"What about a holistic sustainability strategy?"

Go away and read about entropy; sustainability is a joke, a catch-all, meaningless, feel good bit of tripe around which the mindless luvvies can congregate and bleat their mantras.

As for Greens and donations;

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8437830/greens-cleared-over-wood-donation

Wood's $1.6 million donation to the Greens is the largest in Australia's political history. Wood, of course also runs his own media outlet, The Global Mail, without a squawk from the luvvies about media imbalance.

The Greens are inherently misanthropic; they believe in as much 'pristine' nature as possible; the less people doing the least amount of interference with nature, code for living primitive, hard lives, the more 'pristine' nature. Greens don't like people

Killarney I agree with your statement: 'If the 'free' newsmedia were doing its job, the public would be much better informed.
But I think (and hope) you are wrong about the web blogs causing polarization in the electorate. I know polarization of opinion is evident between some bloggers (such as me and Hasbeen) but this is just free speech in action and I reckon that's healthy.

I blame the polarization on the negative, attacking strategies of the major parties and the way the mainstream media reports mainly their 'crap' press releases and does little to analyse their policy statements.

Hasbeen there you go again with nonsense arguments and hyberbole. Is Australia a 'basket case' too, (don't we have proportional representation in the Senate)?

World markets are subdued due to the GFC; demand and prices for NZ (and Tas) products - dairy, timber and tourism are down. Could that have some effect on the economy? Strange too that the NZ government has increased the tax burden on the poor and decreased them for the rich - top personal income tax rate has been reduced from 39 cents pre-GFC crisis to 33 cents. The GST has been increased from 12.5 per cent to 15 per cent. Do you think the MMP electoral system has caused this?

Hi Peter,

'In the end specific choices in regards to policies and personalities, not to mention luck, will play an important part in exactly what happens, but what should be clear is that major structural change is underway in Australian politics.'

Your conclusion interests me.

Is it reflected in the most recent election results in Qld and NSW and the current opinion poling? It seems to me, in those states and probably also WA as well as federally that the LNP is already realigned with electors desires. Isn't'that more the point, rather than any 'structural change' simply because they are at odds with their 'problem being insoluble because of factors that go way beyond national politics'. Clearly it isn't for the LNP.

<< sustainability is a joke, a catch-all, meaningless, feel good bit of tripe around which the mindless luvvies can congregate and bleat their mantras >>

Cohenite, I’m sure that you know what I mean by sustainability, and that is infinitely more sensible than a rapid continuous unending increase in the demand for food, energy and everything else, ie; a highly unsustainable direction, which can’t keep going and has to come crashing down before too long.

If you’ve got a better term for it, do tell.

Come on, you know what I’m on about, so why are you knocking it?

Now, could you please simply outline what you mean by ‘entropy’.

"Now, could you please simply outline what you mean by ‘entropy’."

2nd law of thermodynamics; colloquially describes that things run down; in natural terms things reduce, not remain static; given this sustainability, not taking more than nature can give, means continually reducing either numbers of people, or the standards of living of people, or both.

What do you mean by sustainability?

Cohenite, the second law of thermodynamics is hardly relevant here. For as long as the sun shines, humans should be able to live sustainably on this planet.

Sustainability: living within our means in an ongoing manner. Matching supply and demand, with a big safety margin to get us through hard times. Developing renewable energy sources, improving efficiencies in energy and resource usage, and striving to cap the demand instead of just allowing it to forever increase, especially when there are obvious stresses on our ability to meet this demand. ie: stop population growth.

Currently, both Lib and Lab are taking us in entirely the wrong direction, with their insistence of imposing a very high immigration rate upon us. And the Greens are letting them!

Peter McMahon concludes:

< …what should be clear is that major structural change is underway in Australian politics. >>

Well…. I don’t think so. Whatever structural changes might happen in the near future, they won’t amount to a hill of beans without the change away from the worship of rapid unending expansionism and the embracing of a sustainability-based agenda.