I was sitting in a pub in North Melbourne when Treasurer Wayne Swan delivered his sixth budget. I was there with other 'wonks', Twitter tragics with a robust interest in politics, and we had purposely congregated to watch Swan sketch out the funding for Labor's big-ticket policies.
As strange as it sounds for normal people to be doing this on a rainy Tuesday night, it got weirder for me when I received a text from my sister. 'There must be hope', it said. The initial tally for the mayoral elections in my Philippine birthtown showed the opposition in the lead.
My sister added that people were scrutinising the numbers, which in the local context means they were watching for anomalies. It is an open secret that the incumbent engages in undemocratic methods to stay in office.
The juxtaposition threw me in many ways, such as by highlighting how much Australians take for granted that elections would be tamper-free. When I heard Swan being heckled in the parliamentary chamber at the start of his speech, I also realised democracy will always be an unfinished project.
As a mechanism for national self-reflection, representational democracy is still the best model we have. It is how our sense of identity and aspiration finds collective — and cacophonous — expression. The ideal endures despite the cacophony because silence is even more unbearable.
But reality often falls short of this ideal, especially in places like the Philippines where political dynasties have long had a stranglehold on government. Nearly all the names on the senatorial line-up in the latest elections are entirely familiar, fielded by families who have walked the halls of power for decades.
It is hard to tell whether this feudal state of things is sustained by grinding poverty or perpetuates it, but it is clear enough that it is a legacy of the colonial era.
The intersection of the Philippine revolution with the Spanish-American War swept Filipinos into a second period of colonisation under the United States. Spain lost the war and, after ruling for almost 400 years, ceded the Philippines to the US at the price of $20 million at the 1898 Treaty of Paris. The Philippines would not become an independent state until 1946.
The strata of society that flourished under Spain were entrenched when the colonial administration under William Howard Taft limited suffrage to those who could speak or write in English or Spanish, had a specified annual income, and had past experience as an official under Spain. (He must have missed the irony in advising the senate that turning government over to the natives would result in absolute oligarchy.)
The gist of all this is that the Philippine political culture has been shaped by patronage, a cycle of favour and debt that has led people to perceive merit based solely on a familiar last name. This, along with run-of-the mill vested interests, interferes with democratic representation — making a veneer of it.
But it's worth considering that similar points of incongruence between public and political interest exist in other democracies. In April, the US senate voted against a bill that would have expanded background checks on gun sales. Noting that nearly 90 per cent of Americans favour the policy, President Barack Obama demanded, 'Who are we here to represent?'
The same question may be asked of our MPs in relation to same-sex marriage. The most recent Galaxy poll on the issue found that almost two in three Australians believe same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, the highest proportion since 2009. Yet federal bills and a recent referendum proposal have not resolved the impasse.
In both cases, acquiescing to popular, reasonable opinion seems to be political suicide. It doesn't make sense.
Such dissonance seems to be the emerging feature of our democratic milieu. How do we make sense of the perception that the economy is being mishandled when every objective measure shows Australia is performing far better than other western countries? Or the fact that Labor faces a grim outcome in September despite overwhelming support for banner policies like DisabilityCare, school funding reform and the NBN?
These inconsistencies seem to belie the idea that democracy is an end in itself, or even merely a framework for self-governance. If it were, then good governance would make for good politics, which doesn't seem to be the case. Perhaps, we have been too caught up with the idea of the ballot as validation of the people's will, and been inattentive to the conditions in which it is cast.
The true work of democracy may be creating the conditions that would make each vote as authentic as possible — insulated from manipulation or distortion by patronage culture, powerful lobbies, or dissembling politicians.
Fatima Measham is a Melbourne-based social commentator and . Twitter @foomeister