is it time to shake up australian politics?

Recently, an old pal of mine, Jessica Miller, an inspiring lady I know from my days in Sydney, put herself forward to grill some of the political big wigs in Australian politics through MTV Movement. I asked her to send me some thoughts on Australian policy and on what needs shaking up.

It’s very bloody easy to be angry, sad and bored by mainstream Australian politics. For the most part it trivialises people, favours the powerful and is snide and bitchy.

So maybe it’s time to shake it up a little?

According to the Australian Electoral Commission 65% of the people who voted in the last Australian Federal election were aged 40+, upon posting this stat to my Facebook wall recently, a good friend with a great track record in environmental activism replied “Well, I guess that was a big ‘fuck you’ to future generations wasn’t it’”.

I guess, kind of. The last election also had lowest voter turnout in Australian political history unsurprisingly (even though voting is compulsory in Australia) those choosing not to vote were young.

So are the kids over it?

I’m not Antony Green, but in it’s current format, I would say yes. And if the cage-rattlin’ Russel Brand v Jeremy Paxon seen by more than 8 million people on YouTube, is anything to go by – there seems to be some pretty good reasons for this.

Here are some that I’ve been thinking about:

WTF is actually going on?

I have a political science degree and a lot of the time I have no idea what is actually going on. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention in University (was hung over or exhausted from working till 2am at a bar to pay for the privilege of being there), but when I try to follow what is going on in Australian politics, it sometimes seems like the only options I have to learn about it are in sound bites, whose bum is big, really long columns, ‘polly raunch’ Daily Tele headlines or press gallery ‘in-club’ tweets.

There doesn’t really seem to be anyone who can do a good job of explaining what ‘the game’ is. Like where in the rule book does it allow the Palmer United party to get those Senate Seats? What are the preferential voting ‘deals’ about – are they even democratic? How come lobbyists with lots of money can access politicians and I can’t? And how much do they actually get paid as a ‘pension’? Why is it ok for them to then go and lobby for special interests, when ten minutes ago they were supposed to be lobbying for and representing ‘the people’?

It just seems that ‘the game’ of politics is something that can only be played by people who have law degrees, ‘hook-ups’ the right family or a tonne of money. And that seems a bit rough.

It doesn’t really feel like it’s for me.

Russell Brand was right. You know when you walk into a political room, because you feel like you don’t belong there. I am less intimidated by sparring a 100kg man, five rounds, full-contact Muay Thai with no headgear than trying to talk to a politician or physically being a place like Parliament House.

I doubt very much whether this is done on purpose, but if I as an educated, anglo, English-speaking white woman feels incredibly uncomfortable in a political institution, imagine what it must feel like for someone whose first language isn’t English, who hasn’t had the luxury of education, has troubles speaking, or who can’t afford shiny clothes and nice teeth?

The legacy hundreds of years of  ‘democracy’ is that it remains the domain of a very select and elite few. Given that the very vast majority can now participate remotely and directly with political decision-making, maybe its time for a radical rethink of what political culture, education and direct participation can be?

Are you lot actually even qualified to do this?

I was speaking to this very clever, important, (rich, handsome) responsible guy the other day and he said that when he interviews someone for a job he asks them to ‘So you say you’re good at [say cleaning], so tell me about a time you actually did that?’ – good move eh?

Because it’s all well and good for people to talk about how great they are but really, if your fridge is broken and you need it fixed, you're not going to get someone who writes about fridges, or who just so happens to have pulled a chicken out of the freezer a few times to fix it are you?

No, because that would be stupid.

So why then are the people who are responsible for making very big decisions and try to ‘fix’ big-arsed problems that really do impact upon peoples general happiness and well-being in an infinite way, are not the people who actually have real experience and genuine expertise in fixing a certain problem being the ones responsible to fix it?

For fear of write-waffle, my point is that for leadership and governance to be truly effective, representative and good at solving complex problems, you need a whole range of people involved and contributing – not just lawyers (of which 52% of Cabinet are versus 1% of the population), people who were privileged enough to go to private school (of whom 78% of Cabinet did versus only 35% of the population), and men (which make up 95% of the cabinet versus 49.4 of the broader population).

For creative problems solvers who are good at fixing things to do this at a national level means re-imagining the whole culture and seemingly pedigree-bred lines of getting into these positions.

So it is  really easy to be cynical, sceptical and pessimistic about the fact that young people or even just interesting and diverse people think that politics is a waste of time.

Or, we can all just get on with it.

The sad thing about big old antiquated institutions is that they seem to sometimes intimidate people into thinking that there is only one type of power, and if you don’t have it then you can’t change anything. Or you think its up to someone else to fix.

I think this is incredibly untrue, especially among young people.

Disillusioned by the whole shemozzle, everywhere you look people, and particularly young people, are really just getting on with it. They’re doing it in business, the arts, via social enterprises, in communications and marketing – they are shaking the shit out of it! The miserable thing about this is that many of them have to leave Australia to do it, instead they go to New York, London, Europe, Africa, Japan – places where there isn’t this stifling sense of ‘no!’. It sucks that all of my smart friends all now live in New York.

Moreover, last year Gen Y contributed 16 million hours of time volunteering each month, 192 million hours to charity – this is worth $3.1 billion dollars per year. So shove that down your ‘Gen Ys are so self-centred and lazy’ stereotype-pipe and choke on it.

So given that the real fixers of problems, creators of solutions and givers of time are actually not part of the formal political club, maybe we should just ignore the club and instead focus on doing things ourselves, joining others who inspire us, and support what they’re doing?

I’ll leave you with this idea:

Imagine for a minute that we all collectively decided not to pay our tax to the government but instead throw it behind someone we know personally who is doing great things in our community?

The idea is fraught obviously, but give it a little space to breath and I think you’ll find the imaginings quite delicious.

If you like the idea of shaking up Australian politics a little, Vote for Jess Miller in the MTV Movement here (now do it!) share and tweet about it using the #shakeitmiller & #mtvmovement hashtags @jem1ller