you’ll note I wrote ‘claimed’. It must be debatable just how much credit for some of the decisions going their way they deserve, but I do think the pressure they were able to bring to individual MPs could have been effective; particularly in marginal seats.
As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, fear of losing your job can be a powerful incentive.
Grim,
I quite understand Getup’s claiming success wherever it can. Other NGO’s such as the Wilderness Society do exactly the same.
By using any excuse to claim success they help themselves to not become demoralized and send out a message of hope to potential supporters. Without hope why bother to fight?
Even I, who by no stretch of the imagination can now be labeled a optimist, retain hope and so continue to fight for the causes that I believe are worthy.
What I guess I do see is hopeless in the Australian context is changing the responses of either major political party (within a reasonable time frame) to the critical environmental and humanitarian problems facing all of us.
What I do see as hopeless is convincing our governments to respond to what the people say and not always bend to the will of big business whose ethics go out the window if their (short term) bottom lines are threatened.
We, the developed world including Australia, spent our way into the financial crisis and the accompanying humanitarian crises. Now the best our governments can think of to address the crisis is – you guessed it – spend their way out of it.
Hey Kulu and Grim,
Can I ask what “Getup” is?
My plans did change, slightly, I now write to Therese Rudd, well I will send her a huge file and a letter asking little more than she remembers the children. It heads out tomorrow.
Is a bit sad that all a woman has left is complaining to another woman about yet another persons children.
Actually that one has been going on since time began. Maybe it’s all we ever had.
I thought online polling was suspect. No I am thinking of computer voting, all the fuss in the states with the .exe file on the discs that hold the votes. Online would be even more open to suspicion wouldn’t it?
I’m nto doing that Gravatar thing again, I don’t know what happened!
Getup is basically a protest website which organises petitions and polls and emails a lot of people and raises quite a lot of money for the battles it chooses.
Needless to say, Getup is considerably more professional than my little effort. It is worth your having a look; just Google it.
The Polls I’m conducting are certainly not impossible to cheat; they are merely meant to be an indication of general sentiments. I’m not actually trying to challenge the electoral commission… Well, at least not yet.
Good idea involving Therese. You can’t just do nothing if you do feel strongly about something. Good luck
Gawd I’d be a slack user then… didn’t even navigate my way back to this discussion.
I did write to Therese and sent a ring binder with everything and explaining everything. Heard nothing but that’s okay as my only request was she keep the file until certain children reached 18 years old and then give it to them. Yes of course I kept my own copy.
Added some stuff from Peter off OLO.
Wrote to Linda Burney as well. Letter back from the Directory General suggesting I should take up counselling offerred. Pfft.
I worked out my particular focus through all of this. I do not want anyone anywhere to profit from children in foster care. I want the NGO’s out of the fostering game. In twenty years I don’t want to hear about the new generation of Forgotten Ones because nothing was done now.
Must say – I have searched everywhere and I am the only one I can find with this opinion.