The Canberran Presidential System?

Bryan Palmer linked to this late night live broadcast discussing electoral polling. If you didn't know Australia was a parliamentary system, after listening to that radio show, you could be excused for thinking Australia was a Presidential one.

All the commentary was Howard this and Rudd that. The only time an electorate popped up was as a reminder that the Bennelong issue was separate to the re-election of the government. But even that is in relation to Howard.

The media treats the political system as Presidential, the politicians do as well, and the public seems to. We are half-way there with our 'Wash-minster Mutation', we may as well complete the task and establish a Canberran Presidential System.

Permalink, The Canberran Presidential System?, Jun 2007, cam

Damian DOyle: The media treats the political system as Presidential, the politicians do as well, and the public seems to.

That certainly rings true if you scan the news headlines of the major outlets.

Guy: Commenting and writing about politics as if we were actually in a presidential system simplifies things. The mainstream media likes to simplify things for its readers - as exemplified by your comment on supermodel's views on condoms over at Polemica the other day.

I am not sure if it is true or not that the majority of people want their political commentary simplified, but that's certainly what the major media outlets in this country provide most of the time. Thanks to the almost communist level of domination that certain corporations have over our fledgling media market, we don't have any alternatives that seriously challenge the big players.

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Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for Phoenix, Scottsdale and Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area. This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;

My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are AZ88, Postinos, Bomberos with Grazie, Humble Pie, Orange Table, The Vig, Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on phoenixeatsout.com

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Alternate Australian Constitutions

Between 2004 and 2009 this site, southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues. One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:

A Queensland Constitution by adam
An Imaginary Constitution for Australia by alan
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The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.

Archives For South Sea Republic

South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;

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Who Is Cam Riley

I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident. I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end. I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.

I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now. The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.

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