W6 - Final Boards and Statement

Poster One

Poster Two

Poster Three - Scenario Comic

Poster Four

Written Project Statement

DAB810

Project 1//Capithetical

After exploring how Parliamentary Services can be Flexible, Mobile, Distributed or Virtual, the following questions were raised. What if there was no longer a gap between the Australian parliament and the Australian public? What if the public could be involved in parliamentary decision-making?

The virtual strategy intrigued the group and discussion steered towards the idea that there exists an entirely parallel world to the one in which humans currently dwell. This virtual world is becoming more and more essential to many peoples lives, to the point where people are becoming dependant on it for social, professional and even physical needs. How could this virtual world be used to minimise the distance between the Australian government and the Australian public?

One issue with Australia’s current parliamentary system is the lack of public involvement in decision-making. It may even be asked whether or not Australia really is a democracy. The public have very little influence in what decisions are made in parliament. There is a much larger population, which is disproportionate to individual representative ability. This is causing friction at the moment with the carbon debate; the government is making decisions above the control or involvement of the public.

The Capital Strategy that this group would like to implement consists of a third virtual house that takes on a supportive role, dwelling among the existing Senate and House of Representatives. This Virtual Layer will play two main roles. Firstly, it will provide constant, live public viewing access to all the happenings of parliament. This will truly make parliament transparent as well as raise public interest in the decision making process. Secondly, it will provide an interface with which guilds will communicate via surrogate robots any ideas or queries of the people. They will present the most optimised and developed ideas from the people to the parliament. This will encourage the public to be more intimately involved with any decisions made in Parliament. When implemented, this service endeavours to restore this uncommunicative relationship between the government and the public. The role of the guild is to mediate between the two: “Public By Proxy”. All Guild leaders will be acting on a short term to maximise accountability while spreading out the power.

A member of the public has access to their local Guild member and is able to present anything they like to them, at which point the guild as a body considers wether this is worthy of pursuing and then makes the decision to refine the idea and take it to parliament. This creates a direct line from the public to the parliament. Through the use of surrogates, this process can happen very quickly because there is no need for travel.

The architectural presence of such an environment will not be entirely virtual. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives will need to adapt to changes so they can accommodate surrogates and the virtual layer. With the implementation of this system, we hope to achieve a more transparent democracy where the people are interested and involved with decisions made, which affect us all. 

Jonathan Chamberlain n5774683/Daniel Bignal n6340172/Daniel Alcock n5606918/Troy Adam n6276512

Architectural Presence and Identity

Architectural Type and Purposes

The Two Houses

Currently there are two houses. The lower house (House of Representatives), or the 'peoples house', contains 150 members who each represent an electoral division (PoA, 2005). Each electorate is distributed equally so that they contain approximately the same number of voters. Each House of Reps continues for up to three years, after which a new election is held.

The upper house (Senate), contains 76 senators. Under the constitution, all states in the Australian Federation, regardless of their populations, have an equal number of senators. This was to ensure that states with smaller populations were not neglected in parliament (PoA, 2011). Twelve senators each represent each of the six states, and are elected for a period of six years (PoA, 2011).

Creating a Third House

Currently the two houses operate purely on a representational basis. On many occasions the lack of public involvement can allow political parties to force through their own agendas regardless of whether they are popular or not among most Australians. Our idea involves possibly adding a third house that would facilitate public contribution to the parliamentary discussion and ensure that the legislative process is on tier with the collective mindset of Australians. The diagram below shows how the third house could exist virtually and be represented through the guild system.

References

Parliament of Australia (PoA). (2005). "House of Representatives". Australian Government. retrieved August 22, 2011 from http://www.aph.gov.au/house/info/general/index.htm

Parliament of Australia (PoA). (2011). "Senate". Australian Government. retrieved August 22, 2011 from http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/pubs/brochure/index.htm

W3 - Infrastructure, Strategy, and Presence

Enhancing Public Debate and Contribution

The media has evolved to become a valuable aspect of 21st century politics. Independent news outlets such as Fairfax and Newscorp have become powerful organisations that control most of the public political debate today. The virtual world has played a large part in the growth in this aspect of politics. A serious concern that is beginning to become more evident to the Australian public is that politicians may be working harder at keeping an "image" and relating to the public through the media, rather than concentrating on sound legislative output. Our groups discussion this week revolved around ways to improve actual government processes and parliamentary discussion by having a greater inclusion of the voters through the virtual world.

Improving Distribution through a Virtual Medium

A key idea of our group is to increase the general public's interaction with parliament by creating a system of guilds. Guilds would be a way in moderating idea's generated around the country by the public, with each guild specialising in a particular field of interest, such as economics, mining, climate change, and so on. With guilds placed around the country, it may be a way to bring more mobility and distribution into the parliamentary process, while simultaneously enhancing the public's involvement. The way in which the virtual world would benefit this type of system is that geographical distance would not inhibit the guilds abilities in influencing discussion in Canberra. This could also be a way to soften the tension between the two major parties in parliament that all too often seem to be wanting to take the country in opposite directions.

W2 - Flexible, Mobile, Distributed, and Virtual

Virtual

Much of the Australian political system has remained unchanged over history. However in recent years, with the rise of globalization and social media, the virtual world has become an important stage in the political arena. Politicians have often taken advantage of resources such as Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter in order to send their ideas and philosophies directly to the Australian public. Popular news networks rule the political debate as it is the most easily accessible platform for average Australians to keep track of government processes. Although most of the country is separated from Canberra by large geographic distances, the virtual world enables an entire continent of people to observe from their living rooms, laptops, and smart phones.

Flexible

In discussing the virtual theme, we discovered that it was linked to flexibility. In the same way the system is benefited by the virtual world, virtual elements in the Australian political system also help to make it flexible. This is most evident in the field of public debate. Government processes are clearly adapted to suite aspects of 21st century debate, highlighting the enormous impact that virtual media and technology has on the present political system. The question is whether or not the political system is able to keep up with the pace of technology, and if it is taking enough advantage of the virtual world in order to optimize what is done in parliament. Perhaps now that the voting public is closer to their elected representatives than ever before, they can contribute more to the parliamentary process than simply having a say once every 4 years. Can the system be made more flexible in order to accommodate such changes?

Mobile

In much the same way flexibility is improved, mobility in our political system is also enhanced through virtual media. However the parliamentary process's interaction with the public largely remains virtual. The system could be made more mobile through more direct involvement in the political process by the public. This could also have architectural implications through the setting up of new institutions and facilities that could cater for improvements in this area.

Distribution

Today we see the impacts our system has on distribution more clearly than ever before due to people having greater access to the political debate. However, could it be possible that the way our political system has evolved to cater for more virtual access has had a detrimental effect on the way services and resources are distributed? Is having only a two-sided political debate an adequate way to cater for the needs of a culturally and intellectually diverse voting public?