Vee : Is 40 million sustainable by the Australian environment?

If not, will it be by 2050?

cam : At Australia's present growth it will hit close to 30 million by 2050 anyway. These people say that 10 million is the maximum sustainable population for Australia.

Our cities were built in an era when there was high capital costs for transport, and centralised energy and water delivery. If we decentralise those three (with digital work replacing the 9-5 transport issue) then we can lower our ecological footprint.

We would probably be importing a lot of food from countries with more fertile soil and seasonal rain, but I don't see that as an issue. Might want to get rid of rice as an industry too.

cam : Using the Eureka Motif for the State Flags: I have done in the past NSW;

and Queensland;

I couldn\'t get Victoria, South Australia or Western Australia to come out with a nice Eureka based design, the colours weren\'t right. But Tasmania, despite a red and green background came out well;

However I remain a fan of Brendon Jones\' Australian Pale state flags.

cam

Felix the Cassowary : Governor-General\'s proclaimed flags: Regarding the Governor-General\'s ability to proclaim flags, were they actually proclaimed by the various Governor-Generals of their own initiative, without any oversight by the Cabinent? I always assumed that the G.-G.\'s ability to proclaim flags was just Westminster Government style language: The G.-G. proclaims the flag, but he\'d only do it if the Prime Minister of the day \"advised\" him to, and if the PM had advised him, then he\'d do it. This is not part of a political role of a Governor-General, no more so than the fact that till Commonwealth legislation has the G-G\'s signature (or the Queen\'s), it\'s not in force. It\'s just a piece of eccentric wording a hundreds-years-old governmental system is likely to have, and a very smart way of allowing future evolution: saying \"Prime Minister\" makes it harder to allow alternations between a presidential the-Prime-Minister-is-king system like we currently have, and a collegial the-Prime-Minister-is-first-amongst-equals system like we used to have, and I expect we will have once again.

But you\'re saying, to the contrary, that (some of the) proclaimed flags were proclaimed by a Governor-General on his own initiative, without the Prime Minister first advising him to do so? That would indeed by an unexpected use of the Governor-General\'s power. I would\'ve thought a constitutional crisis would\'ve ensued, but I haven\'t heard of any.

avocadia : I red carded myself: I have banned myself from making up flag designs. After my last effort, which Cam so foolishly/cruelly (:- ) made a reality, I think y\'all will thank me.

avocadia : Politics prevented crisis:

The wording of the section seems to me (IANAL) to give the GG the power to declare flags as Australian flags on his own. Section 63 of the Constitution caveats all references to the GG in the Constitution as really meaning the PM and his cabinet. Unless there is some other piece of legislation extending section 63 to be a blanket qualifier on all references to the Governor-General within and outside of the Constitution, then we may believe that the power granted in the flags act is unexpected but it is only because we have fooled ourselves into believing it so.

Even if it was unexpected, the GG stole a march on the PM. I am of the opinion that it would have created a worse constitutional crisis for the PM to step in and overruke the proclamation. There would have been some hair-splitting on exactly where the letter of the law was trumped by expectation, and it would have highlighted the dysfunctional state of the Australian executive. This would not have suited Howard\'s politics, so not crisis. On the other hand, we did get a crisis, or at least a media beatup, when WIlliam Deane turned out to have an opinion on Aboriginal affairs markedly counter to that of Howard. The difference was, there wasno exercise of power involved, so all Howard had to do was a quick, public "back in your box."

cam : Except: The Tasmanian one is almost exactly the same as the one you described, but with the white stars, instead of yellow. ... I think your red card was removed at the tribunal.

cam

cam : I had a quick look in Hayden\'s biogaphy: I couldnt find it. I know it is mentioned in there, but it isnt indexed, and I havent made a note on the inside cover about it. I will have a mroe detailed look when I have time. I got the the impression that it was the Governor-General\'s decision, previously it had been so defence flags and state governor flags could be made \"flag of Australia\" (the GG is the commander in chief after all). But this was an extensions of it, and a positive one IMO.

Surey Bill Hayden has an email address, we should probably try and ask him ourselves the circumstances and events around it.

cam

cam : Trackbacks: Road To Surfdom, Imagining Australia:

• Road To Surfdom: See Who Salutes
• Imagining Australia: Take Down The Union Jack, It Clashes With The Sunset

cam

cam : The Goggles, they do nothing: Ugh, 1997 called and wanted its frontpage theme back . The GG\'s site isn\'t pretty.

I emailed the GG office asking about the circumstances. The guts of the email;

I was wondering about the circumstances of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander flags being elevated to official flags of Australia using Section 5 of the Flags Act.

Can that authority be used by the Governor-General without advice from Cabinet? Or does the authority to use Section have to come from Cabinet first, and then be implemented by the Governor-General?

cam

cam : Western Australia Eureka-ised:

Though the Eureka southern cross is turned on its side in a mimicry of the Australia Pale design. But if that is the case, it may as well be a proper Australia Pale design instead - like this one .

Stars might look better white too.

cam

siento : Non elected cabinets are a bad idea: President Bush would never become Prime Minister in Australia because he would never be able to handle question time and the thorough debate of a parliamentary system.

Indeed, where the US a parliamentary system now there would be a barrage of questions about the fudging of intelligence. In the US system no one ever has to answer questions. The press can be dodged easily enough. It is worth noting that in the UK which has a similar system to Australia the issue is not dying.

Similarly, it is important that ministers have to answer questions from people in parliament. The people in parliament have the time and resources to properly think up questions and they can force some kind of response from the person they are questioning.

Parties are an annoying fact. But to say that:

The important aspect of this proposal is that there is wider recognition that there is no legitimate voice of the people despite Australia\'s reliance on proportional voting. Pluralism has largely been destroyed by the parties, absolute party discipline and professional politicians.

is overstating the case. There is a lack of absolute party discipline in Australia that is shown by the very next article in which the results of insubordination by Liberal party members is discussed.

There are problems with parties and professional politicians. Today most Australian politicians are lawyers or teachers. There are essentially no scientists or engineers in parliament.

Felix the Cassowary : Absolute party discipline: It\'s not newsworthy in other countries that members of a party don\'t agree with all the party\'s policies. I think you overstate those four backbenchers.

cam : Question Time: is a good point with appointed officials, I sent an email to the Imagining Australia folks inquiring how they would deal with approval of appointments and the accountability of the appointed officials. (ie Question Time or Senate hearing/committees as in the US)

I think the Migration Detention Amendment shows the absolute power of the Prime Minister. That some back benchers introduced a private member bill is quite extraordinary these days. That their bill got cut down to nothing after the PM got a hold of them and it, shows where the power is.

The amendment gives more arbitrary power to the Executive Cabinet, and no-compelling adherence to process or accountability. It is legislation designed to shut the media up, and appease the public without the government actually having to do anything, or change any of their policies.

I was also reading through the Senate Hansard last night and the valedictorian speeches. Several of them spoke that the Senate wasnt subject to absolute party discipline, but I suspect their definition of absolute is different to mine, as I am not seeing it.

cam

davidmadden : Accountability: A quick note on the question of democratic accountability. In \"Imagining Australia\" in the section on reform of cabinet government we make a point of emphasizing the importance of ministers being democratically accountable. On page 71 we suggest that \"To achieve this, externally appointed ministers would sit on the front-bench during Question Time (side by side with their parliamentary colleagues) and be required to attend parliamentary inquiries and Senate committees. And they--- like all other ministers---would serve at the will of the prime minister\".

cam : Sorry. Missed that in the book.: I had it open on that page while I was writing the article. Doh.

What about the appointment process, what check and balance is there to stop repugnant, incompetent or nepotist appointments being made?

cam

avocadia : Appointments:

The Senate. Only this time, we use clear, explicit language outlining the role of the Senate in approving appointments and then we use oune of those highlighter pens to draw the readers attention to it.

Possibly also make it part of the daily proceedings of the House of Reps. Every morning the Government has to stand up en masse and recite, "Verily, the Senate shall approve appointments and we shall not play funny buggers by claiming mandates to ignore the Constitution"

cam : Senate would be the logical place: .... to have the appointments confirmed. Though it would be great to have sortitionists or ratifiers have a vote on it too. Can you imagine the Mississipi ratifiers response if they got to vote on Ashcroft so soon after rejecting him for the Senate.

NO! NO! NO!

cam

avocadia : Ratifiers:

Well, there you go with a issue that might break on state lines rather than party. You\'d hope/expect the Mississipi senators to vote down Ashcroft. I\'ve no idea if they did or not - my suspicion is that they voted on party lines - but then you\'d hope that they were punished for it at an election.

I think the point I was thinking of when I started typing was that there is a point where you have to trust those you elect to do their job, and if they aren\'t then you have to do the job of punishing them at the election.

cam : btw I have probably flip-flopped on this issue: As recently as Dec 2003 I wrote ;

I agree with Costello, the members of the Cabinet will have to be drawn from an elected body of officials. This means the Cabinet will need to be formed from members of the Legislative.

cam

avocadia : That\'s not flipflopping: You merely broadened the universe of discourse :- )

Scrymarch : I have a political philosophy now?: That comment\'s a fair sample of my thoughts on sortition, and I also wrote an article on for k5 two years back that still has some good links, particularly Knag\'s Let\'s Toss For It .  There\'s also the Sortition (Lottery) pattern from my occassional project Government Design Patterns .

Ratifiers are probably the culturally easiest to bolt on to the current systems in rich world democracies, because it\'s so similar to voting.  This is a little strange considering it\'s the only method that requires tech greater than that available in ancient Athens.  Citizen Auditors are also pretty easy to add, this is all ignoring the inevitable resistance from the rent-seekers and courtesans currently gracing our palaces of democracy.

For the more aggressive methods of sortition like appointing members of parliament, I think you\'d need different techniques in different places.  I\'m not really a fan of adding a third house of parliament appointed by lottery, but in places like Queensland, Britain or Canada, with non-existent or uselss upper houses, I would happily appoint up to a half of the members by lot.  (The remainder would probably be a mix of archived party appointees, the great and good etc.)

Where the house of review is a major house of parliament, like the US where it\'s the primary house, or Australia where it can be a serious brake on the government, I\'d be reluctant to put members appointed by lot in balance of power positions.  The aim is representation and relevance, and this is better achieved by placing the members in the secondary house, in these cases the House of Reps.  I\'d start with a dozen members or so, but you could ramp it up to a quarter of the house as long as you excluded their ability to vote on money bills, which is more happily the business of the executive of the day.