photo credit: Daquella manera

New kids send democracy up the spout

By Andrew Bolt

September 10, 2008 03:49am

YOU think we live in a democracy where we choose our leaders? Then wake up and check the leaders of our states and territories.

Voted for any of them?

In fact, six of the eight got their jobs without going to an election. They were picked instead by their party to replace a leader of their own side.

Five still haven’t got the voters’ nod since, which means most Australians have a premier they’ve never had the chance to vote for.

New kids send democracy up the spout | NEWS.com.au.

Poor Andrew Bolt seems not to understand how our constitution works. Perhaps he could walk across the threshold of a public school where they might deign to provide him an education about this.

He seems not to understand a basic tenet of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy. To put it very simply, very few people in the electorate vote directly for a premier or prime minister. The voters vote for a candidate from a party or an independent. The members of the parliament then elect a leader to be premier or prime minister or oppositions leader.

This notion that people directly elect the premier or prime minister, as Bolt’s article implies is just nonsense. Do you think that dear Mr Bolt would be making such a fuss if a Liberal leader had been installed in such a fashion – and this has happened pretty commonly too? Of course not. He chooses to misrepresent the constitution for his pathetic political ends – namely, sour grapes that his team isn’t in government.

WEE all know that the current crop of Labor governments are pretty average. And in the fair state of NSW they’re rubbish. But to pretend that it’s somehow ‘not democracy’ for the parliamentary parties to elect their leaders, and as it follows, premiers and prime ministers is disingenous. Still WEE wouldn’t have expected anything else from Andrew Bolt – it’s probably all a bit complex for him to comprehend.