Watching the government tie itself in knots over Stage 3 tax cuts shows two critical things. 1) How issues…

Watching the government tie itself in knots over Stage 3 tax cuts shows two critical things. 1) How issues are framed determines political outcomes, across elections. Conservatives have spent decades creating a frame that says tax is a type of theft. /1 #auspol

That frame works for them even as they sit on the opposition benches. 2) The only way frames get their power is through popularity mechanisms, like polling and elections. Populism. They shift popularity preferences. /2

I’m a broken record, but get rid of elections. Put the focus on what objectively needs doing in government, not on who can sell ideology in the most popular way. Most of the complexity of modern societies far outstrips all of the populist ideologies elected politicians apply…/3

…to this complexity. We don’t need them. Imagine if government could make a decision without regard to how popular it is. This isn’t about authoritarianism, populism is one of the worst forms of authoritarianism. Anybody bullied at school by popular people knows it. /4

Getting rid of popularity mechanisms removes popularity from the equation almost completely. Decisions stop being popular OR unpopular. Like the decisions a pilot makes when flying your plane, how popular they are is a meaningless question. Whether they achieve an outcome…/5

…becomes the sole focus. And business and social science for example have far more sophisticated ways of testing public opinion and needs and wants than any of the simplistic, rusty populist political mechanisms we use. It’s not about ignoring the public, it’s about…/6

…using vastly more sophisticated ways of involving them than the mono-dimensional popularity contests we call elections, which allow bad people to weaponise popularity to do anything they like. /end