- by Peter Farmer
- The Guardian
- Issue #2171
If you want to understand Australian democracy and you’re not allergic to twee jokes, the ABC has a show for you. In Annabel Crabb’s Civic Duty, Crabb takes us through the history of Australia and voting, explaining what’s so very special about democracy as practiced in this country.
There’s things to be learned here, things we could learn just as enjoyably without the condescension. Anyone who wants to understand what’s unique about democracy as practiced in Australia would mostly do just as well to search on the ABC’s Behind the News a venerable short program for high school students.
Did you know that Lewis Caroll wrote Alice in Wonderland? Annabel Crabb seems to think you don’t, as she explains, with the help of cute clips from old Alice in Wonderland movies, how Caroll also came up with the idea of preferential voting.
Is this really true, this viewer wondered, or was preferential voting devised for more self-interested reasons? Sure enough, it was, although you’ll have to watch the show to find out which Australian PM made preferential voting a thing in order to stop discontented voters putting the Labor Party in power.
Along with Crabb laughing at her own jokes, we’re treated to a range of short interviews with George Megalogenis, Tony Abbott, Penny Wong, Waleed Ali and the rebarbative Tim Wilson, as well as a gaggle of Australian political journalists to demonstrate Crabb’s balance and access.
We’re also treated to interviews with the hard-working people at the Australian Electoral Commission with Crabb extracting maximum whimsy from the number of pencils that have to be handed out each year.
Overall, the message is that Australian democracy is pretty terrific and more unusual than you might think. This country is one of the few with compulsory and preferential voting, and the show gives some solid reasons why both are good things, and fun facts about how they were introduced.
Topical relevance and some gentle debate come from guests explaining their conflicting views on the topics of marriage equality and ‘crossing the floor.’
The question of why we have two major parties comes up. Crabb interviews a guy from the Belgian parliament and does some ooh and ahhing over a coalition of the centre-right and centre-left parties there, ignoring the fact that a coalition between centre-right and centre-left is pretty much what we have here. Pressure from large companies gets a quick mention.
Apart from the independents, of course. Crabb gives time to Fatima Payman, Zali Steggall and others to explain why independents get into both houses of parliament.
One of the last topics in the show is the situation of Indigenous Australians, who Crabb calls “the people with the least power of all, people whose voices the system is not yet trained to hear.” Professor Clare Wright and Djapu leader Yananymul Mununggurr explain about the ‘bark petition’ that was sent to parliament from the Yulu people of Yirrikala. Their land had been given to mining companies to mine for bauxite without asking their permission.
This part of the show is worthwhile and important. Other big problems with Australian democracy are given a cursory mention or just brushed past. What kind of democracy consistently gives outcomes that suit large corporations and the USA? That’s the kind of democracy we’ve got, and cute talk about “democracy sausages” won’t fix it.
Streaming on ABC iview
