Seven Ways to Save Politics

It’s a strange way to start, with musings on the future, but this is where we must situate ourselves, in the place of anticipation. By the time you are reading this, you will have cast your votes, and a new federal government will be settling in. It will either be a government of the same stripe, a Coalition government, or more likely—if the opinion polls at the time of writing are to be believed—a Labor government. It is also possible that we are looking at a minority government of either disposition.

In any case, a wild prediction about the May election result isn’t my purpose. I want to consider what happens next: a more significant quest than putting together the conventional report card on the ‘first 100 days of the new government’—the arbitrary measure imposed by the imperatives of anniversary journalism. What happens next should be a more fundamental reckoning. What happens next should be a recognition that democracy is now on trial in the court of public opinion, both in Australia and around the world.