OPINION
Go direct?​
The case for issues-based public voting in Australia
10 Apr 2025
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In a federal election season such as we’re in, Australian democracy is trumpeted as a crown jewel. Perhaps pragmatically, this serves to remind people to get out to vote and campaigns against treating such an opportunity with flippancy. The attributes of the Australian system we’re encouraged to be most proud of are the mandate generated by a compulsory voting system (the fact all adult citizens must partake) and our historic early adoption of the secret ballot. We also appear to have a high degree of public trust in the Australian Electoral Commission – vote counting and redrawn electoral boundaries are almost never questioned on the grounds of partisan interference. And so, after several decades of a relatively steady federal voting process, to make a critique of the mechanisms Australian democracy looks, in a way, like going after a sacred cow. We shouldn’t wish to erode respect for Australia’s model, but might some of the triumphalist rhetoric be distracting from ways in which our system could be improved?
Going off the latest of the annual V-Dem indices – presented by the University of Gothenburg – Australia ranks as the 13th strongest liberal democracy in the world. We can be suspicious of how such rankings might idealise certain ‘modes’ of democracy, but nevertheless it looks like a tidy result. Across the world, however, democracy is said to be losing ground, with more states sliding towards authoritarianism than liberalising their elections. The V-Dem indices (short for ‘Varieties of Democracy Project’) score countries on a range of democratic attributes. Australia’s lowest score is for the category of facilitating ‘direct popular voting’ (‘0.27’, where the maximum would be ‘1’). To be clear, this element is also reported as low in virtually every other country in the world. In its purest format, ‘direct democracy’ would allow adult citizens a vote on every political issue, rather than vesting this responsibility in the hands of parliamentary representatives. Whilst there’s undoubted utopian appeal, it's been a derided concept at least since the time a parliamentary system was first being devised in the United States. In the late 18th century, America’s founding fathers – faultless paragons! – preferred a representative structure for how it protected against a ‘tyranny of the majority’. Pure direct democracy is often predicted to lead to failed states with weak leadership, where the whims of the masses could hold unfettered sway. Yet the notion that retrograde wishes of ‘the majority’ can necessarily be protected against in a system that divides voters into electorates averaging around 100,000 – such as we have in Australia – might be little dubious, too. An additional, practical concern with pure direct democracy is that arranging a process by which everybody with suffrage can perform a physical vote on all significant topics, and be informed enough to do so properly, looks starry-eyed and ridiculous.
But might there be strains of direct democracy which would have relevance in Australia? Specifically, might there be instruments by which citizens would be able to challenge seriously unpopular measures put forth by a government that otherwise enjoys strong relative approval? The country with the highest score for ‘participatory democracy’ in the V-Dem indices is Switzerland, largely built on its world-leading facilitation of direct popular voting. The Swiss system is famous for enabling various referendums where voters might respond to particular issues, at the scale of both constitutional amendments and ordinary laws. There, a referendum may be called if a proposal or an objection receives the requisite number of signatures. It’s led to such outcomes as a ban on mosque minarets and a municipality that didn’t grant women’s suffrage until the 1990s – both of these results running counter to federal parliamentary advice – but it’s also brought about national votes on such topics as a universal basic wage and increased holidays for workers. Polling suggests that a majority of Swiss are happy with their democracy, however the country’s collective wealth, relatively small geographic area, and modest population should be noted as possible reasons to be dubious a ‘direct’ system would be viewed so favourably elsewhere.
In Australia, the electorate has historically been reluctant to make constitutional changes to our system of government, so any implementation of direct democratic features would seem difficult to pull off. Stereotypically – and somewhat lazily – Australians display cynicism towards their ‘ruling class’ and the significance of the vote, and yet somehow this entrenched value appears to ward off radicalism rather than stoke it. But might we aspire to inch towards a system where average voters show more enthusiasm towards their own role, and can have a sustained influence in the intervening stretch between constrained elections? To talk of specifics, imagine an Australian democracy where optional referendums with a strong turnout and a massive majority of support – something like 70% – could effectively veto parliamentary legislation. Or, rather than an overturning ‘veto’, imagine if disapproval was registered in such a way that it reduced the federal government’s term in office – down from an expanded five years and back towards a minimum of three depending on the amount of successful government legislation disobeying popular will. I’ll leave specific mechanisms to wiser heads than mine.
At our federal elections, Australians are essentially presented with a choice between two major policy ‘suites’ – that of Labor and the Coalition. The Greens go so far as to map out a network of policies without having achieved enough federal clout for this to be treated as a serious folio. But whilst representative voting achieves a relative mandate for the eventual government, there’s room for questioning the extent to which we’re endorsing actual policies. Long-term voting trends in Australia, which have been marginally disrupted by teal independents, have it that Labor and the Coalition compete for comparative approval over the other, and notionally might have success at this whilst smuggling in a few ‘on the nose’ ideas – provided the other mob’s suite of policies looks even less appealing. To use the analogy of team sport, the party that forms government proves its relative popularity (or superiority) over the others, but it might be able to achieve this whilst carrying a few lower-order policy ideas (like middling players). We’re not given some kind of ‘All-Australian’ scenario where the emergent, victorious team is comprised only of ideas that are widely regarded as best. Of course, this makes perfect sense. The winning party needs to have a strong concept of how all their policies cohere, how these might factor into a budget, and the process of their actual delivery. Parties can’t simply campaign on the isolated, utopian notions the public would have arrived at by popular will alone. But given present-day elections are regularly decided by macro headwinds more than individual policies, might we need a way of protecting against distracted or single-minded voters and parties that keep plans close to their chest?
Around the world, incumbent governments are seemingly being turfed out without the usual level of scrutiny on the policy alternatives of challengers. It’s possible, for instance, that the US tariff program currently being foisted on the global economy may not have been entirely digested when it was put to American voters ahead of last November’s presidential vote. For a domestic example, think of how Labor’s ‘low-target’ strategy at the 2022 election was a resounding success, despite the party’s low primary vote, because it had recognised the winds of change favoured it regardless. In the case of election ’25, the policy that conceivably would be most vulnerable to a ‘citizen’s challenge’, in the spirit of a Swiss optional referendum, is probably the Liberal’s nuclear plan. In recent weeks, it’s been reported Peter Dutton’s team have concertedly reduced mentioning this proposal to bring nuclear into Australia’s energy mix because of recognition it might be tanking in the electorate. According to a prominent Liberal ex-minister, it was never a policy being earnestly put to the Australian public anyway. And yet despite flagging opinion polls (and betting odds), it’s conceivable a Coalition government, with a twist in fortune and help from that economically-driven surge against incumbency, nevertheless emerges victorious from May’s election and finds itself in a position to pursue a nuclear plan. In such a case, should there not be a measure by which a significant majority of citizens – 70%, say, if this existed – could express disapproval of such a transformative policy as it’s being legislated, and for such a stand to have a binding consequence? In fact, previous Queensland premier Steven Miles suggested that his state may already require a referendum to overturn their longstanding nuclear ban. If true, would this not be something other states would look upon within envy?
In the tariff-spooked United States, media outlets have already been predicting Republicans and Donald Trump shall feel the wrath of voters at mid-term elections slated for November 2026. But if a massive swathe of voters are united against their president’s tariff policies, arguably they should get the opportunity to challenge these specifically much sooner. With a poll suggesting almost two-thirds of Americans support ambitions for their country to go carbon neutral by 2050, perhaps they should also have had the opportunity to oppose Trump’s customary abandonment of the Paris Accords. Whilst there’s an appearance optional referendums might favour the will of a majority voting bloc over the lobbying power of resources companies, therefore advantaging climate action, this can’t be taken for granted. In Australia, such animosity existed towards the Gillard government’s historic carbon tax – which many experts still regard as the surest means of lowering emissions – that it may well have been vulnerable to a popular upheaval. Citizens advocating for the opportunity to challenge legislation would have to be prepared for this facility to cut both ways across the political aisle. We might be afraid of what the majority foment towards, who exactly capitalises on the pursuit of representation gaps, and what becomes of our once untouchable parliamentary leaders. But is it right to defend to the hilt a system where a great many voters are so jaded as to be disengaged, as to be deciding their vote on the basis of superficial differences between the intonation and appearance of Dutton versus Albo because there’s no hope of finding a representative that truly embodies and fulfills one’s wishes and, failing this, no grounds for political optimism? Churchill’s now-tired line is that democracy is the worst system of government, apart from all the others we’ve tried. We might take this as gospel yet still ask: have we sufficiently tried all the democracies?