When Fatima Payman crossed the Senate floor to vote against her government she knew it would come with consequences.
The Australian Labor party has strict penalties for those who undermine its collective positions, and acts of defiance can lead to expulsion - a precedent with a 130-year history.
The last time one of its politicians tested the waters while in power was before Ms Payman was born.
But last Tuesday, the 29-year-old did just that - joining the Green party and independent senators to support a motion on Palestinian statehood.
This is not unique to Auzzie politics. AFAIK every Westernized nation’s parties follow the same rule.
My question is if your nation touts its democracy as the best thing since sliced bread, how do you mesh that with dictatorial leadership forcing politicians to vote along party lines, especially on something like this?
Enforced conformity is about as undemocratic as it gets, yet I don’t see any big names standing up against it.
If you aren’t voting for one specific person to be your representative, but rather, for the party as a whole, you generally want individual representatives to follow the party line, unless there’s some sort of unusual drama that splits opinions long after the last elections.
In countries such as the US and the UK, you usually vote for one person to represent your territory, but in elections such as the European ones, because you’re voting for lists of people to represent your country, you’re actually voting for a party.
No idea about how Australian democracy works, though.
Then there’s absolutely no reason to have individual representatives. Just have one representative per party that represents the official party line in the parliament. No need to pay 300 people to do the exact same thing in the parliament when you can have one.
Contemporary governments deal with taxation, healthcare, security, defense, education, law, labor rights, minority rights, infrastructure, prison systems, regulations of industries, and so on and so on and so on. It’s very unlikely to find one person capable of having in-depth knowledge of all of these areas to properly defend their party’s leanings on all of them in parliamentary debates, and even if you did, those parties are still going to need experts who draw the master lines of their policy proposals, and those experts need to be paid.
They are not forced to vote along party lines. However, they don’t get to stay in the party unless they vote with it. They become Independent.
Some issues, usually moral issues, are “conscience” votes and there is no party line for those.
But what counts as a conscience vote is up to the parties once again. Palestinian genocide? Clearly not a moral issue
The senator is elected to the senate, party affiliation is not a requisite. If a senator is evicted from their party they just become an independent senator.
Note: I’m assuming this is how the Aus Senate works, as it’s probably similar to any other western democratic parliament.
Australia is a Commonwealth nation so they follow the Westminster style … the same as Britain, Canada, etc. Senators would not be elected, they are appointed, and act as a check on Parliament.
The Australian federal election senate ballot paper would like a word. Senators are popularly elected in Australia. You’re thinking of the UK, where the “upper house” AKA “House of Lords” are appointed. And until recently, some of the positions were hereditary. If you were the first son of “Lord Blatherskate”, you would become Lord upon his death, and proceed to occupy his seat in the House of Lords.
My mistake. I believed that because Oz is a Commonwealth nation their system of gov’t would be the same as Canada’s. But Australia has a mix of UK Westminster style and US Congress style. They do still have a Governor General who represents the monarchy tho.
Its called the Washminster system.
https://peo.gov.au/understand-our-parliament/your-questions-on-notice/questions/what-is-the-washminster-system
Thanks! I was pretty sure the Australian senate was elected, and was hoping for confirmation.
When you vote for a party, the individual political stance of each politician within that party probably should not matter. In this case, the senator received a statistically insignificant amount of direct votes, it was the Labor party directly that people voted for.
Is it undemocratic as you claim if she wasn’t voted in for her personal stance?
It’s not “dictatorial” to expect people elected with a party to vote with that party.
You vote for the person, you should get the person.
I am unsure where you are from, and I also don’t know if you know how senate voting works in Australia.
You can vote for the party by voting above the line, or you can vote below the line for the individuals.
No disrespect, but I think I disagree with you. I mean, I cant possibly be expected to know every single thing about every person I vote for.
Parties help give you a general idea of the viewpoints of a person without having to know every single stance a person has.
So why do they campaign individually? Why do they talk about their values or priorities at all? Why does it matter that they live in their electorate? If you’re just getting Hivemind Unit #173, why maintain the fiction of local representatives?
True. This is just “freedom of association”. Groups (like political parties) do not have to accept everyone regardless of how they behave.