Central to our two-party liberal democracy is political debate. Our system allows for peaceful revolutions at the ballot box. It requires our political leaders to fight so that we don’t have to. The current debate format that brings voters into the equation is a complete cop-out. It sucks. Instead of our leaders debating each other, they have to be nice to the voters participating in the debate show.
The contemporary political debate format where voters get to ask questions in the middle of the debate sucks. It is not good for our democracy.
Our political system is based on the Westminster tradition. The House of Commons was once a place where debate between the government and the government-in-waiting was robust.
Although weapons have not been allowed in the House of Commons for some hundreds of years, the symbolism of the House, which was replicated in Australia’s political system, is supposedly based on a space of some two swords’ length between the government and the opposition.
Hardly the stuff where ‘Heba’ gets to ask the so-called debaters how they stand on ‘genocide’ in Palestine and the leaders either rip the voter apart in public or otherwise pussy foot around the important issues in contemporary Australian politics. Australians are hurting from economic vandalism, and our politicians are being nice to each other?
Who wins these debates? Nobody.
It may make good television and allow people to feel better about the dirty work of politics, but it is weak and detrimental to our democratic practice.
I recall then Labor Minister for Defence Robert Ray talking about our political system. He mentioned how he didn’t hate his political opponents, but that our adversarial system was the best in the world. You can’t be adversarial if you must be respectful towards voters who would otherwise be caught in the crossfire.
Politics in an adversarial system is a metaphorical war. It is no place for civilians.
Our leaders and our society are being weakened in every possible way. It begins with the state of our political debates where the format is designed to be nice. Politics isn’t nice, that’s why it takes a special breed of person to be a politician.
The ‘debate’ between Mr Albanese and Mr Dutton was a farce. The well-meaning undecided voters who effectively controlled the ‘debate’ got in the way of our political system working.
I have no beef with voters and such town hall events have their own merit. But our adversarial system is being white-anted, like much of our society, by well-meaning people who have missed the point of liberal democracy.
The media have much to answer for in how they are scripting political debates as entertainment rather than the serious business of politics. If we are serious about letting our adversarial work as it was designed to do, it is time we let our politicians declare metaphorical war on each other, as it ought to be.
Byline: Dr Michael de Percy FRSA FCILT MRSN @FlaneurPolitiq is a political scientist and political commentator. He is a member of the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, Chairman of the ACT and Southern NSW Chapter of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, and a member of the Australian Nuclear Association. Michael is a graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon and was appointed to the College of Experts at the Australian Research Council in 2022. All opinions in this article are the author’s own.