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The question is whether a more democratic end may be achieved by less than democratic means; whether an electoral system that is more responsive to the public may be imposed without meaningfully consulting that same public; whether a more consensual, less partisan politics is the probable result of a fairly naked attempt by one party to control the process from start to finish.

The question, in short, is whether the Liberals are conning us, yet again.

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The depth of Liberal commitment to a more democratic politics was already in some doubt, in a week in which the governing party imposed “time allocation” on debate on three separate pieces of legislation, one of them the sort of hydra-headed omnibus bill it had sworn never to introduce.

The party, and leader, that promised open nominations, only to impose the leader’s preferred candidates; that promised free votes, only to whip even previously sacrosanct matters of conscience like abortion and (briefly) assisted suicide; that promised a more transparent budget process, only to produce an even more opaquely misleading budget than its predecessors; and that has broken faith with the electorate on half a dozen other of the promises on which it was elected may reasonably be the object of some mistrust, not least among the opposition parties it now beckons to “put partisanship aside.”