This was published 7 years ago
It's our democracy, we should stand up for it
By Stephanie Peatling
Let's start with a statement of the bleeding obvious.
The word "democracy" comes from the Greek meaning "rule of the commoners".
It has become fashionable in liberal, first-world countries to mount the case that democracy is broken, that leaders have no vision, that political parties are chockablock with no one but apparatchiks and the commoner is locked out of the process.
Discontent may well be the feeling of the times but to throw up our hands in despair and take the default position that nothing can be done is a cop-out.
Winston Churchill had it right when he said democracy was the worst system of government except for every other.
I'm with Winston Churchill and his much-used declaration that democracy is the worst system of government in the world except for every other.
Right now, discontent is high and rightly so. What other reaction can there be when one of our elected representatives has let us down? Sam Dastyari is not the first and he certainly won't be the last.
Let's take a flying leap and assume that something is going to be done about political donations.
Let's give Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull the benefit of the doubt and assume that inbetween defending himself to Vladimir Putin, trying to reform the superannuation system, navigating a path through his party on same-sex marriage and the thousands of other things that occupy the mind of the leader of our country, he can see that people are annoyed and want change.
Let's imagine that the donations system is cleaned up somewhere along the lines of what is being suggested by various types. I appreciate these suggestions are not perfect so please do not disregard the argument just because the template for reform is not quite there yet. If we are on the way to eradicating polio and contemplating space as a holiday destination then it is not beyond our ability to come up with a better political funding system.
All the suggestions so far seem to indicate that political parties will get less money.
So what? What does this mean?
Less advertising and opinion polling seems one obvious answer.
If there is less of those then that means finding other, cheaper ways of reaching people and finding out what they think.
Social media will go some of the way but there is another way and it requires something not only of the parties but of the previously mentioned commoners, of me and you.
People who want to get into politics will have to spend more time talking to the people who get to elect them, which means the people who do the electing need to do more - more listening, more asking of questions, more thinking about what they want from politicians.
More town hall meetings, more conversations with campaigners and doorknockers, more talking to our friends, colleagues and neighbours about the changes we would like to see in our community and how we could go about getting them.
It might be better street lights so people feel safer walking home from the bus or publicly funded childcare. Whether the scope is local or national does not really matter.
What matters is less complaining and more doing.
For most people, political activism is limited to retweeting a link to a petition calling for an end to the live cattle trade while watching an episode of The Bachelor.
That is not going to cut it any more.
We cannot keep complaining about "the system" while forgetting that we, the commoners, are a big part of the system. The biggest part, in fact.
We must always demand the best from our elected representatives and hold them to the highest standards.
But does that not also require us to be the best citizens we can be?