Jim says "Moreover it is no good asking soft questions. The questions we need to ask of our politicians, and questions politicians need to ask of each other, need to be tough, robust, and uncompromising"

This is a bit rich, coming from an current office-holder in the Australian Democrats.

A bit of background here - the Democrats are currently engaged in a dispute over who is running the party, so that currently there are two groups each claiming to do so (and each running their own website, see
http://australian-democrats.org.au/contact.php and
http://www.australiandemocrats.org.au/national_executive )
The group which claims Dr Page as its "National Communications Director" has engaged in actions such as disendorsing election candidates and expelling members (for reasons either unstated or weird), and (the point of this comment) has _repeatedly_ refused to answer questions such as which provisions, if any, of the constitution, allow such actions.

So if Jim thinks that asking questions is of value, he's not quite right - rather it's asking questions of people who have at least some primitive sense of being accountable to the questioners.

Dear Jeremy:

Thank you for your post. Unfortunately I don't know who you are, or anything of your background, and thus it is difficult for me to make the detailed response which I think your posting deserves. However what I can say is that I think you make a good overall point about the importance of asking questions. Would you be interested in discussing the issues that you've raised with me? I am reluctant to list my mobile number here, but if you go the University of New England staff directory, and search for me there, my mobile number is listed. Look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,
(Dr) James Page

Overall I applaud the article but I was somewhat bemused by the Democrats plug at the end until I read jeremy's post.

Perhaps recent history has blunted my longer term recollections of the Democrats but when considering the points raised by Dr Page and the Democrats I don't see the Democrats as isolated from the issue.

"Keeping the Bastards Honest" was a theme a lot of wish they had stuck with but at the same time it was part of the whole spin of politics to make opponents out to be dishonest bastards.

For me the move to being the femocrats and the blinkered focus that brought was a big part of the demise of that party.

I'd love there to be a party that tried to do stuff significantly differently, that set a different tone and behaved internally and externally with integrity. That tried to address issues honestly regardless of the political advantage which could be gained by not doing so. Maybe a revived Democrats might do that but it would take a lot of determination to make that the reality.

R0bert