Australia's Election Results ~ Simple Background History Of Democracy In Australia

Australian democracy is based on the British Westminster system of Government

. Hardly surprising really, considering that Australia was founded as a British convict settlement. Although my family history was one of 'free settlers' which meant they had enormous privileges in the beginnings of this country even though life was hard. My family pioneered the New England region of New South Wales.

For the past 70 years of electoral history, Australia has not had a 'hung' election result. The last time it happened was in the 1940's so today we are literally breaking new democratic ground for most Australians.

All political parties accept campaign contributions. In my opinion, this is dangerous to real democracy. Over time, these contributions have lead to a system of capitalist democracy because no political party can afford to run a high profile election campaign without adequate funding for all the advertising costs involved. This in turn has led to a system of dependency on those funds being paid in return for political, usually financial, favours. Every party, of course, denies this to be the case, but it is unrealistically against human nature for it not to be so. There is no politician of any ilk who does not have a big ego and a need of funds to promote themselves or their party.

Independents campaigning though do largely pay their own way via the running of a multitude of campaign fund raisers by a proportion of their community supporters. The major political parties do this as well as receiving donations from large national and multinational companies.

This funding arrangement in conjunction with our Westminster system of Government has led to an adversarial system of lawmaking. This has rarely been to the benefit of a large proportion of Australian citizens and that is why we have so many "little Aussie Battlers". These are people who tend to live pay day to pay day.

2010 History:

Four months ago, when we had Prime Minister Kevin Rudd from the ALP as our Prime Minister; who was elected in 2007 by an overwhelming majority; he brought in a Resource Super Profits Rent Tax on the Mining Industry.

The big multinational mining companies didn't like this and so they began a 21million dollar advertising campaign against the ALP and the Super Profits Rent Tax. PM Kevin Rudd was sticking to his guns and wouldn't negotiate past certain non-negotiable aspects of this tax.

During the recent Global Financial Meltdown, Australia's fiscal policy saved Australia from going into recession and many thousands of Australians losing their jobs. During this time, it was the mining of our natural resources in conjunction with immediate stimulus packages being made available which put us into debt but saved us from a recession.

It was our finite natural resources which saved Australia. The multinational mining companies would have some Australians believe it was them that saved Australia rather than our resources. Even while the multinational mining companies were profiteering from our resources during this time to the tune of Billions of dollars, they still took the opportunity to lay-off 17% of their workforce.

Because PM Kevin Rudd would not give-in to the demands of the multinationals and accept what the Mining companies negotiated, they advertised extensively against this tax and the ALP.

Because this is an election year (Australia's parliament only sits for 3 year terms) so Kevin Rudd was quickly 'removed' by the ALP as Prime Minister and Australia was given our first ever female Prime Minister in Julia Gillard. At the time, PM Gillard was Kevin Rudds deputy prime minister.

This was very unfortunate for PM Gillard because it caused a lot of ill-feeling in the Australian community. Most saw this drastic and swift removal as an unexpected execution. This decision was made by the ALP back room 'powers-that-be' and carried out within 24 hours; without any hint or consultation with the Australian media or people. It shocked Australia and this has continued to resonate strongly and affect last Saturdays election outcome.

2010 Has turned out to be a very important year one way or another for Australia's political landscape. It represents an important change in our democracy and we can all really benefit from it if those we have so far elected have Australia and the Australian people's best interests at the heart of all their decisions. How we move forward into the next decade of this new century now depends on all of us.

by: Jan Smith

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