Time for Voters' Question Time

Day after day, week after week, year after year, we see parliamentary question time (both federal and state) degenerate into a farce of dorothy-dixers, political point-scoring, obfuscation and name-calling. 

Very occasionally, but increasingly rarely, some useful information is elicited. 

Both sides of politics, whether in government or opposition, are equally to blame, so let's think about how we might actually get some value from Question Time.

Here's a 'radical' (ie democratic) thought. Instead of politicians setting the questions, why not let voters do so? 

The on-line technology to do this already exists. In the UK, e-petitions gaining 10,000 valid signatures will get a response from Government and those with 100,000 will be considered for debate in the Parliament (https://petition.parliament.uk). In the past two years, 380 e-petitions have received a government response and 48 have been debated in Parliament - sometimes with a full day of debate. 30 are currently awaiting a government response and 7 a debate in Parliament.

Only 14 petitions with the requisite 100,000 signatures have been refused debate in Parliament.

Incidentally, e-petitions seem to be totally beyond the WA Parliament (which still requires hard copy with written signatures). E-petitions are accepted by the Federal Parliament, but are referred to the appropriate Minister rather than debated  under public scrutiny.

If our Parliaments and Government find e-petitions too threatening, perhaps we could (in the words of Monty Python) make the move 'from accountancy to lion-taming via banking' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azkFz1ZbXyU). 

It would be a brave PM, Premier or Minister who responded to a question from voters by slagging off the questioners or effectively refusing to answer the question.