Hey Shorbe,

What's really empty and disheartening is to see comments like Arjay's who would be content with a full trough if we actually got some performance. No offence to Arjay as the majority seem willing to accept less than we deserve. Arjay too raises a good point about penalising bad performance. The only such penalty today is at the next election by which time both sides have infringed so much that neither deserve to govern.

Wouldn't it be good to have pollies sign a Workplace Agreement with the public, or perhaps their own electorates and be answerable to them?

It seems to me that too many of us have stood and watched when we should have been opposing the rubbish we accept as politics and government today.

If you read here and there on politics again you see people who are not thinking. One half support the Coalition regardless of what they do, what lies they tell, what lines they blur and so on while the other half simply dislike everything the Coalition do. And of course the second half supports Labor regardless of the same flaws.

It's as simple to me as people being used, as our major Parties know we have to vote for one of them essentially. Yes you can get a few extras up in the Senate but the facts are the big two take us for granted and know either one wins or the other. Like time share government. To us it makes little difference as both of them are so similar in their attitude to the public, contempt. Their reaction to One Nation told us who was working for whom. Politicians work for politicians, first and always.

Snouts in the trough and lies will never be acceptable regardless of what else such people may achieve. Simply by flouting the relevant laws and legislation they show they cannot be trusted and that's the opposite of what we need running our country.

IMPORTANT PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT





The Howard IR laws has gone to the high court. The most important legal case in 50-100yrs and a growing number of legal experts are worried if the laws are not stopped it will be the beginning of the States demise.



This government is destroying Australia on so many fronts. The most damaging and badly written IR legislation that was rushed through parliament by a puppet coalition senate. Save us High Court!



How can a so called legal expert like Kevin Andrews put his name on such a bill. At least one senator admitted to not reading the bill and I suspect most

senators didn't bother.



A government that illegally sells Telstra who turns a blind eye to corrupt payments by AWB not to mention the compulsory ID card. That is if you are not rich.



Then there lies on Iraq, GST and children overboard and what about forcing disabled to work.



Howard and Liberal voters, you made a bad choice with your last vote. This time don't fall for the interest rate rubbish (which they don't control) and baby bonus bribes or small tax cuts.



One day we will have a PM who doesn’t stab us in the back. Mr Howard, go and live in America. Oh that’s right your on holidays there right now

RobbyH: A huge part of the problem I think is the preferential voting system. I also think a huge part of the problem is the compulsory voting system. Actually, I think voting is the problem -- two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner and all that tyranny of the masses stuff -- though most people probably consider that a bit extreme.

I, on the other hand, don't vote. I used to vote informally, but I thought even that encouraged the bastards too much. However, that's all well and good, but what point am I even making? I'm faced with supporting the lesser of two or more evils (who is still an evil) or with a completely pointless gesture. Fantastic.

You or I could probably both throw around a whole lot of "ideal" situations, but the reality is that someone will always have power and most people will be apathetic and let the powermongers get away with too much. Personally, I think it's just a matter of surviving despite the nonsense and not getting too frustrated by it otherwise you go insane or end up as one of the powermongers. It's all screwed I think.

Where to our Aussie Democracy? - partly from John M Legge

1. It was Florence Nightingale who regarded the practice of incarcerating the sick and infirm with those reluctant to take a job as immoral. Though the UK system was eventually adjusted under the British Health System, the consensus has now been broken in both Britain and America, Australia gradually moving the same way over the last 20 years.

3. David McKnight in the most important of three books reviewed here, traces the roots of the new misguided morality to Frederick Hayek. who asserted that the Nightingale morality was an evolutionary relic that should be expunged in modern times. Too much looking after the sick and infirm, according to Hayek, could help to put a populace on the road to serfdom.

4. Hayek published his major works in the 1940s, but only became a significant influence on public life with the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Ronald Reagan also is said to have copied Thatcher when he was elected as US president in the early 1980s.

5. Certainly these beliefs had been given thrust earlier in the late 19th century through Social Darwinism, Darwin himself protesting that the survival of the fittest concept only related to the animal world. Indeed, humans given the inherent capacity by God to improve their intellect and understanding through the powers of reason, had a more responsible and compassionate role to fill in life, besides achieving materialy.

Part Two

1. McKnight explains why the Hayek apotheosis gained such influence a few years later in Australia. As in Britain and the USA, the intellectual collapse of the Left not only permitted it to gain power, but allowed it to purge out the "wet" centre without suffering an electoral backlash.

2. Somewhat surprisingly, it was a strong union leader, Bob Hawke, who took up the more Hayek-style format of economic rationalism in the early 1980s, going more right wing than the conservative opposition. Paul Keating used similar tactics, and looking back it seems that the conservatives eventually caught on and have been on top ever since, the former rather scared-looking John Howard, now as Aussie PM and free-marketeer, looking the essence of the top-rank colonial statesman, but working not so much for the UK, but for the US, at times more than for Australia.

3. And because Labor still tries to emulate the Hawke-Keating acceptance of economic rationalism, it is now stuck in a political bog, not having the courage to return to its Keynesian grass-roots.

4. Right now, without a strong opposition, even counting the rather airy-fairy Greens and Democrats, Australia could be faced with many more years of the Hayek doctrine. However, because it leans so much towards non-egalitarian capitalism, it could destroy itself through destroying the rights of its own people.

George C, WA - Bushbred