Peter Kaye  -  Independent Candidate for Bass

When it all started out it was actually very simple.

If you lived in, say, a mythical village in the mythical kingdom of "Zagumba", and the King of Zagumba wanted to put up taxes to maintain the army used to ward off the evil neighbouring kingdom of Balutoland, that had to be approved by a majority of good and honest Zagumbian citizens.

So each village would have a meeting and the idea of more taxes (never a popular idea!) would be put to the vote and a representative of that village would then go to the grand council in Zagumba's capital and put the views of their village to that council.

A vote was taken to determine the majority view of all the villages and the opinion of the majority of the representatives ruled - end of story. Good system wasn't it?

But that all changed with the adoption of the Party system, or, as the pundits like to call it, "representative democracy". This involved "like minded" people setting up Parties that supposedly looked after the interests of sections within the community - like labour and business and other groups.

The grand idea was that we would then vote for these "few" people every couple of years and have them permanently sit in Parliament and represent our interests along broadly accepted principles based on their membership's general ideas and aspirations.

At that time, the baton of democracy was passed to the few to administer for the majority because, as they reasoned, there were now way too many people in the "villages" to have meetings that they could all attend and vote on each issue as it arose. Which was probably fair enough - until the system got corrupted by the aspirations of the ruling class.

So the few charged with administering to the many grew further and further apart from what the real people wanted and started making decisions based on what their party leader thought was the most advantageous way to stay in office, regardless of the cost to the "many". After all, who was going to challenge the system?

Now, however we are in the age of the internet and with a significant number of people "on line" and, with the polling technology and software programmes that have been developed, "direct democracy" is possible.

This is where with the click of a mouse, the majority of people's opinions in Bass can be canvassed very quickly and those charged with the responsibility of implementing the laws and rules by which we live can vote according to what the people want - not the Party bosses.

It would be such a simple matter to set up a data base where those on the electoral roll could properly express their views, "yes or no", on the really important legislative changes before the House so people again felt connected to the process instead of excluded as at present.

The pulp mill issue could have been resolved years ago and we could all have got on with it instead of wasting everyone's time with all the pettiness and stupidity over it that we have witnessed in past and are still witnessing today.

For more on why I think the system we have now is FLAWED, click here

Written and authorised: Peter Kaye, Trevallyn, Launceston. 7250