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.