My goals and reasons for doing this are the same as those on the www.powerup.org.au homepage. They have said it better than I can. My plan is to implement a Direct Democracy system in my local Council. I chose the council to try this because it's impact would be confined to a geographically and influentially small sphere if something were to go wrong. The smaller catchment area of local government would make the process easier logistically. Council elections do not have mandatory voting, which means I would have less competition for the votes if required to win an election. Also, it would provide a template for others to start quickly once it is proven.

Hey all, how do we currently decide who governs?

We elect a member of Parliament from each electorate, an electorate usually decided politically, a group of people considered to be in like socio economic groups generally. These decisions are made supposedly independently of political parties but are they really? The Bjelke-Petersen government era tells me the answer to that is NO.

Similarly, my observance of the Northern Territory decisions on who should be in what electorate is purely political, particularly with aboriginal groups. The previous CLP government simply moved a group of the aboriginal population from an electorate which was essentially based from Katherine down southwards into a Central Australian electorate. This was done simply because Labor wins most seats where the population is mainly aboriginal. In that case the people affected had traditional names attached to their previous electorate but had no say in where they were relocated electorate wise.

Hey again,

I've become too distracted by all the side issues and regretably have written far too much on far too little.

So back on track.

Basically I agree with Margo's overall plan as outlined. The major aim of that plan is to take back our government and that is what I am interested in.

I can see value in having members of such a group as this in as many electorates as possible, the more the stronger the group is. I can also see the value to such an organisation/group in having reporting mechanisms in each electorate.

But I see little value in any of that unless there is an actual plan of what to do, how to do it and when to do it. That's what I'd like to kick off here.

Hey all,

I’m going to make a few posts here, firstly to give you an idea of how I feel which is hopefully how some of what you feel. I am assuming that you too are disillusioned otherwise you wouldn’t be on this site at all.

Firstly, I want action, I want blood. By blood I mean change for the better. And I want it now. I don’t want to wait another 30 years until someone notices that John Howard actually passed away in 2002 and has been reactivated by some Liberal scientist. Maybe, as Dr Who, who is back on air again!

I have had a gutful of our political system as it in no way represents what it is advertised to be. Our politicians call it democracy but that it certainly is not. To me democracy is an illusion, an ideal that just doesn’t work when human beings get involved. In other words, exactly the same as every other political system, it fails when humans start taking the positions of authority etc. Just like the book Animal Farm the few quickly become "more equal" than the rest. Power corrupts and once it does you need a war to take that power off those that have it. A war does not have to be guns and fighting as we have recently seen in a couple of ex Russian spin off countries. The people just stood together and said "ENOUGH".