Politics

Let me preface this by saying that I do not follow politics all that much, nor have I studied it in the past.

There is something about growing up which makes everything you are a part of seem right, at least that is how I found it to be. The school I went to was great, the suburb I lived in was nice, the Country I lived in was flawless, and the governing system of Australia was perfect. Then when I was a bit older, I started thinking 'Hmm, some of these other schools are good... some of the people in this Country I don't agree with' etc. And when it comes to the governing system of Australia, I now believe it is very far from perfect.

My perfect governing scenario is this - the government should strive to do the best job for everyone and be elected into government based on the job they are doing or will do.

The above approach is impossible however, as it requires the population to be able to vote for the government who will do the best job. The problem here is that the population will not vote wholly based on who they believe will do the best for the country. Even if they did they cannot accurately know who would do the best for the country.

So what happens then?

Well a government knows they will not be elected simply by having the intentions of doing the best job for the country. Instead they need to make people vote for them, and to do this they need to ascertain why people would vote for them and exploit that.

If I wanted to get people to vote for me what are some options I could choose to do?

• Pay them money
• Make them remember me by seeing me over and over again
• Have good advertising to make myself seem likable
  
• Have stances on key decisions that people will agree with
  
• Bad mouth the competition
• If elected into a position, make decisions that people like
  

Essentially this is what I believe governments do, and they can't really help it. Hypothetical time - Imagine a political party who if elected will in fact do the best for the country, however they refuse to use the above points to help get them elected. Now imagine a political party who will in fact be bad for the country if elected but use all the above points to help them get elected. Which of the two will get elected... The bad party. If a 'good' party wishes to do good for the country, they need to be elected first. To do that they need to play the game.

The other difficult roadblock

Even if you play the game, there is another huge difficulty. That is - trying to explain to a whole lot of 'uneducated' people that a particular policy is a good choice. I don't mean to offend with the term 'uneducated', I am just trying to be accurate. I consider myself uneducated on most political issues that I hear about, but still I have to try and make a decision about it. Most of the education people would get on the issue would not come from quality educational sources but rather skewed opinions. A current example of this is the proposed mining tax in Australia. I am not an expert in the matter, but the majority of the information I have received about it has been from mining bosses, political parties and the general public. If I was to have a medical treatment who would i want advice from...

• Pharmaceutical companies?
  
• People who are trying to discredit my doctor?
  
• Random members of public?
  
• My doctor?

Really the best answer here is none of the above, the best advice would come from reading articles about the treatment from independent sources. In this example the doctor would hopefully be able to provide information from articles, and if he did not fulfill his job would be liable. In the case of the mining tax, I wonder how many Australians who have a strong opinion about the matter have read information from independent economists?


And in the end?

Well I paint a bleak view of the politics of Australia, however I do believe it is highly preferable to many other governments of the world. I think on the whole we have fairly good outcomes, it is just thoroughly inefficient. The question stands to be asked, what can be done to improve the system and is it worth the risk?