A nervous electorate

A nervous electorate awaits the outcome of desperate efforts by our governments to contain the financial/job crises, while environmentalists despair of ever seeing an effective program to solve the dangers of climate change.

Meanwhile, the success of stimulus and infrastructure spending being uncertain in the short term, maybe better, maybe worse, in the longer term, Dr. Lindy Edwards, (Age Comment & Debate Tues. May 5) ponders whether Prime Minister Rudd will turn out to be ‘Hero, or villain’, depending on which point of time judgement is involved and whether success is a rain shower or failure becomes a hailstorm.

In the midst of innumerable commentators with widely varying views, and political parties at war in parliament, we have Tony Cutcliffe of the Eureka Project proclaiming our leaders need a ‘two-way flow on decisions’ (Age Business, Opinion May 6).

Cutcliffe claims: ‘most senior decision-makers (have) become isolated from the lives of ordinary Australians’…and ’rather than uniting the community to fight our biggest known threat, Australia’s key decision-makers are leading the community to division, fatalism and fear.’ We need, he says: ‘a structured conversation with Australians—with information flowing both ways’, to take advantage of ‘the highly influential knowledge and skills among staff and constituencies now consigned to irrelevance’. He has a point.

I have long maintained that ordinary people are a resource, neglected by party governments which, being engrossed with the exercise of power, have neither the time nor the will for the profitable interchange with the community which could improve the clarity of decisions and achieve a fully supportive public.

A structured involvement of the people could vastly improve the practice of government, with better decisions and a lot less public frustration. This highlights an elementary aspect of democracy which is missing—to our shame and possible peril.