David f,

Agreed. We don't need professional politicians. We do need politicians to be professional.

Australia's form of representative democracy seems to have 'worked' for the most part. I regard it as a reasonable model of government – in the sense of – the best of less-than-ideal options.

Is there an ideal option? Yes. Unfortunately, it is the same ideal that every other citizen of our nation wants: that the parliament always thinks, talks and acts as I would were I the government. Whilst we're all waiting for that to happen…

Back here in the real world I concluded the problem is, most politicians only care about representing the members of the electorate once every four years with the rest of the time spent busily representing their party and, selfishly, representing themselves within it. To survive as a professional politician they need first to look after themselves and their political party and lastly to look after those who elected them.

Voters, I contend, seek politicians whose primary focus is to serve their electorate and to do so professionally.

I've tried to think of the simplest change to our current structure of government which I think will have the biggest improvement in the quality of governance.

This is it so far:

"A person who is a member of a political party may only be elected for a single term of government."

cont.

Three initial reasons in support of this:

It is democratic. Anyone would still be able to nominate for every election as an independent and with any set of policies they wished.
Political parties continue, but not as before if they wish to survive. Fewer opportunities to reward 'political mates' because any individual party member has left after one term in office even if the electorate continues to vote that party a majority.
It alters the extra-parliamentary position and powers the executive branch of government has gleaned for itself over the past 40 years.

I have other thoughts about the topic you started here, but I suspect they can be saved for other opportunities online. I hadn't discovered this thread until a few hours ago and suspect I may have missed the boat...but I thought your proposition important and wanted to try to contribute.

hi win
you say ""We don't need professional politicians.
We do need politicians to be professional""

thats where we went wrong
they need to stop professing
[stop saying we believe in the people
when all they really care about is getting elected
[getting into power...getting the benifits of office etc]

im sick of giving monkeys
gold bars and honour stars

its time their feet where held to the flame
took on responsability [accountability]
as well as felt blame and shame

electing people for one term
is one term too much for most
so much dammage can be done in one term
[look at the last term of the howard years]

opolitical parties ill allways be arround
politricks is a numbers game,..
only parties can deliver the numbers

look arround your electroate..it will have at least ten and more likely many more places to vote from..each booth needs to be manned

[its a numbers game]polititions need supporters in numbers..just to man the booths[or scrutenise the votes recieved][its a dirty game]

there will allways be people to 'reward'
thats how the game is played

to get real change we need to get rid of the others
that get their mate elected..[so their mates gives them their kickback]..thats where the parties are so clever

no-one can get elected
without others helping

its the helpers
[the faceless backdoor men..
who control the member]

or get their next patsy elected

go into any parlement
you wouldnt vote for any of em

they need to sellout just to get nominated
have had to sell out to get elected

dont save your thoughts
the topic may never come up again

as your new here
know..

30 days without a response
and..the topic simply dies..goes away
also many prefer to not reply..[it goes away quicker]