Felix the Cassowary: Corrections & disagreements: Tasmania has a bicameral parliament. But their upper house, rather than being elected in a general election like most states\', has a few seats up for election each year (Wikipedia claims they have 15 members with six year terms, elected three one year, two the next). It also has the unique property of being a very independent house, currently with five Labor members against ten independents. Tasmania seems to have a very interesting political system; you\'d do well to look into it more closely.

I don\'t understand this:

The success of the American democratic system is that Americans have a commitment to it. American voters are largely reasonable people and recognize poor governance when they see it. They also understand that the party machine that is in opposition to the party of the President can be an effective check and balance on executive largess and arrogance.

Australia has no such system in place.

Australians, I would\'ve thought, are committed to our democratic system. Else, why else do we get such high turn-outs? Compulsion alone couldn\'t do that; the law would simply be ignored and discredited. Else, why did the inclusion of political parties on ballots reduce the occurence of donkey votes? Else, why is there discussion about our political system and changes to our constitution and such on plogs and in the papers? Else, why do people who don\'t spend their time reading & posting here have opinions on the Liberal and Labor party? Why\'s there new political parties like Family First and People Power trying to fill the vacuum left by the Democrats, and why are the Greens improving their lot?

So I can\'t grant your first sentence. I\'ll assume you never intended to imply that Australians are unreasonable people who can\'t recognise poor government when they see it.

And as for effective oppositions, what more could you want than an entire shadow ministry? Ted Baillieu and Mark Latham are/were considered new kids on the block with about a year before the election. It was obvious from the start that (former Victorian Leader of the Opposition) Robert Doyle was going to be ineffective and unelectable, and Baillieu has always seemed much more electable. Australian voters cannot be surprised about their new exectutive\'s properties, because the executive has been there for months and years, challenging the Government at every reasonable opportunity.

I honestly do not understand you when you say that all we can muster is the Democrats in the Senate: Contrast this, where a minor party is able to oversee the government of the day, to the American system, where the best that can happen is that the opposition provides the oversight. Obviously there is less practical executive oversight (because the Government can go to war unilaterally, and so forth), but the fact that the balance of power is almost always held by someone outside of the Government is vastly more consoling than the fact that having mates oversee mates a good amount of the time.

Your paragraph about violence seems to be a complete nonsequitur. America was an independent and largely stable democracy until their civil war; Australia had had up to seventy or eighty years experience with democratic self-government before the events in 1932: These have nothing to do with how the prevailing circumstances before were obtained. And even if it wasn\'t, I can only analyse it as contradicting your main point: America, though a largely stable democracy for seventy or eighty years, was not able to prevent itself decending into civil war. Australia, which had been a largely stable democracy for up to seventy or eighty years, and still going through the teething stages of a new federation, and in the middle of a depression the followup to a major war that had caused a significant reduction in Australia\'s male population, our system was stable enough to prevent anything worse than a constitutional crisis. As you say: It could\'ve been a lot worse, but we got through with just a scratch.

You alse conflate \"nation-state\" and \"stable democracy\". It is trivial to find examples of nation-states which are not stable democracies, and stable democracies which are not nation-states. In any case, whenever a foreign power takes over a new land, minorites are going to suffer. This is the nature of the process, and why so many have criticised Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Australian system is not designed for constant and vigorous accountability: It is designed for constant and vigorous accountability while looking like an absolute monarchy. It is tribute to the system and hundreds of years of evolution that it achieves its goals very well. Not that I think for a minute we have reach the peak of democratic evolution. I think we have a ways to go, and there is much we can learn from out neighbors across the Pacific. But I do think we should only pick the best features, such as executive oversight in the Senate, and incorporate them into our system as best we can. I don\'t think it would be at all safe or desirable to adopt any part of their system wholesale.

cam: With the comment on the mid-terms: I meant that US voters can use the ballot to act as a check and balance on the executive they elected two years before, didn\'t mean it to impugne that Americans were more committed to democracy than Australians or vice-versa. I don\'t mean to romanticise either system but acknowledge the best features of both.

My error on Tasmania.

I honestly do not understand you when you say that all we can muster is the Democrats in the Senate: Contrast this, where a minor party is able to oversee the government of the day, to the American system, where the best that can happen is that the opposition provides the oversight.

Two independents got elected to the US Senate in the mid-terms and will probably hold disproportionate power for it depending who they caucus with. This is not much different to the role the Democrats have had in the past. The US system has plenty of third parties on the ballots, it is not a failure of the first past the post system either as the UK system manages to elect third parties under such a system.

America, though a largely stable democracy for seventy or eighty years, was not able to prevent itself decending into civil war.

A majority becoming a minority was the cause for the US Civil War. Virginia were the power brokers on that continent during the revolutionary war. By the mid 19thC they could muster enough power to challenge New York and Massachusetts but not enough to defeat it.

America was equally brutal to its local minorities as Australia was in its rise to and during its nation-state status.

our system was stable enough to prevent anything worse than a constitutional crisis

It is important not to indulge in Australian romanticism either, if Lang had of told Game that he didn\'t recognize his authority due to his dismissal being unconstitutional (which he would have had a point on) civil war was on. NSW was the federation minority, it was the free traders and the biggest state with the most to lose by joining with protectionist Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland.

Like the US Civil War where NY broke Virginia, the \'no blood on the wattle\' episode broke NSW power and made the state subservient to Canberra - the homogenous nation-state was complete. It is the same process and it NSW had state supported based militia rather than spontaneous volunteer militia and the NSW Police Force who appeared in the stand-off then it may have escalated to a higher level of violence.

cam

Mark Hill: Voter turnout: Germany has over 90% turnout with voluntary voting.

Don\'t forget we only got representative Government two years after Eureka, but not in WA or the NT. Before then we had an aristocracy and a Governor who had the powers of a medieval Duke, beholden to the aristocratic UK Parliament.

The US was very democratic before the revolution. Virginia is an example of this, the House of Burgess and an accountable Governor.