Now this is not intended to be an exhaustive review of the system of Australian politics, since it would take a fairly hefty book to do that and I couldn't consider myself to be any more of an expert on it that any other Australian.

And make no mistake about it, Australians are generally pretty keen observers of their political system. They have to be, because voting in Australia is compulsory, with punishment in the way of escalating fines if you don't. You can cast a donkey vote if you want to, but in the minds of most Australians, thats a bit silly, because if you don't vote, you don't have the right to complain about whoever gets into power.

So Australians vote. Added to that, since most people are cheapskates at heart, they won't even give something as ethereal as a vote away without looking to see where they are putting it. Which just adds up to having to understand the system, since without understanding you might put the vote in the wrong place and that would just be silly.

Officially, the Australian system is known as the Washminster system, since it combines aspects of the Washington system of politics and aspects of the Westminster system.

The system most closely resembles the Westminster system in that it has a House of Representatives which is equivalent to the House of Commons and a House of the Senate, which is the equivalent to the House of Lords.

The political system itself is is based around the concept of being two party preferred, which is more complicated in description than it is in practice.

Basically a candidate or party will allocate preferences to each of the other parties involved in the election. Lets look at an example.

Party A likes the policies of Party B but not the policies of Party C.

Party B likes the policies of Party C but not those of Party A.

Party C likes the policies of Party B but not those of Party A.

In the election, Party A gets 1000 votes. Unfortunately, Party B gets 1500 votes, as does Party C.

In the two party preferred system, Party A is knocked out of contention. But because Party A transferred his preferences to Party B, Party B is counted as having 2500 votes and is a clear winner of the election.

Like I said, more complicated in description than in practice.

The thing with this system is that it allows the most important participants of the election to actively take part in it.

Since Australia has compulsory voting, the voters watch with eagle eyes where each party is placing their preferences and if they don't like it, they can quite simply avoid voting for them.

This is called 'voting above the line' and believe it or not is considered the lazy way to vote. The other way is to vote 'below the line', which means each voter can allocate their preferences themselves. Thats right, voters can go through each and every party and say where they want the preferences to go. Sounds a lot simpler, but it makes that one vote a lot more powerful.

What governments and the media often forget (and it certainly seems that the current UK government has) is that the most important people in any democracy is the people. The people put them there, the people pay for them and the people can take them away at each election.

Thats a concept which can often be forgotten and unfortunately, often is.

My next post I will talk about the Australian senate and the remarkable power it has. It might sound a bit boring, but given the current debate on reforming the House of Lords, it will be worth thinking about. The Australian system might not be right for the UK but I think it would be a hell of a lot better than having the party in power appointing more of his cronies (of whatever political affiliation) to work their sycophantic magic on the people who are apparantly represented by the Commons.