Doesn’t seem to be big in Australian culture.

Even in idle conversation we choose the comfortable space of consensus over the adrenalin rush of strip down argument and opinion.

We don’t know the difference between personal assault and assault on an idea.

It is not knowledge these forums (deliberative polling, peoples chamber) should foster.

A people’s chamber should be a place where we learn to argue, to grasp at, inspect and find value in an idea.
Australians don’t seem to enjoy this at a grassroots level and our political system reflects this lack of objective energy.

Ken, it is the spirit of times due to the impending Howardian Regime that is official on July 1.

Gary Sauer-Thompson and I commented on his blog sometime ago that the “Regime” as I call it has all ready begun which appears to be evident by the Howard govt recent actions in parliament and only the bills of little dispute being presented to the House and Senate as evident on Andrew Bartlett’s blog.

I expected to be misunderstood, and have been by your post. I tried to explain myself in the post, but expect it would take a few goes. So I’ve tried to respond to others’ comments in the thread. I’m strongly in favour of representative democracy - but see my proposal as addressing a flattening out of it - driven by political parties and the mass media. Please have a read of my attempt at clarification and let me know what you think. In fact, for ease of readers’ use, I’ll reproduce it here.
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Cam and Vee,.

I’m trying to inject more popular sensibility into representative democracy to give it more depth ‒ more representativeness. But as my comments about ‘vox pops’ were intended to convey, populism gives me the creeps.

I don’t know enough about their concrete successes and failures to be sure I don’t want citizens initiated referendums (CIS) but I’m instinctively hostile. I think its important to do what is possible to insulate democratic systems against populism (which I would equate with mob rule) for various reasons including

1. the fact that I think its important to have structure to political deliberation and most of the proposals for more direct democracy are too like a vox pop which suggests the idea that everyone’s view is equally valid no matter how ill considered. My instincts tell me that this is more part of the problem than the solution. (I don’t mean to imply anything anti-democratic here - democracy is a process of deliberate deliberation. The microphone in one’s face at a shopping centre implies quite different cultural values.

2. Elitism has protected Australia from policies I consider extremely odious that are likely to have majority support ‒ particularly the death penalty. It has also allowed us to phase out stupid policies like tariff protection which would be impossible with too great popular participation in politics.

3. Greater populism can also make it very hard for governments to make difficult decisions. I didn’t support the adventure in Iraq - I think of it as one of the most bizarre things we’ve ever gotten ourselves tied up in - but I do broadly support the idea that a government be able to do unpopular things and then be judged on its performance some years later at the ballot box. This is often necessary for good economic management.

Note in support of 2 and 3 that US politics is not just more corrupt with money buying politicians far more than in our own system. Its also much more populist - with CISs. I don’t think its a coincidence that it has the death penalty and what could yet be revealed to be nationally criplling budget discipline. The weak often shifting minority governments of Europe too find it hard to take resolute action to address their economic problems. They too run near continual budget deficits.

Cam, some of your proposals resemble mine but it seems to me only superficially. Your proposals are a complete program ‒ one might even call them a utopian program. They comprehensively recast our system. I have far less faith than you that all the details can be worked out in theory and then imposed ‒ by you or me.

So I do want to stress that my proposal is really a very modest one, and it is an attempt to influence the culture within which our system operates, rather than to reform the system itself. The new body isn’t much more than an advisory body, though the delaying and initiating powers I’ve suggested it have should ensure it would be taken seriously. And its critical that, though its makeup is popular, the members of the chamber would, like a jury, take the time to inform themselves and do their best in deliberating on the issues. I see this as very different from more popular direct participation in politics.

Indeed, I think the ‘flattening out’ of politics as I describe it is a result of TOO MUCH popular participation in politics (via the dumbing down medium of the mass media) not too little.

I discovered your post immediately after having contributed to the comments thread of my own post, now extracted above. I pasted those comments up on this thread immediately as I felt that I was being misunderstood. I hadn’t read your post carefully.

Having been through it now, I do feel pretty misrepresented. The entire focus of my own suggestion was to deepen the conversation occuring within representative democracy, not to suggest that there is some improved way in which we can reach an otherwise unatainable consensus. I don’t think that.

OK. I accept that I must have misread you and that your focus was not on a process aiming at consensus (despite your explicitly mentioning consensus conventions, Fishkin, and making the jury analogy - an institution where consensus IS the objective). In part I was using your post as a springboard to muse about Habermas and Mouffe and deliberative polling, a topic I’d been intending to discuss for some time.

Your idea of a People’s House is an interesting one, even if it is wildly improbable that it would ever be embraced by our politicians to any extent at all (as it would need to be to be put to a referendum). But leaving that aside and treating it purely as a thought exercise, what democratic deficit do you identify in our current system that leads to your posposing a People’s House as tre answer? Certainly there’s an almost complete lack of popular participation in our current system, but your proposal doesn’t remedy it to any significant extent. Do you see the People’s House as a mechanism to enhance political accountability or transparency? I can’t really see that a bunch of ordinary citizens whose names are picked out of a hat would be an optimal body to enforce accountability - rather the reverse really.

Or do you see it simply as an additional democratic check and balance? But why are two houses of Parliament insufficient? Why do we need a third one? Is it just that the evil Howardians are about to gain control of both existing houses for the next three years? Does that evidence a democratic deficiency, or is it just democracy in operation?

Why should our existing elected politicians, or the population at large, view a randomly selected body like this as having any particular persuasive or advisory force? It possesses neither expertise nor true representativeness. I suggest politicians would feel free to ignore it, and the population at large would not see it as having any moral force as “their” house because its members were merely drawn from a hat.

Would membership be compulsory for all people whose names were drawn out in the ballot (as with jury service), or would it be optional? Even if compulsory, there would surely need to be a wider range of exemptions than applies for jury service. Jurors serve for only a couple of weeks (usually), and in their home town. Members of a People’s House would be conscripted for three years (presumably) and be forced to serve in faraway Canberra. The disruption to career and family would be huge for most people. It’s all very well for politicians who have made a deliberate career choice to seek federal elective office, although even for them the toll on family is very large (especially for politicians from places like north Queensland, NT and WA). But I suspect that most people chosen at random would decline membership once they’d had a chance to weigh the implications and effects on family, career/business etc.

If members were generously paid, then people on low wages might well be tempted to accept nomination. And no doubt some would foresee the possibility of using membership as a platform to achieve high enough public visibility to then make a run for elective office. But a Chamber consisting mostly of these sorts of people doesn’t really strike me as terribly desirable.

Of course I may be reacting with excessive pessimism, and in part I’m just playing the devil’s advocate. But in fact my quite genuine reaction is that, while it’s an interesting idea on first blush, I don’t actually think on balance that it would be a positive addition to our existing democratic institutions.

I think you’re underestimating/ignoring the mass hysteria/group dynamic affect of such a gathering. I experienced it myself as a participant in the 1999 Republic Referendum deliberative poll. Why did it achieve a turnaround from well under 50% supporting the referendum republic model at the outset, to more than 70% at the end? Was the ARM model really worthy of such high support? It certainly didn’t receive it in the referendum itself. Was that because of public ignorance? But many political and constitutional experts (not just monarchists) viewed the ARM model as deficient too, so surely that can’t be the explanation.

Some sort of group dynamic closely allied to mass hysteria is a plausible explanation IMO, and I KNOW that it existed because I was part of it. It felt very much like a Billy Graham Crusade, where large numbers of people “come on down” and convert to Jesus in the euphoria of the moment. These conversions are mostly shallow and short-lived, and I suspect the opinion shifts achieved by deliberative polling are too.

An ‘ideal communicative situation’ sounds like a good start for deciding something to me.

And now a genuine question for you. Isn’t there place for looking at ways to implement politics as process? I think that it is the process not the decision that we could be concentrating on given the apathy of the electorate. Most Australians are fairly disinterested in political decision making because we feel helpless when it comes to making any kind of difference. Why? Because we are or feel, locked out of the process. Why because we think we don’t matter and don’t know enough about politics to be listened to or acknowledged, much less regarded with respect. The political elite; media, pollies and academics have the situation too well in hand. And there is no contingency on the horizon that will spur the 60 minuters and fringe dwellers to participate more than they do.

I love the notion of a ‘people’s assembly’ because it would be a (get this one) a consciousness raising exercise that involves us like conscription did. Civic duty by force.

That’s right Parish it will be disruptive. But just about weverything worth doing is. And very expensive too. I think service of 1 year in the PA Canberra would be sufficient to keep us on our toes.

I can’t do much more than refer you to my original post and the comments on the thread. In mentioning Fishkin, I suggested that I was skeptical of what he was arguing for.

I don’t see it as a democratic check or balance. As I said, the point of its delaying power is to give it some teeth to get it taken seriously. I agree that as an accountability body, the Senate - with expert and broadly representative Senators - is a better option.

It seems to me that the discourse of policy making is very dominated by a certain class (upper middle class) and a certain style of discourse. I think the Pauline Hanson adventure reflected this. “Please explain”.

People have a hunger for their own issues to be talked about in a way that is accessible to them. Yet it cuts both ways. When these frustrations break out into politics they break out as crude populism from our political professionals (read my lips, no new taxes) and as ad hoc and unworkable policy from the Pauline Hansons of the world (ezi-tax anyone?)

For that reason it seems to me worthwhile to have a forum in which these issues are mediated. It works both ways. It will be worth while for the political pros to address the concerns of the hoi-polloi in the ‘people’s chamber’ (to speed its passage through Parliament) but at the same time it won’t have to be dumbed down into sound bites in our media. That’s the essence of what I think is important - for there to be deliberation.

Likewise, the various forms of snake oil like One Nation’s ezi-tax can be put forward and exposed as snake oil. So the point of the exercise is to improve communication between political classes and so to deepen and enrich our political discourse.

I don’t have it in mind for membership to be compulsory.

This para seems a bit too ‘devils advocate’ for my liking. “If members were generously paid, then people on low wages might well be tempted to accept nomination. And no doubt some would foresee the possibility of using membership as a platform to achieve high enough public visibility to then make a run for elective office. But a Chamber consisting mostly of these sorts of people doesn’t really strike me as terribly desirable.”

‘Mostly’? Why mostly? Would you accept if you were nominated? I would. Neither of us receive low incomes by most people’s standards. Lots of people would accept, but of course some wouldn’t. So they’d be broadly representative in the statistical sense like a jury is - not when it came to votes but when it came to the weight of discourse. And yes, I see the idea of it as a platform for the odd person to make the transition to professional politics as a good thing. Its not clear to me whether you think it’s the idea of it as a possible platform is good or bad. Currently there are very few ways in, scandalously so on the ALP side - where you need to be a staffer, a unionist or a footballer or rock star. I think its very good. I think that word ‘mostly’ throws us off the track here.

Finally I wouldn’t have thought it would require a referendum. I can’t see why it couldn’t be established by statute for some temporary period. One might not be able to call it a house of Parliament in that case, but the functions that it has could be delegated to it - it seems to me - by statute. In other words, it doesn’t appear to me to be ultra vires the constitution for the existing houses of Parliament and the executive to bind themselves to a particular procedure until and unless the legislation doing so is repealed, or is repealed automatically under a ’sunset’ clause.

But you and all who read and contribute to this blog are hardly a representative cross-section of Australian society. By the very nature of this forum, we are likely to be well-educated, politically engaged and on above-average salaries.

I think Ken is right — a three year disruption to the average person’s life is not achievable. To take a simple example, how would you get representatives who were stay-at-home mums (and not doctor’s wives)?

Perhaps the jury system metaphor can be extended. In this scenario, the people’s house would consist of several small groups of people (say 20-25) who would be drafted on a rolling basis for 4-8 weeks at a time to consider legislation before the Parliament. They could propose amendments to the legislation, request sunset clauses or delay implementation of legislation pending a review.

Initiation of bills would be a tricky one. I think given the limited time span there would have to be a common agreement that other business could wait — say a 2/3 or 3/4 majority of the group to allow introduction and debate of new bills not already before the other two Houses.

Despite the above, I am not convinced of the necessity of a third house. Picking up on jen’s comment, I don’t think people are apathetic because they feel they can’t effect change — I think most people are disengaged because they are happy with how the country is going. The fact is that when popular opinion changes, our political masters acknowledge the new reality and adjust. The new refugee policy by Howard is a good case in point.

On the other hand, if the new IR policy post-July 1 turns nasty, I foresee a radical upswing in political interest

I don’t know whether I would choose to be involved in a People’s House if one existed and I was selected. For a start I don’t know whether CDU would give me leave of absence. We’re currently so short-staffed that it would cause major problems, and it isn’t anywhere near as easy to recruit competent academic legal staff to Darwin as in larger centres. Then there’s the fact that I’d be away from Jen for prolonged periods, not to mention disrupting her daughter Jess and my daughter Rebecca (who’s currently in Year 12 and needs all the help she can get). On balance I think I’d be forced to pass up the opportunity, despite my lifelong fascination with politics. And I suspect I’d be fairly typical in terms of family and career impediments/involvements.

In the case of the Ratification proposal on SSR, they ratifiers dont meet face to face. They just vote on bills. They are also a flash-mob that changes with each bill. I would have citizen referenda come through another means.

In Nicholas’ proposal of a peoples-chamber/sortitionists he doesnt mention them necessarily being face to face in a parliament.

Ken wrote, “Was the ARM model really worthy of such high support? It certainly didn’t receive it in the referendum itself.”

But we watched support for the Republic crash once the professional politicians got a hold of the issue. The Australian people arent dumb, they knew when they were getting an inferior solution that changed nothing.

Ken wrote, “I don’t know whether I would choose to be involved in a People’s House if one existed and I was selected.”

Who says you have to go to Canberra to do it? I now work from home 75% of the time. I have an RSA Secureid which lets me VPN into private networks securely. I have complete access to the internal network of the company I work with. I collaborate in meetings and projects through a mix of vocal, email, documents, repositories etc etc etc. Government can do the same for a people’s chamber; sortionists or ratifiers.

IMO government is seriously broken, party discipline skews and already skewed representative system. The only way to retard the skewing of government by faction and representation is through the statistical weight of the people. There is much wisdom out there, and it is going to waste. It needs to be tapped, because our political institutions and political parties are delivering us inferior solutions.

There is no vitality or vigour in Australian or State Government.

Cam, I think such an assembly would be more representative if the people involved intracted live most of the time. So maybe Canberra it is.
Even though internet communication is becoming more prevalent it is distancing and open to misundertandings, even among the always users - Like road rage or sms.
There are many obstacles to creating a viable forum in which people can meet: travelling away from home and being absent from our usual jobs for extended or even short periods is not convenient. The assembly forum protocols will be unfamiliar for most of us too

But at least if people meet on a face to face level, they can deal with difficulties in that immediate and personal context.

It is worth a try I think.
The most valuable thing about a people’s forum is that people will participate in a political process.

I think a group needs to be together a good deal of the time to feel connected and relevant.
And that is the best thing about a people’s forum.

As you point out, vitality and vigour aren’t big in government forums and I think that is the fault of the electorate who are largely satisfied with the way things are and see no need to spend energy attempting to improve them, but I am an idealist and - life can always be better.

As for Nicholas’s suggestion that a legislation-delaying role could be built in by ordinary legislation and without constitutional amendment, I don’t think so. The High Court says the Commonwealth Parliament can’t impose “manner and form” requirements on successor parliaments that would bind them as to the process of enacting subsequent laws. Thus legislation purporting to forbid the H of R and Senate from enacting laws until the People’s House had considered them for a specified period of time could simply be ignored if the Parliament so chose. Therefore a legislative-delaying role for the People’s House could only be informal and effected by self-denying discipline on the part of the elected politicians.

However, as Nicholas and jen suggest, the major role of a People’s House would be advisory and consciousness-raising anyway, aimed at giving ordinary people real input into the political process instead of feeling excluded and disempowered by the professional political classes, lawyers, political journos etc. That role doesn’t really require a power to block or delay legislation, although it would certainly be desirable so that the PH is more than just consultative window-dressing.

On reflection, I agree that an institution of this sort could be a positive addition to the existing political system, as long as its sitting frequency and duration are tailored to maximise the feasibility of broad participation (not just the idle rich and poor, and tenured public servants without substantial family commitments).

I’ve changed someone’s mind. A good mind too. I’m quite chuffed.

And yes, Ken, I realise now you must be right about ‘manner and form’ restraints on future Parliaments. It takes me back to a couple of weeks I spent trying to understand Dixon’s judgement in Trethowan’s Case about thirty years ago. Took me ages. Then the penny dropped.

One could establish the idea of a 12 month delaying power as a convention however. The Americans managed to follow Washington’s self denying ordinance of two terms as President until F.D. Roosevelt had a couple of extra terms. Then they were ready to entrench it.