|
December 8, 2004
I am reading Margo Kingston's Not Happy, John! The core of the book is about the Howard Government's attack on Australian democracy, a defence of democracy from this attack, and some positive ideas about how we citizens can set about deepening democracy.
I did find some parts of the book naive. In Harry Heidleberg's chapter, called 'Ever More Democratic', Harry writes:
"The [media] moguls need to be reminded that in a democracy the people run the joint. We delegate our power to our political representatives but we don't do so without caveats. We know they can't be trusted with unlimited power so the Senate was designed to mitigate the power of the House of the Representatives. ....That's why a large number of people habitually vote one way in the House of Reps and another in the Senate...John Howard seeks to undermine the balance of power by detoothing the Senate, but he won't get away with it because the framers of the Constitution were smart enough to write us into the equation. Sadly for Howard we need to approve his power grab, and that will never happen."
Alas, the people voted Howard a majority in the House and Senate in 2004. He didn't have to grab power. It is was democratically given to him by the people. So we citizens become passive observers in the theatre of our democracy.
Nor did we, the people, ever run the joint, as Harry claims. The executive did within the constraints of the Senate. We, the people, had little say over the neo-liberal economic reforms of the Hawke/Keating Government in the 1980s and 1990s.
What Harry has put his finger on though is the way Margo Kingston's Webdiary "short circuited a ritualised Canberra-style debate where slogans are tossed back and forth in mindless synchronicity."
Webdiary is a part of deliberative democracy, as it is a place where public reasoning about public issues can, and does, take place. Even though Webdiary is tucked inside the big corporate media, and it is on the edges of Fairfax that the idea of political deliberation is actually being put into practice.
Harry Heidleberg gives the following account of his experience of the Webdiary process:
"The Webdiary trip taught me that ....[if] both sides [of politics] adopt a take-no-prisoners style of debate we end up with a barren sterile discussion in which the language may be strong, but the blows are as meaningful as those we see in World Championship Wrestling. Denunciations become hollow and laughable. I've learnt that meaningful blows are the ones you land against yourself or the ones where you let your guard down and give your opponent a free go."
Another word for Harry's 'process of engagement' is political deliberation. This involves reflection, participation, being amenable to changing judgements, persuasion rather than coercion, and the discussion and debate being run by citizens.
The limitations of Harry's piece is that though he sees democracy is under threat there is no reflection on deliberative democracy. He talks about core democratic values in terms of threat to media diversity, the lack of education to empower citizens and the failure of ethics in government and business. These are road blocks to a better democracy.
Democracy is seen in terms of bringing people back into democracy. And the touchstone of democracy is seen as people running the joint. But there is no reflection on the constitutional liberal understanding of democracy.
|
