My take is a little different: what we’ve seen recently is a strong example of a working democracy.

The Prime Minister became increasingly unpopular over many issues and didn’t take the opportunity to do anything about it. The public stopped believing that he could effectively lead the country. For better or worse, the PM is seen as the policy-setter of the party. They are held accountable for the performance of the whole government. And I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing.

There is a reason we make elected ministers, rather unelected public servants, responsible for running portfolios. It’s so we have someone to blame. It doesn’t matter if a minister loves or hates the policies they are overseeing, they are responsible for them. Of course, the policies come from the party and removing the minister may do little or nothing to change them.

But our votes and our voices are the mechanisms we have to participate in our democracy. The minister, or Prime Minister, is by design the focal point of the public’s attention for a given set of issues. They are the conduits from the public to the party. It might be unfair on the individual politician, but that is their role.

The Labor Party didn’t remove Kevin Rudd because of some mining magnate/journo-led conspiracy: they did it because he had become unpopular enough to threaten Labor’s chances of winning the next election. The party is primarily interested in getting itself elected and that is what drove their decision.

There may well be a downside to reactionary, poll-driven politics. It can certainly be a hindrance to anyone trying to implement a long time vision. But, only if they lose the trust of the public.

More direct responsibility to the public has to be a good thing in a democracy, surely. The public may be open to manipulation by whichever boogeyman you like and our electoral system isn’t as representative as it could be. But there’s a crytpo-fascist aspect to the ‘reactionary is bad’ argument: an underlying belief that there are people who are better suited to making the rules and people who are better suited to following them.

We are not cattle. We are smart enough, as a collective, to choose the direction for the country. And if we’re not, we’ll suffer the consequences, learn and improve. Or, we’ll fail miserably. It’s entirely up to us.

That, to me, is what democracy is all about.

Suppossedly the “political profile of Gen Y” is fiscally conservative and socially progressive, and I fit that bill pretty well. I have some conflict between my belief in individual sovereignty, my mistrust of unchecked corporations and the desire to help people: my inner socialist and libertarian jostling with each other. But there is one thing I hate with clarity: goverment interference in personal autonomy.

Unfortunately both major parties are socially conservative. Both are paternalistic and believe, in one form or another, that people are too stupid to think for themselves. The Liberals trust corporations to self-regulate, but insist on moralizing about what adults do in their bedrooms. Labor has to me been the best of two bad choices, with their paternalism at least coming from a vague sense of helping people.

There’s a lot of reasons to be disillusioned with the Labor government. Other than (potentially) having guided us through the GFC there has been a trail of incompetence and inaction. With Abbott as the alternative PM, those failings wouldn’t be enough to sway me away from Labor. But the incessant obsession of this government with controlling personal freedom has tipped me over the edge.

Despite massive public outcry, the government still plans to implement it’s expensive, ineffectual and potentially harmful Internet filter. Now they are proposing to monitor the email and web browising habits of all Australians. This is a dangerous, infuriating and unacceptable breach of the role of government.

Imagine the public outcry if every letter sent through AusPost was opened and the contents recorded. This is even worse: not only are they reading your mail, but they know which books and newspapers you read, who your friends are and, increasingly, what you purchase. If, like I do, you use a VoIP phone service, that can be recorded too.

Potentially every electronic interaction you have could be monitored and stored. There is no possible justification for this level of citizen surveillance.

So, despite my severe reservations about the Liberals, I have decided that I cannot vote Labor. Somewhere burried in their core the Liberal party believes in personal autonomy, and even though they have been overtaken by religious nutjobs, I have to believe they have the potential to come down on the side of individual freedom. I have no such faith in the current Labor government, who have shown time and again that they do not.

God help me, I’m going to preference an Abbott-led coalition. I just hope the Greens get enough power to keep the craziness in check

When the Aged Pension was introduced in 1909, the qualification age was 65. However the average life expectancy of men and women was only 55, meaning that most people never lived long enough to receive it (ref). Those that did were much closer to the end of their lives than the 65 year-olds of today, who can expect to live until their mid 80s.

I mean, it’s a nice idea: work hard for 45 or 50 years then get 20 years “off” to wind down. I can certainly see myself enjoying that. But what was originally intended as a safety net for those blessed with an above average lifespan has become a method of funding able-bodied people’s inactivity. Of course not everyone at 65 is still fully capable of  working, especially if they’ve had a physical career. These people should be taken care of, but not necessarily via an aged pension.

The aged pension is a blunt tool. It’s very easy to identify someone who qualifies: they are past a certain age and below a certain level of wealth. Using measurements like this makes sense past a certain age, where the number of people capable of working full time is very low. When first introduced, of the few people who made it past 65 very few would have been able to work. These days however the age where most people would be incapable of work is much higher, although I won’t pretend to know what it is. Of course for many people, especially those in physical careers, 65 may well be an accurate age. But the average office-worker has had much fewer demands put on their body over their working life and require much less physical ability.

Perhaps a wiser move, particularly given our rapidly aging population, would be to move the aged pension age to say 75 whilst introducing individual assessment-based capability reviews for people between 65 and 75.  This has the potential to be over-burdened by bureaucracy (as the current invalid pension is) but assuming that it could be fairly implemented it has the potential to reduce the cost of aged pension retirees considerably.

The financial side of things is only a part of the issue though. It’s rather depressing to spend 50 years of your life focusing on how you’ll live your last 20, should you be lucky enough to get that long. It seems to be a waste of a life, and could only be entered into by people who are fundamentally unhappy with their working lives. Surely it makes infinitely more sense to build a life that you are passionate about.

For most of the species’ history, and for most of the world’s current population, people work from the time they are first able until they cease to be able simply as a matter of survival. To expect 20 years of social security, paid for by the next generation, seems quite unreasonable. Complaining that you may get 2 years less is down-right selfish.