Anyone else notice the change of job description for our State parliamentarians? It seems that they view their most important role as being to vote according to what they consider to best accomodate their own views. I know it’s probably an old fashioned view of democracy to suggest that they are in Parliament to represent the views of their electorate, but has that principle really been abandoned, ignored and discarded by these temporary bit players? The answer I’m sure is that every elected member who voted on the Bill conscientiously canvassed the views of every voter in his or her electorate so that their vote carried the validity of electoral support. For if they did not, by what magic rune did they divine the will of their paymasters? And, by what sophistry do they claim legitimacy in their attempts to resist the only decent, humane and inevitable outcome which will surely soon arrive. They have made themselves appear to all the world as heartless and doctrinaire conservatives plugging the holes in the dam of public opinion with their pontifical thumbs. History will soon laugh at them.
There can be only one course open to South Australians now. They must march on Parliament in their thousands with voices so loud that even the deafest of conservative ears will hear them through the stone walls of their chamber.
Or is that too an old fashioned view of democracy?
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