ISIS, Dan? Achievements!? Be papered to die for what you believe in!?
And if you believe that world is flat, that women are just goods and chattels, that Christians should be routinely beheaded!? Rape as part of warfare? And you would die for such medieval stone age beliefs?

I might die to keep our freedom-loving nation free from such evil bastardry!

Hasbeen, I understand why you and a vociferous minority want to keep the present system, where unrepresentative swill serve powerful vested interests as they pretend to serve the national interest! It's all sham and thundering theatre liberally garnished with non-core promises! And serves undeserving privilege protection, ahead of the true national interest!

I contend that a rabble would serve the national interest more faithfully than any current self-serving, self-absorbed political party! Who have set up a rule system to keep honest brokers out or failing that, work on bending and corrupting them until they lose any vestige of a moral compass?

Me? I'd want all candidates strapped to a polygraph they annunciate person and party election platforms! And failure to pass that test would ensure they were replaced with a far better class of candidates!
And far better decisions made in the national interest ahead o the aspirations of the new idea free moribund generations of the past?

Thus we'd get rationality restored, nuclear power and a turbocharged economy not taxed to a standstill and cooperative capitalism to ensure the paper shuffling, profit demanding middlemen, were ruled out!

None worse than those who corner the spot oil market, to create an totally artificial shortfall, then as demand forces prices artificially high, reap an entirely undeserved, unearned capital gains windfall the rest of us pay for in so many diverse ways!

That you can't see it tells us a lot about you and your values/patriotism or total lack thereof?
Alan B.

DD,

Good information. Add the MSM all day, every day, and subliminal messages from many sources.

How many times do we hear people say "THEY say" of "THEY reckon", when expressing something they believe, or think they should believe.

You are right of course Hasbeen. No matter how the others grind it up
it comes down to groups forming to get a compromise majority.
No good them forming that majority if there is not a sufficient number
of the public to put their marks on the ballot paper.
That is all there is to it and the others can make all sorts of waffle
about intentions but in the long run it works out.
LIFE IS A COMPROMISE !

Dear Hasbeen,

«Yuyutsu you are much more likely to get it wrong voting for an individual, whose real opinions will often be hidden, than a party who have to keep some faith with the public.»

Any representative could potentially go mad, turning 180º to betray their voters. That is why an electorate should have some mechanism whereby it could replace their representative at any time.

Better still, voters ought be able to vote directly on the issues that matter most for them. Obviously they have no time to study all parliamentarian issues, thus they should leave all other issues by default in the hands of their representative.

Should a political party suddenly decide to legislate that witches must be burned, then there is not much that voters could do to stop them, but if it is a single representative gone mad, then it is practically impossible to convince a majority of the other independent parliamentarians to join along their crazy proposition.

A rabble would be an improvement on what seems to be, the inmates out and in charge of the Asylum?

I mean, apparently prepared to pork barrel like never before? And,i.e., build a rail line with taxpayer's money, to build a great big white elephant rail line from Brisbane to Gladstone for volumes of coking coal that will need to be shipped in impossible record volumes for 100 plus years just to pay off the construction bill!

There's no harm in wandering around in cloud cooku land as long as you don't move in as a permanent resident?
Alan B.

I have realised that what we are arguing about here is why Mohammad
made his robber gang tribe into a religion.
It immediately solves all argument. Allah said so ! qed.
If you do not do as I say (Allah told me) then off with your head.
It has been remarkably successful !