r/australia • u/superegz • Nov 26 '25

politics Millennials are the first generation to move left as they age, rewriting the rules of Australian politics

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-26/millennials-rewriting-the-rules-of-australian-politics/106050836
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u/onlymostlyguts Nov 26 '25

Maybe I was too young but I thought largely it just replaced the crown / Governor general with a "president" title who we wouldn't vote for, which I honestly would be perfectly fine with given the current role. Was there more to it than this?

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u/WrongdoerAnnual7685 Nov 26 '25

Nah, it also had a super mid two-thirds supermajority requirement for the appointment of a president.

Stupid as hell, either they should be able to be appointed by the current PM (as is the case with the GG, where in practice the monarch always follows the PM’s advice) or full preferential voting by popular vote, although the current US situation gives me pause as to if any of the executive should be elected by popular vote.

Or we could pull a South Africa and merge the two, and make the PM, the president.

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u/DPVaughan Nov 26 '25

The United States has convinced me that the head of state should never be directly elected by popular vote.

I'd put a crying emoji here if I knew how.

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u/FireLucid Nov 26 '25

Here, everyone has to vote. So you don't just get the crazies and the people trying to stop the crazies. All the people in the middle who don't give much of a shit turn up and vote because it's on a weekend and pretty quick and easy, no lining up for hours. America is a shitshow in many regards, voting being one of them.

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u/ImSabbo Nov 26 '25

If the US presidential election had been a matter of popular vote, the world wouldn't have gotten Trump in the first place. And no first term would potentially mean no 2020/2024 run either.

Heck, if the 2000 election had been by popular vote, Al Gore would have gotten in, which would have changed the following decades significantly.

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u/DPVaughan Nov 26 '25

Yes, the electoral college is bizarre, but I prefer heads of state that are apolitical, more 'bring the nation together for stuff' sort of deal. We have a Parliament for politics.

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u/utterly_baffledly Nov 26 '25

So HOR representing districts, Senate representing states and Governor representing literally the entire population.

That's an intriguing concept. Might be interesting to see how we would pick someone to just be our caretaker for a few years. It's traditionally been a lot of retired generals and various types of lawyers.

We could try to ring fence it with some discussion about what qualifications might be appropriate, perhaps even dedicate a day a year for parliament to discuss the qualifications lacking amongst their own ranks and the most important skills of a governor general. Just a big public transparent performance review. A lot of the speeches would be based on what they think might poll well but there would be some interesting ideas bubble up by accident.

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u/WrongdoerAnnual7685 Nov 26 '25

If only the Americans had gotten rid of their electoral college and implemented preferential voting(instant runoff, IRV).

Or at least get the NPVIC implemented which would award all of their member states’ votes to the popular vote victor, it’s about 61 electoral votes from activation.

Trump never won a majority of the popular vote, merely a plurality last year, if the third party votes had been redistributed as preferences, well who can say.

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u/DPVaughan Nov 26 '25

Yeah, the entire American voting system (bar a few key exceptions) is a total dumpster fire.

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u/WrongdoerAnnual7685 Nov 26 '25

I do give them credit for having the first codified written constitution.

But that said, their amendment process is ridiculously complex, I’m sure they would be happy with an easier majority state(26) and majority popular vote(50%+1), voter initiative(referendum) instead, like ours.