Both Labor and LNP take large donations from mining and energy multinationals , which means both parties are getting their strings pulled by the same people....much like what happens in the US . You can change the government but the faceless men lurking behind closed doors still want their payback for the big donations. - @PJL 8:22pm yesterday.
Australian governance is miles ahead of America -PJL some 9 hours later at 5:28am.
We have a saying in America about talking out both sides of your mouth. As we're on a talk board and thus typing.....why not pick a f'n argument you'd like to make...….you're all over the place and looking.....well......overmatched.
And @Rationalist please send me your list of coalition governments who don't have elitists in power. Thanks.
F'n unbelievable.
If by "common sense gun laws", you mean "no gun rights", sure. Granted, few Western countries actually understand gun rights. There was a time when the West actually understood them, but unfortunately, statism eroded them just like it did in much of the world outside of the West.
At this point, the US is one of the few Western countries with significant gun rights, while a few non-Western countries also have them. Granted, much of the West is also losing its freedom of speech.
You misunderstood my post. I wasn't saying that elites don't control these governments. I was saying that they find them harder to control in the conventional sense, since they involve opposing elites. Coalition governments have elites with a variety of policy stances, so they have to come to certain compromises while still conflicting on other policies.
In short, power is more balanced.
I wouldn't go that far. Australian governance has a lot of flaws when it comes to social policy. Like a lot of the rest of the West, the freedom of speech has been eroded due to the expansion of hate speech laws, and Australia is also subject to the expansion of the surveillance state -- since it's part of the Five Eyes program. All 5 of the countries involved (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States) have seen reductions in the right to privacy for the sake of a false sense of security. Also, Australia tends to get pulled into American led interventions. So, you could say some of Australia's governance problem is due to American influence. Granted, Australia is also manipulated by Chinese influence.
The "glory days of the past" for America would be the early 1800s, at least in terms of limiting government. Granted, slavery was around at the time, so the "glory" wasn't evenhanded.
Where Australia excels is the allowance for coalition governance, although that's obviously not unique to Australia. Plenty of other western nations have this. America just happens to be one of the few without it.