Next Episode of Annabel Crabb's Civic Duty is
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Australians rarely pause to appreciate the miracle behind the ballot box. How often do we stop and marvel at what we've built? How many of us know that the familiar, uncontroversial features of our electoral system are – in global terms – highly unusual? And how many of us have heard the rollicking backstories of the democratic dreamers and reformed felons behind it?Across three episodes Annabel Crabb's Civic Duty unearths the individuals and stories that combine to make Australian democracy globally unique, like our invention of the secret ballot, our adoption of preferential and compulsory voting, and our peculiar attachment to sausages.Annabel travels both here and abroad to investigate how the politics of our parliament have changed thanks to political leaders, the media landscape – but most of all - the power of the Australian people.
We begin with one of the enduring oddities of the Australian electoral system - preferential voting. Vaunted by mathematicians and theorists as a fairer way of voting. Adopted, uniquely, by Australia in 1918.
In the early days, Parliament House hosted an all-male conclave of politicians and newspapermen, sharing a cramped environment and a complex code of conventions and mutual dependency. But the age of disruption has arrived.
Democracies operate according to rules, but they also change. Sometimes at the hands of visionary or power-hungry leaders, sometimes in response to external forces, and sometimes as a result of people power.
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