We all agree the faceless men of NSW are to blame. Lets forget the faceless men, lets just blame NSW.
Why do we let them dominate our party? Our country? It seems to me the main problem is that we are stuck on this democracy shtick.
Australia has 150 federal seats.
48 yes .....fully 1/3 are in NSW. More astonishingly Sydney and its surroundings have 34. Nearly 1/4.
Or looked at another way, Sydney itself has as many seats as WA, SA, Tas and the Territories combined. So if we stick to some form of democracy then Sydney is always going to dominate.
So why are NSW pollies so carnal, base and corrupt? Not just Labor, Think of Askin, Alan Jones, The Golden Tonsil, Mac Bank and so on...
If we accept literature and music are cultural barometers then we must agree political practice has some substantial cultural component as well. What if NSW political practice, of any party, is just a representation of the Sydney cultural zeitgeist?
What if you can only get better political practice by first reforming a culture that had rum as its first currency? That today believes a huge boat, a face job, and a harbour view are the sine non qua of achievement?
If this thesis is right, and reforming Sydney culture is the only way to reform NSW Labor, it is a century long project. Consequently, in the meantime, simply by the iron law of numbers, Sydney will continue to dominate the Labor party.
Perhaps one solution is to let all NSW delegates get 1/2 a vote.
In many US corporations (like News Corp) there are 2 or more classes of voting rights......Rupert controls News Corp with only 29% of the shares........If it good enough for ol' Rupe.
If you cant bear the thought of different voting classes, you have maybe two alternatives, firstly, put up with it and stop whingeing... Or finally Qld (30) and Victoria (37) have to vote as state blocks and put the suppression of Sydney above factional concerns...
Divisions of the Australian House of Representatives
Australian electoral boundaries map:
On the other hand, we could blame the Tasmanians who get 12 senators despite having only 5 seats in the Reps, giving them an intercameral ratio of 2.4, while poor NSW has only 0.25 senators per lower-house member.
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