The role of an opposition is not to just "oppose".

In the Westminster System it is to debate, review, refine and ultimately vote on policies as put forward by the government and to offer alternatives of their own.

It's not to sabotage the everyday workings of parliament for the sake of partisan political gain.

The last decade has seen the rules change to personal attacks in lieu of serious policy debate and question time turn into a sideshow of opportunism for the sake of media coverage and leadership turned into some sort of personality-based reality TV show where weekly scores are analysed.

Despite all the posturing about creating a "kinder and gentler polity", these have become the new standards and we are all the poorer for it.

There's no clearer evidence of someone's degree of stupidity then when they continue to disregard proven dismal failure yet refuse to give a new team the benefit of doubt that they may possibly prove to be more competent.
Let's put the australian voting age up to 40.

JF have you learnt to count?

Do you realise they count the votes in parliament? That's how they decide if a bill has passed, in case you had never heard.

individual

Not sure what your trying to say, the ALP by any measure are a big failure, to be honest the over all state of economics is not too bad yet they have failed to sell their message to the electorate. How have they done this ? by not listening.

Their is nothing new about the ALP new cabinet, its based on factionalism and feuding. The electorate has judged this badly.

If they can keep a lid on things the ALP might recover in the polling but by 8-10% in 4-5 months on primary ?

Abbott has just stood by mostly while the ALP has just self imploded.

JF Aus

And the need to do anything while the ALP self destructs is ?

If Abbott has been given a free ride into the PM's job ...... whose fault is that ?

JF ....There was no effective opposition to the non-productive NBN or the 'carbon' tax either.

Sorry, but I think you are mistaken.

The alternative to the NBN, suggested by the opp, was to continue using the current system, upgraded, at an approx cost of $6 billion.

As there was never any guarantee that the new NBN system would be utilized, partially because not even the government was able to provide costs info, it made more sense to risk $6 B than $36 B.

Besides, if big business wants faster broadband, then it is they who should be taking out their cheque books, not the tax payer.

Now as for the carbon tax, it was also the opp that pointed out that emissions are a global problem and as such should be addressed globally, as opposed to us being the go it alone heroes the Gillard government wants us to be.

Indi spot on.

My brother recently fielded a call from one of these polling mobs.

The first question they asked was his age, and when he said 50+, they said thank you and hung up.

Polls like most numbers in politics (unemployment as an example) are a joke.

The best thing we could do would be to dump compulsory voting.