How can we differentiate a politician who thinks with a long range view from one who doesn't? Voting records are meaningless because parliamentarians must vote according to the decision of the party room. They cannot vote their conscience, the views of their constituents, the good of Australia or the long term view if it differs from the decision of the party room since they will incur penalties including not being backed for re-election.

The solution is to have all votes conscience votes except for those issues stated in the platform which the pol ran on.

This is too simplistic. The conflict is not a glib "thinking with the heart instead of the head". Rather it is a conflict between a logical solution (let 'em starve) and our entire moral and ethical infrastructure which must reject this solution in order for us to remain what we think of as "human" as opposed to animal. If you and I are alone in the desert the "logical" solution may well be for one of us to hit the other on the head and take the water; I know from much recorded experience of others in history, and for knowledge of my own core weakness, that probably you or I will take this course of action to save ourselves. Our life may be saved by so doing but the trauma to our minds might prove terminal

The author makes some great points, with which I fully agree.

What is evident is that those who run the political circus,
have finetuned their abilities to guage public opinion and then
push emotional buttons, in order to swing elections. Karl Rove
did it twice for George Bush.

Sadly a good share of the public react to all this, by acting
in their short term self interest. So our politics is largely
about spin and pushing emotional buttons, to get the party
over the line at the next elections.

It is all about entertainment.

In my opinion we have become a nation of spectators and spectators with a very short attention span.

A long term health or education initiative in some remote poor country has little entertainment value as compared to patrol boats and sinking or burning refugee boats.

I cannot see any changes in outlook occurring in the immediate future.

It is the way we are, sad but true.

SD

This is all very much jumbled thinking. The Helen Palmer Enneagram Institute has clearly demonstrated that there are three main groups comprising how humans solve problems (defense mechanisms), each having three sub-groups, thus nine profiles (Enneagram).

The three types are “Head”, solving by thinking, “Heart” solving by emotion and “Body” solving by intuition. You can’t get one type to behave the way another personality type does. It’s a contradiction in terms to say “think with your head rather than your heart”. Heart types don’t think, they are driven by emotion.

There may be a case for selecting those best suited to particular tasks, unfortunately that would be undemocratic.

The mix of types within politics is probably little different to any other group so you might need to think about the other factors that influence politicians specifically. Now that will be fun.

One solution along the way would be to get rid of compulsory voting.

This would get rid of the 40% or so that vote only because they have to and tick the box based on the latest sound bite.

Entrenched policies with proven track records and woes can never be as sexy as "new vision" promises that have yet to be tested.