Australia’s status as an open democracy downgraded by The CIVICUS Monitor

https://www.hrlc.org.au/news/2019/12/5/downgrading-of-australias-open-democracy-status-a-stark-reminder-of-the-need-to-create-an-australian-charter-of-human-rights-and-freedoms

by DyslexicAtheist • 7 years ago

161 68 7 years ago

hrlc.org.au

mac_was4• 7 years ago

This is based not on any research, polls, just a group of people decide how is a country by reading newspaper articles. While in some cases a democracy status might really show what is happening in a specific country on the other hand there is bias involved, if we compare that in France we've got constant protests, fighting with Police and it is on the same level as Australia?

brnt• 7 years ago

Its based on human rights watch organisations, not people reading newspapers.

Also, democracy does not equal absence of civil unrest. Possibly even the opposite.

petermcneeley• 7 years ago

"democracy does not equal absence of civil unrest. Possibly even the opposite." This is next level thinking and reminds me of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias#In_the_mil...

mac_was4• 7 years ago

The name implies how these organisations do their work - they watch. And the only way to watch is to read articles, watch TV news, etc.

Civil unrest shows that people are unhappy and government is not doing anything, is this democracy? The difference between France and poor countries is if you live in a poor country you fight to survive and have got no energy to protest, in Europe, basic rights (food, vote, etc) are provided and people can protest and then go to supermarkets to get food. So again is French government truly democratic? Should we use the same measures in France, Australia and Kongo?

rsynnott2• 7 years ago

Protest is a sign of democracy, really. If you find yourself somewhere where there's never any protest, ever, well, you're probably somewhere very nasty indeed.

BLKNSLVR• 7 years ago

Queensland is attempting to pass laws as a knee jerk reaction to some of the climate protests that disrupted traffic recently.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/09/queen...

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-09/extinction-rebelli...

Fnoord2• 7 years ago

How does this relate to the Democracy Index [1]? In the 2018 version, Australia is a full point ahead to USA.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

ImaCake• 7 years ago

This CIVICUS rating has a lot less fidelity. But both seem to be based off surveying political scientists and other experts. I guess it is difficult to quantify something as complex as the "democraticness" of a government.

It's somewhat funny that Australia and the UK should be lumped in with the US. Australia's democracy has a ton of features that the US system completely lacks; independent electoral commission, preference voting, an ecosystem of parties that have real power outside the two major parties, parliamentary system instead of presidential, and many more.

I think a lot of alarm over recent scandals is just the ongoing tug of war between order and liberty. People who support more liberty or more order are always quick to argue that recent events extrapolate into infinite of whatever they think is bad. Very occasionally they are right, but mostly they are not.

thepete22• 7 years ago

Yes, that's the problem with reducing all these things to one number.

quotemstr• 7 years ago

Political science, like all the social sciences these days, has an extreme ideological skew. Consequently, any subjective evaluation of the openness (or any other kind of goodness) of a particular country is going to partially reflect merely the extent to which that country reflects the prevailing ideological skew among the experts doing the evaluation. In the present climate, it's difficult to imagine a well-run democratic country with politics opposite to that which prevails in Western academia receiving a great score no matter how well it's run.

Personally, I consider these sorts of studies as just noise. I can't trust any of their methods or conclusions when the researchers are all drawn from an intellectual monoculture that demands constant activism in favor of that monoculture.

thepete22• 7 years ago

From the "How it works" page

We aim to share reliable, up-to-date data on the state of civil society freedoms in all countries.

I guess you can be more democratic than you are free? Also it's an index that's bound to be imprecise to some degree. And one is by a consortium of human rights orgs, the other by a company.

shasheene• 7 years ago

This refers to the CIVICUS Monitor rankings. See the interactive world map: https://monitor.civicus.org/

nness• 7 years ago

Thoroughly depressing.

WilTimSon2• 7 years ago

As I was reading, I was about to pipe up with "oh, prosecuting whistleblowers and intimidating journalists? I hope the US and the UK are in the same boat" but yup, they are, according to the CIVICUS map. I see no reason to disagree.

I do have to say I'm surprised that Canada is considered 'open'. I don't know much about their politics, are things really good there on all those points? Also, highly amused by Russia only being 'Repressed', the past few years of news from that place seem anything but democratic.

mac_was4• 7 years ago

Very good point, journalists, politicians being murdered but it is repressed...

hjek• 7 years ago

Well, an MP was murdered in the UK a few years ago, and the current PM is making light of the murder.

Naga• 7 years ago

On Canada, generally yes, it is.

cryptica• 7 years ago

Having lived in Russia for 6 months in the past, it's is not as bad as western media makes it seem. Unlike China, their internet is still open. Also, internet access is much cheaper there than in the west. Politically, people are definitely afraid to speak out against top government figures but there is still some freedom of expression politically but of course not quite at the level of most of the western world.

Russia's government is relatively new and people are still getting used to capitalism and democracy. I think people are still in control because they know most of the facts. People are simply more tolerant of their politicians bending the rules. Russians like a strong leader; for most Russian people, this is more important than democracy itself.

Fnoord2• 7 years ago

Russians like a strong leader; for most Russian people, this is more important than democracy itself.

In the same way Italians preferred Berlusconi, despite the scandals (e.g. Bunga Bunga sex parties [1])?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunga_bunga#Resurgence_in_Ital...

thejohnconway3• 7 years ago

You’re getting unfairly downvoted, HN seems to have weird groupthink on Russia. I have heard this exact thing from other people who have lived in Russia, and it is a legitimate point of view.

adventured• 7 years ago

Having lived in Russia for 6 months in the past, it's is not as bad as western media makes it seem. Unlike China, their internet is still open.

That would be great, if Russia were not actively working on closing off its Internet as China did and for similar reasons. [1][2] The Russian firewall is being put into place now. It's obvious what they will do with it. The sole reason it's still relatively open is because the Russian state is incredibly backwards technologically, it is operated top down by very slow fiat, and so it has taken a long time for the Russian authorities to implement total Internet control within their territory. They've been working that direction for a decade.

Also, internet access is much cheaper there than in the west.

I fail to see how that's a good point. Russia is a very poor nation, with incomes less than 1/3 the median of the EU and less than 1/6 the median of affluent Western nations. Of course their services cost a lot less than in Denmark, Sweden, Germany or the US. As one example, Romania's Internet (famous for fast speeds at low cost) costs a lot less than it does in the US as well, appropriately so, their incomes are 15%-20% that of the US. The median Russian is poorer than the median Romanian now. To adjust to US income standards for Russian Internet costs, they should not be paying more than roughly $8 to $12 per month.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-sovereign-internet-la...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50259597

dragonwriter• 7 years ago

Russia's government is relatively new and people are still getting used to capitalism and democracy.

No they aren't, because, among other things...

Russians like a strong leader; for most Russian people, this is more important than democracy itself.

Which is among the reasons why they have a strong leader and not anything with more than the superficial veneer of democracy typical of most 20th Century and later authoritarian regimes

kzrdude2• 7 years ago

The anglosphere is in trouble in this way, at least much of it is. There's several factors that influence this across countries, and one of them is Robert Murdoch and the erosion of media culture.

roenxi3• 7 years ago

Murdoch is a leaf on the river compared to technological change. Traditional journalism became endangered because the internet exposed a lot of what they do as vapid misinformation and opened up better options to do research. If I want to know about a politician's platform I can re-watch their debates and read their policies on demand. If I want to know about a subject, I can go straight to relevant technical reports. If I want to know about Cardinals being arrested for pedophilia then the newspapers are the only places that don't carry the news. Reading a newspaper article generally has negative value add, journalists usually don't capture the nuances.

But the bigger picture of authoritarianism is more to do with the technology needed to enable it. It is very cheap and efficient to run an authoritarian state with improved surveillance/computer vision and the ability to control people's purchasing with the electronic banking system.

We're already seeing early attempts at exercising this control in Australia with the cash ban bill this year. It'll ratchet up as time passes.

zzzcpan2• 7 years ago

Yeah, the map is a bit weird and biased, maybe just uninformed or influence of governments is spilling over to the map. I see examples of repressed status given to closed countries, obstructed and narrowed to more open than narrowed countries.

ajxs• 7 years ago

I was hoping that this article was going to be more of an in-depth critique of the poor state of regulatory capture and disruption of democratic institutions by bad actors in the private sector. My local state government ( NSW ) has been steadily growing more ostensibly corrupt over the last decade. I don't think there's many people denying the fact that wealthy business stakeholders get a disproportionate say in legislation and the allocation of public resources at the moment.

LIV2• 7 years ago

I still have no idea why people voted them in again, Everything they do can be found to benefit the developers (like selling waterfront property in Woy Woy for only $40k to a developer, selling the land the powerhouse museum is on to developers, rail corridors etc)

It's pretty depressing

roenxi3• 7 years ago

In a sense if that is the major complaint then it makes sense why they are getting relected - developers are taking land and building things people want. There has always been a background level of corruption in construction afaik. Everyone wants it to be a squeaky clean process, but everyone also wants infrastructure; we have high immigration and we need the groundwork laid in Sydney to support population growth.

We can argue about whether they are making great long term decisions. They probably aren't. But there is a lot of activity in the right general space; they took political risks with their light rail build up for example. And the recent Federal Labor party has a questionable record at infrastructure projects and it seems unlikely that the NSW branch has a better handle on the situation.

jakecopp• 7 years ago

Negative gearing and franking credits seem to be more important than absolutely everything else.

bamboozled• 7 years ago

I see two major issues in politics right now.

The first being that Democracy wasn’t ready for social media and the Internet and still isn’t.

The second is a major one without an easy solution. It seems we’re always forced to vote for the least worst option.

I feel many democracies need to consider alternatives. I think It would be nice to introduce a pre-election poll and first ask voters to decide on whether they’re actually satisfied with the candidates and policies put forth prior to the actual election. Else we just end up with 4 years of no one being happy with the lesser of two evils running the show.

This is why people always say “I can’t believe X won”. It’s because there is often no alternative but democracy just plugs on as usual even though no one was really satisfied with their options. I believe it’s also why many major elections of late have been so close, people are just divided.

I’d propose that if the voters aren’t ready to proceed with the election, say someone such as the Governor General (in Australia’s case), needs to work with major parties to start another pre-selection round.

I’m also interested in the idea that politicians should be “pardoned” by those who elected them before leaving office, ie if major initiatives were not implemented, there should be some accountability for that and maybe some penalties, ie reduced pension.

It’s insane to think one can be the leader of a country and not be held accountable for a single thing during a term in office, wow.

danieltillett• 7 years ago

NSW has always been corrupt. Look at the Rum Rebellion [0].

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rum_Rebellion

RVuRnvbM2e• 7 years ago

Yeah the current government has been accelerating an authoritarian slide unencumbered by a bill of rights. Neither major party supports such a document and without it you get bullshit like this recent secret trial and imprisonment:

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-21/canberra-prisoner-...

friendlybus5• 7 years ago

A bill of rights does not protect you against secret trials. Assange's secret indictment is a famous example.

Synaesthesia3• 7 years ago

No those rights need to be enforced and of the government won’t do it, the people have to put pressure on them.

ekianjo• 7 years ago

Where is the trial of Assange secret exactly? You can consider his treatment to be unfair but there's been nothing secret about it.

humanrebar• 7 years ago

You also need several independent pieces of government (1) overseeing one another. People tend to underappreciate how the divided powers in the U.S. setup are also critical. Different branches of government. Different independent levels of government. And so on.

To some degree, the frustrations in America right now are due to the erosian of that system of separated powers, generally in favor of a national bureaucracy, which I don't thing many voters actually like.

(1) And, ideally, other social institutions would be in the mix, but those vary more by country. Having a monarch around to berate political leaders for nonsense helps with some things. A free press helps with others. Strong protest culture, etc.

chvid• 7 years ago

https://monitor.civicus.org

According to this map Australia then joins the ranks of the US, the UK, South Africa and Japan.

It is a fun map. But honestly it is silly. Australia is an open and functioning democracy, so is the UK or the US for that matter.

PixyMisa2• 7 years ago

The article doesn't go into any specifics. But I can't say I disagree, unfortunately, with actions like the bipartisan legislation on strong encryption last year.

Australia needs to adopt the US Bill of Rights - just cross out "Congress" and write in "Parliament" and be done.

It won't stop abuses, but would give a way to fight back.

senectus1• 7 years ago

yeah I dont disagree, but I find it hard to believe that the US has the same rating as Aus...

Also, is it just me or is that map just a double of "Left or Right aligned" ?

PixyMisa2• 7 years ago

They list New Zealand as "open" when that country just passed new laws - almost overnight - allowing people to be jailed for their speech.

So yes, they have a lot of bias. They are pointing out real problems, but they are also ignoring real problems.

hamhand• 7 years ago

One can argue that to fight authoritarian infiltration and culture clash, certain amount of de-democracy may be needed. After all, the free nature of democracy by which malignant powers exploited is what allowed the situation worsening to alarming levels.

Synaesthesia3• 7 years ago

No we need more democracy, to combat this attack on democracy.

A bad democracy is still in principle better than a benevolent dictatorship.

wz1000• 7 years ago

I thought the notion that Australia was a democracy was laid to rest in 1975 with the CIA's coup of Whitlam's government.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/23/gough-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional...

Australia’s status as an open democracy downgraded by The CIVICUS Monitor

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