Threats and challenges to Australia’s democracy are well outlined in government report. Now for some action

The Strengthening Australian Democracy report released by Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil this week provides a sophisticated diagnosis of the challenges facing democratic governance around the world. The report also offers a broad prescription of how Australia might meet those challenges.

The Strengthening Democracy Taskforce, established by O’Neil in 2023, prepared the report, which is based on wide consultation and deep research. It positions Australia as a global leader and innovator in democratic practice.

The report argues we need to recognise and safeguard against our own vulnerability to anti-democratic headwinds and regard the defence of democracy as an issue of vital international importance. We don’t want to become “an island of democracy in a sea of autocracy”.

The threat to democracy

The scale of the global threat to democracy is well-recognised. We are seeing the erosion of democratic institutions and conventions such as a free press and judicial independence around the world, including in Brazil, Venezuela, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Turkey, India and Indonesia.

In the United States, the politician who has already shown he is prepared to disregard democratic norms, in a nation that trumpets itself as the bastion of democracy, may well be re-elected as president. “Strongman” populists in the style of Donald Trump, armed with simplistic and potentially dangerous solutions to extremely complex problems, are — in the words of O’Neil— “replicating at an exponential rate”.

The Strengthening Australian Democracy report conceives Australian democracy expansively, as a community-wide project. Community consent through the electoral system gives licence and legitimacy to our elected politicians.

Our democratic practice includes not only those electoral and political systems, but vital elements such as judicial independence, anti-corruption bodies, publicly owned media and civil society.

Australia is in a stronger position than many other countries. However, there are alarming signs of democratic decay in rising levels of polarisation and distrust in our democratic system. This is particularly so among the young and less advantaged.

The report also details the threat to Australian democracy posed by foreign actors through various means. These include the use of human commentators by a surprisingly high number of overseas governments — 47 in the year to May 2023 — to distort online debate and seed conspiracy theories. It also includes the deployment of AI technology to spread distrust in government.

The threats presented by AI, social media and the internet more generally are also home-grown. These technologies can act as tools for innovation and even democratisation. But they are also used to rapidly spread disinformation and misinformation, and polarise communities far more effectively than analogue technologies.

To its credit, the report does not dwell on external or technology-driven threats at the expense of the endemic social and economic causes of declining trust in democratic governance.

While social connection — “a vibrant civic society” — is vital to democratic wellbeing, loneliness and isolation are increasing. Membership of political, religious, sporting, political and trade union communities has declined.

Crucially, those who feel shut out of opportunities such as home ownership and employment, or suffer from mental ill-health and forms of complex disadvantage, are more likely to feel disillusioned and distrustful.

The risk of complacency about our democracy

The report’s claim that “every generation has discovered that their democracy cannot be taken for granted” doesn’t square with the unique circumstances of the current situation, nor our history of civic indolence.

Indeed, Australians are notoriously complacent about their democracy. The late historian John Hirst commented on the “strange gap” between Australia’s democratic achievements and our lack of attachment to them. We are much more likely to derive national pride from sporting achievements or Anzac commemoration than from Federation or other significant democratic achievements.

Previous generations have sought to educate children about our system of government. Crucially, though, this was never in circumstances in which that system was threatened existentially.

The civics and history curriculum taught in schools until the 1950s was designed to inculcate children into the “sacred rites” of British race patriotism. Then, in the mid-1990s, then prime minister Paul Keating revived civics education.

This came amid much fuss about the extent of our civic ignorance — “What kind of country would forget the name of its first prime minister?” asked a television advertisement for the centenary of Federation. The civics program was part of Keating’s broader plan to make Australia a republic by the end of the decade.

John Howard maintained the civics education program when he became prime minister in 1996. It survives, albeit in a moth-eaten form, to this day.

Data collected by the Australian Curriculum Assessment Authority indicates civics education is ineffective. Just 38% of students finish Year 10 with the required standard of knowledge.

Importance of democracy education

It’s heartening the government is encouraging informed debate about our democratic future. But the big question is whether O’Neil can win support within Cabinet for funding to introduce concrete measures that complement the work done by security agencies against foreign and domestic threats.

As the report notes, democracy works when people share a feeling of common purpose, which motivates them to work co-operatively and constructively. The widening wealth inequality gap and diminution of public services continue to erode this feeling of common purpose. These issues are not easily tackled given the entrenched and powerful interests that continue to block efforts at reform.

A more immediate option for the government is to commit to a widespread education initiative. This must be creative and innovative, and conceived around the concept of democracy itself, rather than civics, with its more abstract, less exciting connotations. Australia has plenty of material with which to build pride in its democratic history — for instance, early introduction of the secret ballot and enfranchisement of white women, Saturday voting, preferential voting, compulsory voting and an independent electoral commission.

The school-based aspect of democracy education will inevitably be a thorny issue, given the need to wrangle the federation, find room within an already overcrowded curriculum and ask more of an overburdened teaching profession.

The Australian Electoral Commission could make good use of more funding to expand its community outreach. This could include engaging with and educating voters on election days. The importance of election-day voting rituals, not least the “democracy sausage” and community cake stall, in fostering a sense of pride and inclusion in our democracy must not be underestimated.

Similarly, the government could increase funding for the Parliamentary Education Office, for Parliament’s school visits program and for the excellent Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House.

The Australian War Memorial has been extravagantly funded in its role as the national shrine to Anzac commemoration. Why isn’t Old Parliament House, a magnificently warm and intimate building, adequately funded to become the shrine to Australians’ most important ideal — democracy?