Do Australians Hate Politics?

Running head: DO AUSTRALIANS HATE POLITICS?
Do Australians Hate Politics?
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DO AUSTRALIANS HATE POLITICS?1
Over the last four decades, people or citizens all over the world have lost faith and
trust in their respective governments. The same is found among the Australians as well. The
Australian politics has always been a hostage for a generation to the racialized and divisive
politics that is practised by the National and Liberal Party successors, wedging Labour that
has struggled for refocusing the agenda beyond it (Baptist 2016). According to the recent
surveys and reports, Australians think themselves as observers instead of participants in their
formal political system. This paper shall elaborate on presenting views in favour of the notion
that 'Australians hate politics’.
It is to note that Australia is a federation of six different states that together with the
two self-governing territories have their various parliaments, constitutions, laws and
governments. The formal name of Australia is 'Commonwealth of Australia' (Brennan 2016).
It is considered to be both a constitutional monarchy and a representative democracy with
Australia’s head of state and Queen Elizabeth II. The government of Australia comprise of
the Queen, the House of Representatives and the Senate. It is the parliament that passes the
laws that affect the entire nation. With the same, it is also to note that there are a total of three
arms of the Australian government and they are- a) the legislature, b) the executive and c) the
judiciary. The authority is responsible for voting and debating on the new laws that are to be
introduced under the power of section 51 (Section 51 of the Constitution defines some set of
issues upon which the parliament can make laws) (Arcioni and Stone 2016). Secondly, the
executive of the Australian government is responsible for upholding and enacting all the rules
that are established by the legislature. Individual legislature members or ministers are also the
members of the executive, and they have some essential responsibilities for some areas of law
as well. Lastly, the judiciary refers to the legal arm of the federal government (Nyland and
Ng 2016). It is highly independent of the legislature and executive and is responsible for the

DO AUSTRALIANS HATE POLITICS?2
enforcement of the laws and making decisions on whether the other two arms are taking
actions within their powers or not.
The electoral system of Australia is considered to be one of the best in the world.
However, although having all these rules, responsibilities, powers, laws in place and gaining
the recognition of being among the best electoral systems, Australians have lost faith in their
governments. As per the federal election of 2016, Australians were identified as the least
satisfied citizens with their democratic system since the dismissal of the Whitlam government
in the year 1975 (Hocking 2018). It was the most dramatic event in the history of Australian
politics and federation. Following the election of that year, the members of the crossbench of
the House of Representatives took about 17 long days for confirming that they are supporting
Julia Gillard to form a Labour-controlled minority government in Australia. On the contrary,
the democracies of the West Europeans took about weeks and many times, months after the
election to decide the governing coalitions (Blockmans et al. 2016). The seventeen days of
mild confusion in Australia was enough to give rise to the excellent proportion of citizens
who expressed their support for the democratic system to fall and decline from about 86% in
2007 to 72% in the year 2010. As per the study of Park (2017), it is found that the average
number of Australians who believe and trust in their government and the political system fell
to 37% from 43% in the same year.
Leipold et al. (2016) in this regard has claimed that Australians feel themselves to be
observers instead of participants in their formal political system. As per his study, 90% of the
people interviewed have regarded themselves as without influence over the Australian federal
government, and 70% of them feel the same about the other levels of the Australian
government as well. Hence, there is extensive evidence of the negative attitudes and
disappointment among the citizens of Australia towards their political system and their
politicians. It is to note that according to Evans and Stoker (2016), as well, more than a