Page 529 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 8 March 2011
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representatives do and do not have to the electorate, what is and is not a core or non-core promise, who has or has not been deceptive or tricky in their language and what they will or will not commit to.
Increasingly, the public are saying that they are sick and tired of petty politics, sick and tired of the name calling and spin. What they want are outcomes and real substantive debate about the issues that affect them. To achieve this, voters are turning away from the major parties who so often are stuck in this old style of politics.
The growing reality is that governments are being formed with the support of others in the parliament. Here in the ACT, in Tasmania and in the federal parliament we have minority governments that have been formed with the support of other parties and independents. This is the case because the community want action and outcomes and they want a better standard of outcomes. They know that no-one has all the answers and that, far from being a dirty word, compromise can deliver better outcomes for Canberrans and indeed Australians.
Parliamentary supremacy and the structure of our democratic system dictate that executives are accountable to parliament and depend on parliament for the authority to act. Stable governments formed through the support of minor parties are the contemporary reality across the country and not just here in the ACT. We are operating in a new political landscape.
So when is it okay to take governments to task for not implementing their election promises, promises they made as political parties prior to forming government? Firstly, a premise of our system is that our electorates will hold all of us to account when we turn away from the value system and policy background that we have espoused throughout the process of being elected. This may have been one of the reasons why the Democrats were so severely punished for eventually supporting the introduction of the GST.
The current federal debate about a carbon price is an example of this issue. The current opposition campaign will ensure that the federal ALP will wear some flak for pursuing a carbon price against a backdrop of pursuing a market-based mechanism to deal with climate change. I should say that of course the Greens agree that there should be a price on carbon and equally we should stop the current fossil fuel subsidies that create perverse incentives to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It was probably quite foolish of Julia Gillard to rule out a carbon tax before the election—talk about locking yourself into an unnecessarily difficult situation!
Anyone looking at the ALP policy platform on climate change would have realised that there is not much difference between a carbon price, a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme. In fact, anyone who understands climate change policy will realise that the broad operation of these is very similar, though a fixed carbon price does not ensure a particular emissions limit and an emissions trading scheme does not tell you the exact price of carbon.
It is interesting to note that the inconsistency on climate policy has been held by the Liberal Party probably more than the ALP over the last decade. They have gone from
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