Nicholas Gruen
Nicholas Gruen
Nicholas Gruen
The dirty electoral funding deal: How to get something better
10 minutes Posted Feb 28, 2025 at 1:44 pm.
0:00
10:54
Download MP3
Show notes

I talk to Leon Gettler about the way electoral funding is manipulated by the major parties to entrench their own power.

Democracy is supposed to be a competition, not a rigged game, yet we see politicians making decisions that serve their own interests rather than the public good.

I argue that it's absurd to have politicians determining the terms of political competition — they should have no more to do with that than they should with setting electoral boundaries.

We need a new kind of institution—one that takes key decisions like electoral out of the hands of politicians and puts them in the hands of a jury of everyday Australians.

I discuss the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, a model that has helped clean up gerrymandering in the U.S., and how a similar approach could work here.