I don’t understand the reasoning and thoughts behind the conscience vote. I know what it means. It means that when Gay Marriage comes to a vote in Parliament, Labor MPs have been given the choice to vote how they feel. Independent of the Party’s opinion on the matter.
What I don’t understand is…
No Sam, all of representative democracy is like this. You vote for someone because what they say and feel best represents what you say and feel. So when a conscience vote occurs it doesn’t change anything or destroy this concept, all it does is allow for MPs to not worry about where their party stands on the subject but instead make their own decision, which is why you voted for them. If the point of a politician was to relay to parliament what his electorate wanted, then there would be no need for us to vote him in considering all he would be saying is what we said. Therefore no matter who we voted for we would get the same result. To be honest this sounds much better to me. Soviet democracy for the win.
As for the whole ‘small group of people deciding what’s best for our country’ thing, that’s what our ‘democracy’ looks like. And you can thank party politics for that.
