Borgen

Currently I am half way through Borgen – a Danish political drama.

Denmark has 5.6m people and a land mass 3.5x that of greater Sydney. It’s GDP is equivalent to the State of Victoria and less than 1/3 of Australia’s. There aren’t any states so their government runs everything – there is even a minster of traffic.

Politically, the Danes have an MPP style system, similar to the one New Zealand has recently adopted.

Which means there is always a coalition of parties in ‘power’ that pretty much hate each other. By skullduggery, after election they negotiate coalitions between themselves, and then appoint a PM and other ministers from the coalition with the most seats. It looks horrible.

The PM spends most of her time in dramas associated with keeping the coalition together. She has one ‘spin doctor’ and one ‘Humphrey’ to advise her, and one colleague from her own party that she vaguely trusts but who just got invalided out of the show.

Contrast this to the Hollowmen where our PM has a head adviser, another one, a private press office, and a spin team of about 10 people. All this despite the fact that we are only three times the economy of Denmark but minus all the state-run issues. And there are no coalition issues to keep them distracted.

I know which system costs its citizens more.

The Danes also have the lowest income disparity in the world. As dodgy as their MMP systems looks on television it might be worth considering – possibly the MMP system is less susceptible to the power of corrupt lobbying and media control than is our preferential two party system.