I am with Chris Lewis. The Prime Ministers and Treasurers over the last forty years have almost all been Lawyers, They may have been good Lawyers, and if so should have stuck to that. Unfortunately they did not, and the conglomeration that have powered their way up to be the brains of these parties, show by the recessions they have managed to maintain, that they are worth a blob of dogs dung as full payment. I am more of the same idea as Chris, people have either a genuine common sense and can handle many problems of life, or they are devoid of common sense and can only work out problems that coincide with problems that have appeared in their book, and the politicians we have had over the last forty years have proved that. Of course, the only party people we have to vote for, are those who signed a pledge “I promise to agree with the decisions of the majority”, seems to be about the level of their integrity and an equally low intelligence.

“For the record, Gillard’s moves on foreign students cost Australian universities a significant amount of revenue. Which begs the question of why a university employee would vote for somebody who is wreaking havoc in their sector. But I digress.”

What you say is true. The problem is that the price of granting these students' citizenship to lure them to the universities, seems a little wrong to me.

"Think about it this way; how could you sensibly debate economics, public finances, climate change or even foreign policy without having qualifications in one or more of law, economics, accounting or the sciences".

What is being alleged that only experts are capable of having an opinion. Are you suggesting that most are not capable of looking at arguments of experts, making their own decisions from the facts displayed.

I thought that was why we had experts, someone to sort out the truth, explain and educate us, in a way we lower humans can understand.

“I don't think that any one person can be across all that fields. But I agree that you need to be qualified to do certain things. I wouldn't want a tradie doing bypass surgery on me unless he was also a trained surgeon!”

I also would want a trained surgeon. I would also expert that expert to explain to me why and how he was going to operate on me. I would expect him to communicate what was happening. I would also reserve my right if he did not convince me to seek a second opinion

“The biggest swing at the ballot box at the last election was actually the swing towards the informal vote, and it appears that there were many voters who didn't want Gillard or Abbot.”

This swing was not uniform across the country. It was mostly in the Western suburbs of Sydney. I have not sighted any research that indicates what this means. I believe that there has only been a small growth of informal votes overall across the electorate.
I would also like to point out the swing to the Coalition was uniformed across the states. They did well in Queensland but were unable keep the momentum up in other states.
What does the rise of informal votes mean? Without the benefit of any research, it could mean in the overall figure that people are not interested in politics, therefore getting their names crossed off but not voting.
I do not know what effect Mr. Latham's call to vote informal had on the situation.
I suspect that in Western Sydney and other like places, something else was going on. I suspect that it was not a lack of interest in politics but the opposite. It is possible it was a protest vote, expressing a pox on both major parties and a disinclination to move to the minor parties. If that is true, politics in this country has reached a new low and is not respected or meeting the needs of the people.

What utter arrogrance.

Go back and support your arrogrant Labor mates.

Obviously you've never been able to communicate with real working people nor well read individuals like myself.

None of us have much value for academic's such as yourself, especially half smart lawyers, as we see you lot as devoid of understanding of the real world ... living and working in ivory towers we bloody fund.

Just keep your f...ing elitist attitudes to yourself and keep voting for the labor p...s who just take us all for granted and who think it smart only to lie to use and have taxes they like and taxes they hike.

If Abbott was to listen to the likes of you we'd all be totally f...ed.