Even with a diaeresis, your world-weary cynicism demonstrates how out of touch with the real world you are, John Tons.

Living at the shallow end of the financial pool, my life - including family of five in all - is much more pleasant and manageable since the advent of the Labor government. It's not just brands, nor personalities (I personally don't care all that much for some of Rudd's perspectives): it's the resources.

As a carer my disabled child is much better off, as a parent my kids have computers (one courtesy of Kev, one courtesy of Kev's funding) and I can claim 50% of educational expenses. As a partially self-funded retiree lump sums have meant that my frugality no longer seems like meanness to my kids.

So no, John Tons, they are not all the same; one lots focuses on the big end of town, the other on ordinary folk. You can work out which label fits where. And yes, I am pleased we can have a change of government without revolution - and within a constitution.

Utterly wrong, John. It matters a lot. Our civil rights went spectacularly down the drain in the Howard years. We were lied to (remember the children allegedly overboard?), we had a referendum on a republic scuttled, we had public asset sell-offs (remember Telstra and the mum and dad investors?). We were dragged kicking and screaming to the 1950s as dog whistle racism came out of the kennel into the streets of Cronulla and onto the decks of the Tampa.

The maturity of a democracy means that bureaucracies remain largely the same - there are systems and functions that are pretty much perennial in the Australian form of government.

The difference is leadership and the national psyche, underpinned by constitutional freedoms. Not money and its acquisition.

Yep, LRAM, after all, as proven when the Romans tried to take over early democracy from the Greeks, and they even had a sort of Senate for quite a few years, but it had soon become tribal, only oldies allowed to run the show.

So after a surprising number of years, the young'ns eventually got Jack of it.

So enter the Caesars, most of their politics related to murdering the other, even the slaves having a go, finishing that way after a few more hundred years, with laws broken down to the stage that one day they found one of the former beaten Germanic leaders from over the Alps,
sitting on the Roman throne.

So as the Greeks began democracy, so St Thomas Aquinas
tried to re-enliven it, taking lessons from history, and bringing in the style of borrowed Greek democracy we now have.

Simple enough really, if only we would do more study and take the above lessons from history

I agree completely with the proposition that democracy is terminally ill, only I don't blame the politicians, I blame the electorate and therefore the system. Democracy is predicated on the naive assumption that the majority will be moved to act rationally, responsibly, ethically, sustainably, for the common good etc. When the truth is that the majority seldom, if ever, put any such values before their own interests. Politicians are forced to pander to the popular penchant for the best of everything at no cost. Thus they (politicians) promise everything, including lower taxes, during election campaigns; then spend their time in office defending the broken promises--utterly unrealistic in the first place. Top social infrastructure requires high taxation (top infrastructure is in fact no longer viable in the global economic market place, but that's another topic), but the majority want it for nothing.
Not only for nothing, but at any ancillary cost: slave labour overseas, inhuman animal husbandry practices, devastation of the planet etc. None of this matters if the compromise is lower living standards. Not even the prospect of our own destruction insinuates sobriety or modesty--the fate of the other species we drive to extinction, or indeed of the whole damn planet, is no expense at all! but don't raise taxes!
All the parties are the same because they're all moulded by the forces of the popular vote. The democratic majority is no better than the most profligate monarch, indeed worse because blame can be endlessly deferred. Even if a majority could be persuaded to do the right thing, they are easily confounded by the agents of hegemony, who need only point out that the "right" or "sane" course of action(rationalised as conspiracies in any case) might actually require a "sacrifice". The ruling majority will then recoil in horror! Climate change change is only one case in point where the "ethics" of the situation alone should overrule self-interest. But self-interest en masse overrules every other consideration.
Democracy is the tyranny of the selfish herd.

Churchill is still right - democracy, with all its faults, is still way, way better than all the alternatives.

Inch by inch, the electorate is wising up and there is now more reason applied at the ballot box and less tribalism than ever before. That's why simplistic creeds and class/race/etc wars don't attract the votes they used to. Sure, there's still a few spruiking socialism and someone like Pauline Hanson gets a few votes every now and then, but they are fringe players these days.

The greatest problem with democracy at the moment is the level of cynicism about all things political. Scepticism is healthy, but cynicism says more about the cynic than about the intended target. All this cynicism, and the ruthless scrutiny of politicians' private lives, makes it difficult for all parties to attract good candidates. And some dud candidates get elected and become dud MPs

It's kind of a skewed question because we really aren't particularly democratic at all- aside from LACKING the direct-democracy overrides that the Swiss enjoy, we don't even have the right to elect our actual ministers (for those who are dumb and don't actually know, you only elect a local 'representative', who, by private arrangement, may be Prime Minister of all the other localities he is not accountable to, or might just be a seat-warmer because his party didn't get enough reps and was thus disqualified).

In fact, the government doesn't even need an actual majority (like they do in practically every country in Europe)- they just need more votes than any other single party.
The result- the remaining 65% or so of the population is forced to accept the government they didn't vote for, and the whole package-deal of crap policies they're bringing with them.

In short, OUR system is most definitely terminally ill- or at least, gets by on extreme life support.
Euthanize the damn thing I say- make a new one based on observing some of the modern European systems.

But the bright side- as neither the "Ford Party" nor "Holden Party" intend to either change much on each others policies, nor to even do a particularly good job, surely the stakes of which party wins have never been lower!
Which means there is less urgency to ensure the "lesser of two evils" gets in and more people will look up some of their other candidates- even the gullible "Howard divided the nation" and "Labor are pinkos" types- hopefully we might see more Independents in the mix this time.