BOAZ-David. Maybe you should be spending some more time in The South.

Seems to me that BOAZ_David has already made up his mind to vote for the Big Guy.

Arjay writes that if you 'want rights you have to work for them'
Rights are inalienable because you are a human being. It has nothing to do nothing to do with 'working for them; they are NOT consumer goods.

For example children have a right to to a safe and happy life and therefore to be protected from harm . Even if you dont have children it is still important for you to contribute for their well being through taxes, your attitude etc. It is about being part of a human society and not about what's in it for me.

Greg's worldview remains curiously trapped in the 1980s. The quaint version of liberalism as a river of ideas which individuals hold by conviction and test through argument with colleagues in pursuit of the public interest, died in the Australian Liberal Party a long time ago.

Today, the Liberal Party (like Labor) is an instrument for career-building. The National Party retains a residual culture of conviction politics from some of its social conservatives, and has not yet entirely been captured by professional apparatchiks. But it faces a slow death for demographic reasons. To place any hope for political renewal today on the shoulder of the conviction Lib is to ignore the powerful culture of careerism that both major parties nurture and rely upon.

Vern Hughes
vern@peoplepower.org.au