The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > Trust the issue for all sides of parliament > Comments

Trust the issue for all sides of parliament : Comments

By Rosemary Aird, published 2/12/2013

Can the Abbott Government make inroads into the most serious issue for many Australians – a lack of trust in those who are charged with the responsibility of serving the best interests of the Australian people?

  1. Pages:
  2. Page 1
  3. 2
  4. All
The short answer is No.
Posted by Cobber the hound, Monday, 2 December 2013 7:57:15 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Probably everyone agrees with the thrust of this article, that there is growing distrust of all major parties in Parliament. They are wrongly called the "two sides" of politics, as if they stood for polar opposites. Viewed properly, they are both two wings of the same predatory bird.

Firstly note that misleading and deceptive conduct, or conduct likely to mislead or deceive, is against the law in Australia but only "in trade or commerce". It's not illegal "in government or politics". And so politicians and bureaucrats routinely make the most outrageous misrepresentations or straight-out lies, and we have no legal remedy whatsoever. If we merely abolished this double standard this issue of distrust would be enormously reduced, for obvious reasons. Currently, government literally has a legal monopoly of fraud.

Secondly, there should be no surprise that politics is the arena in which the foremost representatives act in an unprincipled and disrespectful way towards others. This is because politics is, by definition, the process by which people can get what they want, without moral principle, by simply threatening others with aggressive force, which would be illegal in voluntary, including all market transactions. This is because the defining characteristic of the State is that government claims and exercises a legal monopoly of use of threats of force, backed up by real fire-power.

Where social relations are governed by voluntary and market relations - such as the supply of holidays, electronics, socks, land, friends, office premises, and so on, we don't get this characteristic of chronic conflict and hatred. But all of a sudden, when the State provides "services" - e.g. "asylum seekers, social issues, environmental problems, immigration, health, education, crime/law and order, housing, racism, national security, industrial relations, and Indigenous issues" - all of which are funded by threatening to cage people if they won't hand over the money, all of a sudden everything is characterised by huge waste, hateful divisiveness, and widespread distrust of those running the operations.
Posted by Jardine K. Jardine, Monday, 2 December 2013 8:52:07 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Of course the answer is NO.
Tony Abbott is a pugilist by nature. Battlelines, the title of his book signals this, as does his body language and the tone of his voice.

Meanwhile we are now firmly entrenched in The Argument Culture as described by Deborah Tannen in her 1991 book of the same name.

At a deeper more foundational level never-ending argument and conflict, even leading to outright even globalized warfare are the inevitable consequences of egoic society as described in this essay:
http://www.dabase.org/p5egoicsociety.htm
Posted by Daffy Duck, Monday, 2 December 2013 9:46:41 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Abbott will not make any difference to the lack of trust Australians have in politicians; he is just one of those who have been hanging around for years and helping generate the distrust and contempt.

He is no worse than any of the other politicians – no matter the flavour – but it’s well past time that Australians got up and demanded better candidates to vote for.
Posted by NeverTrustPoliticians, Monday, 2 December 2013 2:02:04 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
NTP, we have to find our own trustworthy politicians, as they did in Indi, and now is the time to start looking for good candidates for the next election, in our own electorates.
Posted by Candide, Monday, 2 December 2013 10:10:44 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I certainly feel I can trust the Abbott Government more than all the ALP Governments combined since big Goaf. What the Coalition has to focus on is the gradual removal of ALP supporting bueaucrats who deliberately sabotage conservative administrations without a second's thought of the many lives they wreck purely for some idealistic reason which has no reasonable reason.
Posted by individual, Monday, 2 December 2013 10:18:53 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. Page 1
  3. 2
  4. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy