I have deliberately delayed commenting for the last few weeks to ensure I could keep at least a semblance of objectivity.

As it turns out yesterday’s 7:30 interview with Tony Abbot frames the issue perfectly.

Kevin Rudd’s extraordinary decision to “delay” the ETS was completely shocking, especially after having ridiculed the opposition’s wish to delay until after Copenhagen stating:-

What absolute political cowardice.

What an absolute failure of leadership.

What an absolute failure of logic.

And much more, including some of the most emotive utterings of this normally rather dull speaker. The transcript in the Australian of his speech at the Lowy Institute last year makes stirring reading. However the reality of the ETS, was that it put the interests of the current energy industry and the big miners ahead of that of the nation as a whole. The Greens were quite right to vote it down, though Labor has tried to paint them as the minor villains of the piece, with Abbot and his merry men of course being the major baddies.

This puts Australia back to the top of the list of the developed countries doing least on climate, and despite our lack or importance and small size, will have been very significant. We were the holdout that recanted at Bali and joined the good guys, and now we are back to full “Black Hat” status, and will be the example seized on by China and India when pressed to do more.

Rudd’s dropping of his commitments on climate change as soon as they are no longer in his own interests are just the latest, and most blatant, example of politicians apparent belief that they can say whatever they like to get elected, and then change their minds as expedient. First we had core and non core promises, followed by a host of small broken promises plus this major one by the current government, and lastly we have the extraordinary performance of Tony Abbot on the 7:30 report last night. Some way in he admitted that he was liberal with the truth, and that the only things he said that you could treat as gospel were policy speeches and the like. His actual words are below, before he started to dig himself rather deeper into the hole he made for himself.

“I know politicians are going to be judged on everything they say, but sometimes in the heat of discussion you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark.

“Which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth are those carefully prepared, scripted remarks.”

So we are left with the obvious proposition that we cannot trust either of the two main parties to do what they say they will do. Their actions do show that they consistently put the industry lobby above the general public, and hope we have forgotten by the next election, or just marginally hate the current major party slightly less than the other.

Europe, and specifically Britain, is suffering from the same problem, and has just reacted by voting for the three main parties in almost equal proportions (by percentage of the vote rather than elected seats) thus forcing the parties to debate the issues a bit more honestly. This has been common in Europe for years, where majority governments are uncommon. The vote in Britain has also forced a discussion on electoral reform, including discussions on political donations and the ability to “sack” an obviously incompetent government, which living in NSW, seems a wonderful idea. Unfortunately, Australia and the USA, the two main recalcitrant “developed” nations on climate change, both have more polarised political affiliations, though the recent election in Tasmania is encouraging.

The conclusion is obvious. After a century or so in roughly its current state, democracy needs a serious overhaul. The cosy links with money and commerce must be disbanded, and politicians need to be much more concerned about upsetting the electorate. Electronic voting systems are in their infancy and won’t be trusted until an open source implementation is developed and refined, but they do point to some of the possibilities we need. I propose the following vague and unrefined thoughts and suggestions:-

• Australia’s electoral system is relatively elegant, though the Senate would be better chosen by proportional representation over the whole country rather than by state.
• State Governments have outlived their usefulness. Let’s have one government to praise or blame, rather than allowing another opportunity for buck-passing.
• It’s a total disgrace that we tolerate elected representatives of the ilk of Fred Nile and Steve Fielding. I suspect they would not exist if negative as well as positive filters were available, so that, for example, a candidate cannot be elected if more than 50% put a black mark against them. This becomes vital when no one party has an outright majority, to avoid the convenient giveaways to minority interests who hold the balance of power.
• Governments should be elected for fixed terms, but the double dissolution mechanism should be replaced by one which is triggered by the voters. For example the electoral web site could allow voters to start and sign petitions. Once these have been signed by a reasonable number of people, they would act as more robust opinion polls. A petition to call a fresh election, and therefore sack the government would be automatically started every 6 months, and the government dissolved if a 55% majority is obtained on two consecutive occasions.

Apart from promoting these sorts of dreams, there seems only one thing we can all do to ensure government’s attention, and coincidently, in Australia it’s also a sensible thing to do. Vote Green, or anyone you support who is not in a major party. This is especially likely to be successful in the Senate, and you can help further by donating to the Greens.