As usual, the mainstream media is content to take the superficial view of elections. They all seem to think that elections are only about deciding which major party forms government.
This is convenient for them. It is easier than considering individual candidates and the possibilities for policy change. It also allows them to think that the major parties must take notice of what media are saying. In other words, it is a power play.
This government-opposition duopoly of the narrative can be referred to as a 鈥淕OGO frame鈥. In the face of such limited opportunities, what can individual votes do but conform?
There is one huge difficulty with this narrative.
Both major parties have, in recent decades, been responsible for creating the very crises for which they now claim to have the solutions. And yet the media continue to swallow these lies.
The crises they have created include a lack of affordable housing; the huge gap in social indicators between Indigenous and other Australians; destruction of the environment, deforestation and species extinction; continued subsidisation of fossil fuels; failure to address climate change here and abroad; the surrender of defence and foreign policy autonomy to bullying powers; wasting money on submarines; domestic violence and a failure to condemn infanticide in Palestine.
If these crises are not sufficient for voters to want to ditch the major parties, consider the looming crises in health care, aged care and policies on disability.
In both Britain and the United States, with which the major party leaders like to associate, governments seem to exist mainly to hold their populations down and prevent protest.
Between elections, the major parties rule in an authoritarian fashion. They ignore logic and science and denigrate people whose frustrations boil over sending them to the streets.
This two-party system does not serve the mass of people well. In other words, it is barely democratic.
Elections are reduced to a means of securing a mandate for one major party and this mandate is then claimed as a right to ignore us for three years.
It is good to bear in mind that while majoritarianism is often seen as essential to democracy, it is dangerous when presented as the be-all and end-all of good government.
There are alternatives.
First is the obvious example of the Senate where proportional representation means that the major parties do not dominate.
The second possibility is random selection. When citizen juries have been empanelled randomly, the experience has generally been positive. The individuals selected and gathered for discussions have quickly reached moderate, consensual decisions about vital issues.
While it is unlikely that Australia is likely to abandon elections any time soon, or even to change the current system, it is well to remember that the democratic process is imperfectly served by the current partisan competition for places in parliament. We ought not expect too much of elections.
Governments like elections because they can point to them and claim a mandate, which they think gives them the right to rule tyrannically for three years and ignore critics.
By all means take the democracy sausage, but keep your options open, maintain your expectations and campaign for the issues that matter to you in between elections.