Silencer, on 26 November 2018 - 02:44 AM, said:
That is, again, a very rosy view of the Australian parliamentary system. Backbenchers very rarely vote outside party lines, and their "independence" has lead to something like 6 leaders in the last 4 terms of parliament, constant leadership spills, and what it actually results in is the fringe pulling the majority elected to the right. Those racists and morons? They're in the minority, and the only reason they have the power they do is because of the threat of a leadership spill and the fact that the incumbent party cannot rule without aligning six different distinct parties together.
Instead of the PM having a de-facto dictatorship, you have fringe extremists having a de-facto dictatorship. At least with your PM, the party that was voted in is actually the one whose views get advanced. In Australia, it's whichever nutcase 1-member party managed to get their tiny electorate to vote them in, giving them a balance of power they do not deserve.
The currently elected Liberal National Party is actually a coalition of about six different parties. And in order to maintain their grip on power, they have to continually appease the far-right elements of their party and their allies. Effectively, no individual part of their coalition has the numbers to rule alone. This would be like 1% of the population of Canada holding the balance of power because their electorate seat holds as much power as any other, and the current government *needs* that one seat desperately.
I'd rather my local MP be hamstrung by party politics than that. It looks all nice and rosy until you realise the likes of Pauline Hanson, Tony Abbott, and that other idiot whose name I forget wield more power than they have earned through votes.
Like I said, grass is always greener on the other side - I certainly don't think the Canadian setup is the best, but the UK and AUS parliaments are categorically NOT more democratic. They just like to pretend they are.
But the exact same thing is going on in Canada too, except that here you don't see the individuals responsible for the BS as who they are.
I will use a provincial example. In BC, there is a municipality called Surrey that has a number of provincial swing ridings. In the last election, both sides knew that the few thousand swing votes in Surrey could literally decide the election. So, instead of making sane policy choices, the New Democrats decided to run on removing tolls from a billion dollar bridge (effectively adding 3-4 billion to the provincial debt) while the Liberals ran on not allowing ride sharing apps to operate in BC (because there is a significant number of cab drivers living in Surrey).
In the AUS system, the individual MPs in these swing ridings would run on those insane policies, get elected, and hold the government hostage. In the CAN system, the entire political party aligns itself with the riding. But at the end of the day, it's a few voters in specific areas who hold the balance of power and make the outcomes less than ideal.
In my opinion, the solution isn't to hamstring people's representatives. Instead, we have to work towards more representative systems of government that don't give specific voters a disproportionate amount of power. At the same time, we should preserve individual MP's ability to work for their constituents. (proportional representation FTW!)
I think that generally, the Canadian system of government is marginally better than the system in the UK and AUS. But that's because of the fact that Canada has an actual written Constitution and a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with the Parliament being bound by these documents. The Charter specifically provides a good degree of protection against bad politics (but not absolute protection, see Ford and the current Quebec government).
But looking specifically at the Parliaments of the three countries, I would much rather Canada had the UK system. If the outcome is going to be decided by a small number of votes, I would rather it be obvious which votes are deciding that outcome.