inamerrata

Pia asks:

Why is it that older, heterosexual, Christian, married, white males, who probably only make up ~16% of our totaly population are making the decisions for all of us? So much for representative politics :)

Let’s consider the alternatives. Younger rather than older means less life experience, which means you’re probably electing a party hack who knows how to stack a branch, and mouth a few cliches, but doesn’t really have any idea what it’s like to actually do something productive, which makes it difficult to do the job of actually helping people be productive. Being non-heterosexual usually comes with a feeling of being discriminated about it and a not-unreasonable desire to do something about that; according to some statistics, about 2.5% of people in Australia identify as homosexual or bisexual, and same sex couples apparently account for only 0.46% of couples.

Going on from that point, according to the 2001 census, about 51% of Australians are married, another 17% separated, divorced or widowed, and 32% of Australians who have never married; I don’t think it’s much of a leap to exclude a fair chunk of the latter group as “not married yet, but will be” (the average age to get married is around 30, apparently, and the 15-24 age group is about half the size of the unmarried group), or much of a stretch to think that the married folks are more likely to be better able to deal with the highs and lows of politics.

As far as “white” goes, according to the 2001 census, around 80% of Australians considered their ancestry to be Australian, English or Irish; the other 20% isn’t stated at all, but presumably includes at least a few Europeans. As far as Christian goes, 70% of Australians identify as Christians, followed by 16% as non-religious, and 10% who didn’t answer the question. The next most popular religions are Islam and Buddhism on a little over 1% each. (There are five times more pagans in Australia than scientologists, apparently, though there are fewer Rastafarians)

And then, if you look through the current Federal ministry, there are six women ministers (of 30, for a 20% contribution, and an additional five of elevent if you count the parliamentary secretaries for a 27% total contribution).

Which is to say, I don’t think what we’ve got is particularly unrepresentative. But then, I don’t think the point of representative politics is about representing your skin colour, religion, gender, sexual proclivities, or favourite sporting team anyway; why should they even be a consideration?