By Denis Hay
Description
How does political power in Australia compare with that in China and Russia, including protest policing and internal party selection systems?
Introduction
Most Australians believe power is exercised through elections. Citizens vote, governments change, and policies follow. But power is also shaped by institutions, legislation, executive authority, and political incentives that operate beyond the ballot box.
However, many citizens feel something different at the street level. Protest laws have tightened. Surveillance powers have expanded. Major policy settings often continue regardless of which major party forms government. The February 2026 Sydney protests against the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, and the later allegations of excessive police force, intensified public debate about how state authority is exercised in practice.
This article examines how power is exercised in Australia on a day-to-day basis and compares this with China and Russia. It does not claim equivalence between systems. Instead, it analyses institutional design, political incentives, and enforcement practice, and explains where reform is realistic.
The Problem: Freedom on Paper Versus Power in Practice
Expansion of Security and Protest Laws
Since 2001, more than 90 federal national security laws have been enacted. States have strengthened protest restrictions, particularly around major events and infrastructure.
Some of these reforms included preventive detention provisions that allow authorities to detain individuals for limited periods without formal criminal charges under national security frameworks. These measures were introduced in the mid-2000s and expanded executive discretion compared with earlier legal standards.
Many of these powers expanded after 2001 through successive national security amendments, and again in later counterterrorism reforms. This gradually strengthened executive authority relative to previous decades.
In February 2026, thousands protested in Sydney against the invitation extended to Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Reporting by The Guardian and the BBC documented clashes between demonstrators and NSW Police. Video footage showed officers deploying pepper spray and using physical force during crowd control operations. Legal experts described aspects of the response as disturbing and disappointing. The NSW Law Enforcement Conduct Commission opened an investigation into police conduct.
This incident does not define Australian democracy. However, it illustrates how broad policing discretion combined with security framing can alter perceptions of street-level freedom in Australia. The systemic driver is political incentive. Governments prioritise visible order and security. Enforcement agencies receive expanded authority. The beneficiaries of the status quo include institutions whose mandates and resources grow in response to perceived risk.
Policy Continuity Across Party Change
Australia allows citizens to change governments through elections. Leadership shifts occur. Yet in the Australia-China freedom comparison, a structural nuance emerges.
On major frameworks such as defence posture, AUKUS commitments, national security architecture, and market-based service delivery, bipartisan continuity is strong. Party change does not always produce deep policy restructuring.
The systemic cause lies in institutional alignment between major parties, bureaucratic continuity, alliance commitments, and concentrated economic influence. Electoral competition exists, but structural policy convergence narrows variation.
The Structural Comparison
China: Single Party System with Internal Selection Structure
China is governed by a single political party, the Communist Party of China (CPC). However, this does not mean appointments are simply handed down from the top.
At the local level, citizens elect representatives to local People’s Congresses. From there, officials are selected upward through a tiered structure. Advancement within the CPC typically depends on administrative performance, party evaluation, and experience in lower-level governance roles.
This creates a pyramidal structure in which officials often progress sequentially through municipal, provincial, and national responsibilities. While the CPC remains the only governing party, the internal process is more structured and performance-based than the simplified “authoritarian” label often suggests.
Policy formation also involves consultation processes through advisory bodies and regional congresses. This does not make China a multi-party liberal democracy. But it does mean the system includes internal mechanisms of feedback and evaluation that are frequently overlooked in Western commentary.
Compared with Russia, where political competition has narrowed significantly in recent years, China’s system remains highly centralised but internally structured.
Australia: Competitive Parties with Institutional Convergence
Australia ranks far higher than China and Russia on electoral freedom and civil liberties. Courts are independent. Media is plural, though concentrated. Civil society works openly.
However, the exercise of power in Australia is shaped by institutional incentives. Defence procurement, surveillance legislation, and economic orthodoxy often persist across administrations. Bureaucratic continuity and political caution limit structural divergence.
The contrast is therefore nuanced. In China, citizens cannot change the party, but policy shifts can occur internally. In Australia, citizens can change the party, but core frameworks may remain stable. Both systems have mechanisms for responsiveness, but they operate differently.
Russia: Managed Political Competition and Centralised Executive Authority
Russia holds regular national and regional elections, and multiple political parties are legally registered. However, the political environment is tightly managed. Major media outlets are either state-owned or operate within boundaries that align with state interests. Opposition candidates face administrative, legal, and media constraints that limit their competitiveness at the national level.
Executive authority plays a dominant role in shaping policy direction. While courts and parliament formally exist within the constitutional structure, judicial independence and legislative autonomy are widely regarded by international observers as limited in practice.
Compared with Russia, Australia maintains stronger institutional checks and balances, greater media pluralism, and a broader civic space for opposition and public dissent. The structural differences between the two systems are substantial.
Where Australia Stands
Australia is neither authoritarian nor immune to democratic drift.
National capability is strong. Electoral administration is respected. Courts are active. Oversight bodies such as the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission work.
Execution varies. Security laws have expanded rapidly. Protest restrictions have tightened. Media ownership concentration shapes public discourse.
These outcomes result from policy decisions and governance incentives, not cultural inevitability. Institutional capacity exists to recalibrate the balance between security and liberty.
The question is not whether Australia is democratic, but how power is structured within that democracy.
The Impact on Citizens
For many Australians, the issue is practical rather than theoretical.
A renter facing rising costs may see limited change across electoral cycles. A worker concerned about job security may experience similar labour settings regardless of the party in office. A protester seeing footage of pepper spray at a rally may hesitate before attending the next demonstration.
Democratic confidence depends not only on rights written into law but also on whether participation feels consequential and safe.
Lived Experience Translation
Imagine a university student attending a peaceful rally about foreign policy. The student sees police using force during crowd control. Even if investigations follow, the emotional experience shifts. The student still lives in a democracy, but participation feels risk-weighted. Freedom becomes procedural rather than intuitive.
What This Makes Possible
If institutional balance improves, tangible outcomes follow.
- Clear statutory protection of peaceful protest strengthens civic confidence
- Stronger parliamentary review of security laws restores proportionality
- Media competition reform broadens debate
- Transparent lobbying disclosure increases accountability
- Visible policy divergence across elections strengthens democratic agency
Housing security, work stability, and access to services improve when citizens believe institutions respond meaningfully.
Proof of Feasibility
Australia already has reform capacity.
The High Court has ruled against executive overreach. Royal Commissions show investigatory depth. Independent oversight body’s function. The LECC investigation into the Sydney protest shows accountability structures are active.
Comparable democracies support strong protest protections while preserving security frameworks. Administrative capability is not the constraint.
Solution Integrity
Reforms must follow logically from the problem shown.
- Introduce mandatory sunset clauses and periodic review for national security legislation.
- Codify stronger statutory protections for peaceful assembly.
- Publish transparent policing guidelines for major demonstrations.
- Strengthen media competition law to reduce concentration.
- Expand parliamentary scrutiny of defence procurement and lobbying activity.
These reforms use existing institutions. They are politically difficult but administratively realistic.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Australia less free than China or Russia?
No. Australia supports competitive elections, judicial independence, and civil society freedoms that do not exist in China or Russia.
Are CCP officials elected on merit?
Advancement within the CCP follows structured internal evaluation systems that assess performance and political alignment. It differs from multi-party electoral competition but is not purely arbitrary appointment.
Does protest policing weaken democracy?
Excessive or disproportionate force can reduce public trust. Strong oversight and clear safeguards are essential to support legitimacy.
Conclusion
Australia remains a functioning democracy with robust institutional safeguards. Citizens can replace governments. Courts can constrain executive power. Oversight bodies operate.
However, recent protest policing controversies, expanded security legislation, and bipartisan policy convergence show that power exercised in Australia is shaped by institutional incentives as much as by elections. Formal freedom does not automatically translate into perceived agency.
These outcomes are the result of decisions, not inevitabilities. Where pressure is applied, reform can occur. Democratic resilience depends on institutions that respond visibly, proportionately, and transparently to public participation.
Freedom is strongest when citizens feel both protected and heard. Understanding how power is exercised is the first step toward ensuring it remains accountable.
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We can probably assume that the CPC realised some time ago that China was too huge in size and population to rule by force.
Their solution was centralised control of national functions, with local control of regional functions.
Party membership does not automatically confer privilege at the local level.
And it works.
It’s efficient.
They make sure it works, to maintain stability.
People are satisfied with the ongoing progress.
The liberal democracies have gone down the path of the appearance of local control of national functions (via national elections) while at the same time ensuring that liberal economic policies dominate.
Labor has slowly become a party of liberalism, while retaining a little of its working class roots.
The result is a perpetual war between competing priorities, both regionally and nationally. This is inefficient, but the desired result is obtained — liberalism wins most battles.
And so the downside is that the Chinese structure has produced a powerhouse while liberal democracies the world over are struggling economically.
The downside becomes ever more apparent.
Denis notes that we have robust institutional safeguards, but we are seeing here and in all the liberal democracies, that ways around safeguards are being found.
The harsh treatment of protesters is not about single issues.
Its to protect the System
The crackdowns will continue as the global threats to liberalism multiply.
A fascinating, well structured and an easy read. It is important to know how the “other half lives” so I am curious to know what are the differences in structure, function and outcomes of governance when Australia is compared with USA. Currently it is difficult to decipher the media coverage of what is actually happening both at Wall Street, corporate and small town levels.
This book will shed more light on the exercise of power.
Just got hold of a copy.
Have not finished the Intro yet, and already it’s a goldmine.
Escape From Capitalism: Economics is Political, and Other Liberating Truths — by Clara E. Mattei
The first international economics conference in history was held in Brussels in 1920.
British financier Robert H Brand said this to the conference:
“The manual workers, were encouraged to expect, (after WW1) and do expect, some new way of life, some great betterment of their lot. These changes, they believe, at any rate in my country, can be achieved if the system of private industry is replaced by some sort of Government or common ownership. They do not realise the hard truth that … a better life can, owing to the losses of the war, be now reached only through labour and suffering.”
Yes, more labour and suffering of those who died by the millions in a war between competing capitalists.
Fast forward 103 years and we see this:
On September 12, 2023, in his speech at the annual Property Summit of the Australian Financial Review, the Australian billionaire and think tank founder Tim Gurner used less subtle words to express comparable thoughts: I think the problem that we’ve had is that people have decided they really didn’t want to work so much anymore through COVID, and that has a massive issue on productivity …. Unemployment has to jump 40, 50 percent in my view. We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around …. We have got to kill that attitude, and that has to come through hurting the economy, which is what the whole global, you know, the world is trying to do. Governments around the world are trying to increase unemployment to get that to some sort of normality, and we’re seeing it …. We are starting to see less arrogance in the employment market.
As Denis points out, “Institutional capacity exists to recalibrate the balance between security and liberty” and that the problem we have is the political will to recalibrate.
We have a Reserve Bank stacked with economic ideologues of the type described here. They would have nodded along in agreement with Tim Gurner’s sociopathic comments.
And the Reserve has written its own definitions and followed its own program in defiance of its charter.
The Reserve Bank is following the economic imperatives charted by the WW1 victors to the letter. The Reserve’s control of inflation comes at a cost. A cost to the workforce. Austerity by way of using unemployment to control inflation.
Here’s where Clara Mattei gets really interesting.
A few years later, these experts (at the Brussels conference) would support the rise to power of the founding father of fascism, Benito Mussolini. Mussolini guaranteed a sufficient dose of economic austerity, characterized by wage reductions, cuts in social spending, the privatization of public services, and increased interest rates. His economic rectitude garnered applause from economic experts worldwide, including liberals and nationalists alike.
And he still garners applause today, because the economic programs followed today by the liberal democracies are the programs of Mussolini.
“political incentives that operate beyond the ballot box.”
In light of the corrosive issues regarding politics in Victoria, I was actually discussing this very issue “At the local level, citizens elect representatives to local People’s Congresses” however given the vested interests of Nine who own The Age, was not published!
Exactly, and that’s on a daily basis thanks to MSM and other emotive issues to distract and aggravate….
Political leadership or lack thereof….Albo then Taylor’s new directions
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/02/for-what-does-albo-stand/?
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/02/scapegoating-migrants-is-as-old-as-history-itself/?
And of course, that other emotive issue that’s meant to be an inaliable right for everyone….maybe you have the capacity to relocate, maybe you don’t….or maybe you will find a way or circumstances will present one.
https://michaelwest.com.au/regional-housing-market-booms-outpacing-capital-cities/
https://7ampodcast.com.au/episodes/the-great-housing-disaster-whos-to-blame?
In terms of environment Santos and Bayer….
https://michaelwest.com.au/judgment-looms-for-santos-net-zero-greenwashing-case/
Why this issue keeps dragging on is nothing more than profit for the various beneficiaries. At an individual level there are other methods that will do the job, needs a bit of application however far better for your health
https://michaelwest.com.au/bayer-offers-10b-to-settle-roundup-cancer-us-lawsuits/
https://jimsmowing.com.au/2023/01/basic-techniques-controlling-weeds/
For those who might doubt my depiction of the Reserve Bank, this from the Guardian today — In 2025 wages grew slower than inflation, which means that wages clearly are not the cause of rising prices. Not only have workers seen their purchasing power decline, but the RBA’s decision to raise interest rates has once again punished them for inflation that was not their fault.
Before I go any further, excuse me while I go to the calendar and mark off yet another three months without a wage breakout. It’s a ritual I have been able to do my entire working life.
There hasn’t been a wage breakout since I was in primary school but do not worry – the RBA is still on the watch, ever on alert to raise interest rates in an effort to increase unemployment and lower wage growth.
Earlier this month the RBA raised interest rates because, as the minutes of the board meeting stated, “wages growth had also slowed only gradually, and unit labour costs growth remained high, supporting the view that the labour market remained a little tight”.
What this means is they believe too few people are unemployed (the labour market is tight) and, as a result, employers are having to keep offering better wages in order to entice people to work for them. This, they believe, is causing inflation to go up.
In response they increased interest rates in the hope that people will spend less, employers will cut back on staff and hours and as a result not feel like they need to raise wages.
The RBA never misses an opportunity to blame wages for inflation because it really is the only reason to raise interest rates.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2026/feb/18/real-wages-fall-australia-workers-economy
The RBA is there to assist the protectors and beneficiaries of a consumer society of oppressors, controllers, profiteers, over the rest of us losers, the people of little means, power, position. They are hatefully so bent. Rigged, rigid, rapacious, righteous, the RBA is quite anti-social. Could any government now improve this?
Re “political incentives that operate beyond the ballot box”, some wry but good feedback per Gareth Hutchens/ABC on Senate select committee on information integrity on climate change and energy in Canberra this week:
“Nationals senator Matt Canavan said that until this inquiry he had never heard of the Atlas Network.”
Ha ha, laugh a minute that fella.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-19/climate-disinformation-senate-committee-dr-karl-atlas-network/106350002
Here’s an example of the benefits that flow from not following the liberal concept of development and social structure.
Arnaud Bertrand describes the shock Westerners travelling in China experience, when they need medical treatment.
The recurring theme? Shock. Shock at not having to wait weeks for appointments. Shock at receiving diagnosis, tests, and treatment, all in the same morning. Shock at the insanely low fees (less then $3 per consultation). Coming from Western healthcare, they can’t quite believe it.
The 5-minute consultation is just one part of a system. A system that’s stunningly efficient and actually delivers a surprisingly good experience for patients, once you get used to it.
Well worth a read.
https://arnaudbertrand.substack.com/p/one-morning-in-china-one-year-in
Perhaps the solution lies in ”Public Funding of Elections” as occurred in New York City and resulted in the unexpected win by Mamdani against the financial power of the BILLIONAIRES CLUB.
Check out this Robert Reich reel explaining how the NYC system worked. It looked very good to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA9_guRnKes
I have just realised that I missed a number of thoughtful comments on this article. My sincere apologies to everyone who took the time to contribute.
Even though I did not respond at the time, I have now read your comments carefully and I truly appreciate the perspectives shared. Respectful discussion is what keeps this space meaningful.
Thank you for being part of the conversation.