“The end result is that the Australian political system neither represents popular opinion (whatever that is) nor does it respond to substantive problems. It is entirely dysfunctional, neither democratic nor providing good governance, while making a great show of doing both.”

A succinct and correct summary, applying to all political shades in Australia.

A bit of a random spray rather than a coherent attack on the iniquities of the system we have willed upon ourselves, but nonetheless a fair start to a critically important debate.

(Undoubtedly this thread will degenerate into a microcosm of the problem at large, offering incisive comments such as “Howard sucks”, “Beazley's incompetent”, “Howard's a hero”, “Beazley and Labor are our only hope” etc. none of which will contribute one iota to the discussion.)

But before diving in, just a point or two about leading with one's chin.

Pinning the theme to a reading of Latham's diaries allows Howard's lackeys and lickspittles an easy target with which to divert attention from the issues. Just watch.

Equally, careless soundbites such as "... the structural changes in the national economy (read: globalisation) has [the Nationals] fatally weakened" are meat and drink to the non-thinkers, since it is essentially a non-thinking comment in itself.

Globalisation is not the cause of the weakening of the National's influence - that's mere sloganeering.

Simple economics are the reason for the decline in power of the agricultural community in Australia, just as it is the case around the world. The CAP in Europe is only held together with old bits of string, and the US farmer's voice is steadily weakening too, despite the direct support of their president in overseas negotiations.

Despite those blemishes, the article manages to raise the key questions about our political future. Are we going to sit back and allow the current combination of blatant careerism, media pandering and personal nest-feathering to pass for a democratic form of government? Shall we just sit back and mouth off about whomever we happen to dislike at the moment, then slump back to watch the soccer? Or will we decide that enough is enough, and actually do something about it?

I know which one I'd bet on.

Our current society is a product of a decade of the politics of fear and division, where Governments of either colour seeming endlessly are cutting back on the services they provide, while increasing our tax budren. Where is all of that brevenue going, certainly not to the average family on a median income.

Nothing was ever achieved without fighting for it, now is the time to fight, and fight hard.

When the press gallery is sought on google it comes up at the PM's office - most of the gallery haven't set foot out of the rarified atmosphere of the big house for years and have no idea what is going on.

They really seem to believe that Howard's deceit, dishonesty and outright lies are "clever" politics and refuse to dig beneath the circus.

Every time a policy statement is made from the ALP, everytime a position is taken such as with AWA's they don't let the ALP explain they ask Howard for his opinion.

Everytime I hear the man's voice I have a reaction that is evisceral - I want to gut him and if I can't I say "f...k off" and switch off the voice.

Howard spends all his time living in 2 tax payer funded houses, he travels first class all over the world at our expense, sends soldiers to illegally invade other countries, murder in anyone's language, doesn't read cables, wants to be a dictator and kisses the arse of anyone who wants a say in our politics.

Bush decides our foreign policy and now Indonesia is to decide our refugee policy - it is not a migration policy as refugees are not migrants.

The ALP would be no better.

The debasing of our political systems is firstly a result of immigrational, branch-stacing and seat-stackng gerrymanders. How else could NSW end up with 5 Italian descendants running the state like their own personal monopoly board, complete with a stack of get out of jail free cards. It is exacerbated by mulligan-stew style global corporatism which is becoming bolder in its disdain for public interests. Put the two together and you get GPDs (Government-Private-Dicatorships) where democracy is a sick and frustrating illusion with little hope of fair electoral processes.

Solution: Halt big government sponsored property debvelopment in Sydney. The entire Australian immigration program will collapse as migrants only want to come to Sydney where they have disproportinate political clout.

It is true that immigration gives Australia benefits at a modest dollar cost to our economy and a huge boon to our property markets. But at what cost socially and spiritually if we lose our democratic freedoms while interest rates rise and property prices fall into a black hole Costellation?

We don't have to be funnelled into this slavery and serfdom. But we need to act quickly as the final plans are surely on Macquarie street drawing boards and will unfold rapidly if Labor wins another term in March.

"Warren" - Neerh! "What's up Doc"

The implementing process of the Liberal Governments "New Work Choice" regime has begun to impact on Australian Workers wages and entitlements.

Employers have three years to change over to the Work Choice and old awards have been frozen.

A.W.A's are a Federal Agreements. The States of Australia have their own Workplace agreement system.

There are three choices in which Employers will now contract their labour. A.W.A, A.P.A or a legal formated contract.

It has been found that 63% of A.W.A' workplace agreements do not pass wage requirements, omitting entitlements and leaving the Australian worker worse off.

The abolishment of the unfair dismissal laws relating to Small Businesses with less that 100 employees have begun a supremacy of terminations of the "Mature aged Employee".

Australian workers have a new definition in "sacking" in which you are sacked and offered your job back with lower wages.

This is also concern for Australian workers when a lack of leadership and vision has put Australia in a position of needing a new wave of Industrial changes in which Australian workers are now competing with Imported migrant labour.

Queensland Liberal Warren Entsch has been quoted as saying that the sky did not fall in when the Liberal Government introduced the GST.

We would like to tell Warren, nor did all of the taxes it was supposed to abolish.

The latest opinion polls in which Labor is leading the fight is reflecting that the Australian people do not want a lowering of their wage standards.

Another Carrot on the Barbie, Warren?

Dr Peter McMahon makes many good points in his opinion article. However, the opening line includes a flawed common assertion.

The flawed common assertion is “Australia is one of the most over governed nations in the world”. Assessing its credibility depends on those nations that Australia is compared with. It seems valid to compare Australia with nations of relatively equal levels of development and prosperity rather than those that may be considered substantially underdeveloped and/or with high proportions of substantial poverty. A comprehensive comparison of Australia with 17 robust, wealthy liberal democracies including nations such as the USA, UK, Germany, Italy and Sweden (Tiffen & Gittens 2004) indicates the assertion is not credible.

Australia is the 4th least taxed nation of the top 17 liberal democracies. Australia spends the 4th least proportion of total GDP on government.

Interestingly, Australia has the second lowest level of membership of political parties amongst its population and, Australia has the highest concentration of newspaper ownership of these top 17 liberal democratic nations and the fifth lowest newspaper circulation. How many of us obtain most of our political information from this narrowly constituted media without an alternate source?

Despite a Federal system of government that translates into 2.5 tiers of government, Australia also has a relatively low level of political representatives per head of population compared with other OECD nations and the combined employment in the public sectors around Australia is also relatively low compared with other OECD nations.

There are certainly many flaws in Australia's political system but over-governance is debatably not one. Perhaps it might be fair to argue that along with our concentrated media ownership, we also have concentrated political power. Maybe there’s too few rather than too many representatives with their fingers in the pot of power in Australia?

Monopolisation is a cause of our decline. Diversity in industry, manufacturing, commerce, government services and competition has disappeared as monopolisation swallows individual and business enterprise and innovation.

The same goes for government, we get less services, yet more bureaucrats getting higher and higher wages for less and less. When political parties climbed into bed with big business, there could be no other direction other than privatisation and monopolisation. After all, its who fills your political coffers that dictates party policy.

All our politicians could be charged with false pretenses, lying, corruption conflict if interest and breach of the constitution because they state categorically they represent their party and the parties policies in deference to voters. We have lawyers and rich people for politicians. A legal system, economy, social and health system, tax regime and increasingly, a welfare system favouring the elite. Its only the elite who get work perks, tax relief, (in the guise of trusts and business expenses)

Nothing will change until we have a revolution of some kind. There's little chance it will be a political revolution, anyone taking on the current two faction single party monopoly, are destroyed, even jailed, as was the case of P. Hanson. The populace will do nothing until they wake up one day and realise they are just slaves for life, with no rest from birth to death. No holidays, worthless superannuation from rising taxes and costs.

Remember, politicians and bureaucrats super is funded by the tax payer, another massive burden upon us for the elites benefit. More Billions of dollars we're enslaved to provide the elite for zero return

Why are politicians pushing for us to work until 75, plus starting school younger. Now Its out of the cradle, into enslavement (child care, school)then work until your 75, yet many die within 5 years of retiring at 65 now.

Welcome to the real world, provided by those you voted for, enjoy the ride, it may be freaky.

Hi y'all
Yes, we do get the government we deserve because we vote for it.
If and when we stop voting en masse for the major parties, then we may get people in parliament who represent their electorates in the parliament, not the parliament (or government) in their electorates.

The difference is not so subtle. In the first case, the people elected to represent the interests of their electorate do so regardless of party discipline. In the second case the electorate votes for whoever sells them the least worst view of the world under their party. In case A we get representatives, in case B we get snake oil salesmen.

Vote for independents, turn them over often and trust that really government makes very little difference - for example Italy!

odsoc

We need to scrap compulsory voting first. Then there would be no "safe" seats, candidates at elections would need to get people to vote for them.

Instead we have people who take no interest in politics voting only to save themselves from being fined. We need to encourage a system where the best local candidate has a chance to win, no more safe labor or liberal seats.

Odsoc
yes, indeed we do.(vote for it) Many of us see no alternative to the lesser of 2 evils.

COALITION
Capitalism/Econimic Rationalism = Manipulate the world to maximize corporate earnings. (like the Japanese and Green land with Whaling) Does this approach consider the dwindling resource ? how CAN it when it is driven by 'shareholder value' ? When CEO bonus's are driven by 'shareholder value' ?
In summary driven by....memeMEMEmeme_and_MORE_"me"

LABOR/SOCIALISM
Legislate all things even going to the loo, BIGGGGG government, massive public spending, connected to Union vested interest, head in the sand over international impact of local policies, etc....
In summary driven by....memeMEMEmeme_and_MORE_"me" (Just different 'me's)

GREENS/DEMOCRATS......er...who ?....what ?

Final summary.

"each of us has turned to his own way." (Isaiah 53.6a)

Final Solution.

"But the Lord has laid on HIM, the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53.6b)

Oh that Politicians, Unionists, Chief Executives, Share holders and everyday blokes and shiela's like us, would grasp this truth, and submit our hearts to it.

I can only express my amazement that people still seem unable to understand that the ethical basis of politics in Australia was laid down during the 1790's by the NSW Corps. You only have to look at the Cross-City Tunnel contract in Sydney today to see that Corps members would have wholeheartedly endorsed the provisions, particularly the rip-offs organised by their spiritual descendants, the right wing of the NSW Labor Party.

The four principles of Australian politics, which were formed during the early days of settlement are:

1. The Government is the enemy of the People, and can never be trusted.

2. No taxation with or without representation, with any deficiency being made up from the sale of politician's assets.

3. At every election, no matter whom you vote for, a politician is ALWAYS elected.

4. Always vote NO at federal referendums.

Mark Latham will always have a honoured place in my political memories, because not only did he coin a phrase (a conga line of suckholes) which rivalled Keating's description of the Senate (unrepresentative swill), but he was responsible for reducing politicians superannuation. As someone who believes that the maximum remuneration for any politician should not exceed the dole, that was a rare step in the right direction.

We have a political system that faithfully represents what we are (not what utopians think we should be), and that is what it should do.

P.S I have never been able to find out how Keating would have described the House of Reps. Would they be the "representative swill"?

I will be accused of howard bashing but what I say applies to all the parliamentary parasites er sorry I meant, of course, honorable? members.
First is of course the behaviour of our representatives in our Parliament they all act like demented, backward, uneducated, retarded fools. Then howard's control of a compliant, belly-up, totally unabashed liberal biased speaker, I add that all previous speakers have been controlled by their prime minister to one degree or another.
Cop howard recently - whilst talking to his party dummies getting their views he sent a minion er minister to the G/G 'instructing' him to give his consent to the motion or bill that was being debated. How utterly contemptible, how divisive, how deceitful, how howard.
Then, again from the pathetic liberals and their mates, all the grubby, lying 'Dorothy Dix' questions. The sad part of this is that the local (mine)member is the leading 'Dorothy Dix question asker - of course it is all she is good for.
Then there's two homes for the howards and the cost of a RAAF plane to take him to and from Canberra. Not to mention the extraordinary wine cellar all paid for by us twits. It may have been stopped since her marriage but for a long time howard's daughter had a tax-payer funded car park for security reasons. Never occurred to howard to have the common decency to pay for his daughter's safety out of his own deep pocket - he's not that type of person.
Sorry I tend to rave on but our politicians totally disgust me. numbat

Aah... It's the big question, isn't it? "Are we going to sit back and allow the current combination of blatant careerism, media pandering and personal nest-feathering to pass for a democratic form of government? ... Or will we decide that enough is enough, and actually do something about it?"

Disengagement is born from an overwhelming sense of powerlessness. Australians are feeling alienated from the political process because they don’t feel they have a meaningful role to play, so they are not really paying attention to it. In particular, they are disengaging from events at the state and national levels. This is why the AWB scandal got no traction in the public mind, despite its egregiousness.

Perhaps, if people had a real opportunity to participate on their own terms, then they would engage and contribute. But how can this happen, when cynical media types collude with self-seeking politians to limit the range of debate?

The answer might lie in participatory media platforms built at the community level. No offence intended to OLO, but your handwringing about issues, rather than brainstorming practical actions and activities, is really just re-enforcing people's sense of alienation.

Recent research by Hugh Mackay, Richard Eckersley and others shows that Australians feel the most meaningful participation in their lives can be around friends, family and hyper-local communities – the street, local sporting and community bodies, even local government.

Emerging online communities that allow people to gather and participate around ideas and interests at levels and in circumstances that are most relevant and valuable to them could eventually refresh their appetite for engagement at other levels.

Nothing will happen overnight. But helping citizens use the increasing connectivitity and relative utility of the broadband internet to connect with each other to build and provide awareness of local issues and activities and empower higher levels of participation in community life could lead to longer term re-engagement with broader issues.

forgot to tick the box below numbat

Pericles, I believe you've made a safe bet.

Peter McMahon Opens with “Australia is one of the most over-governed places on earth,”

And then goes on to say how he supports labor, the masters of intrusion and Nanny-State laws which over-govern us more than any liberal / conservative would seek to do.

Steve Madden, I too believe compulsory attendance at a ballot box is detrimental to the democratic process, lets face it the first responsibility of any democracy should be the right to choose to vote or otherwise.

Jeez — I agree with you too Steve, Now where is my medication?

David BOAZ, I think God is above politics, the trouble is the Church of Rome and the Anglicans are and always have been up to their necks in it.

If given a choice, Church of Rome or Anglicans (despite who they claim to represent), I am sure God would not vote for either.

I note John Howard decided to live in Kirribilli House instead of the Lodge because his kids were still at school, fair enough maybe.

But now his son is working for the Republican Party in the US he should get his backside back to the lodge.

I wanted to read The Latham Diaries too but my local bookstore doesn’t have a ‘fiction and fantasy’ section as yet.

What’s wrong with Australian politics? Let’s see: we had a leader who terrorized taxi drivers; a politician who turned the bucolic backwater of O’Possum Bay into a capital city to get better T/A rates; an MP sleeping in his car at truck stops to get T/A; an MP who didn’t know whether his car was a four cylinder or a V8 (I’d like to sell him a car); an MP who forgot he owned a half-share in a concreting company; an MP whose only functioning organ was his penis (he must’ve been a lot of fun at cabinet meetings); an MP who had to have the law changed retrospectively to keep him from being charged with fraud; an MP who couldn’t tell a colour TV from a black and white TV; the protection of a high court judge whose file has been sealed for a number of years; a current high court judge who broke the law for 13 continuous years; another judge who enjoyed political protection while he trawled the crappers at various railway stations looking for young boys; a judge with a fine political pedigree whose fondness for the amber ale was known by all except those who appointed him; and, the never ending raids conducted on the taxpayers’ purse by MPs.

The above is just a small sample of what is laughingly referred to as Australian politics. Why would the media become fixated on such trivia? Isn’t the answer axiomatic? It’s the only bleedin’ thing our policians seem to do. The ordinary punter has no hope of breaking the political omerta which serves the two major parties well.

Mr Latham, a politician is a person who has risen above the pack and is not a person who behaves like someone from the bottom of the pack.

An interesting article, Peter, backed by very interesting commentaries. Notice you favour Mark Latham a little, with a couple of commentary agreements. Keep it all up, mates because it is what our politics sorely need. As you said, Peter, it shows the lack of both sides of our government's political thought, when we are still led to follow and what America follows, worn-out politico-economic philosophies thrown out once at the end of the 1900s, and then once again during the Great Depression.

The saddest thing is that Labor is too gutless to give out a genuine boo, which at least Mark Latham wasn't short of.

One point that needs dialoguing right now, is that we need to really take up the argument against the BiLateral-Trade agreement, not only about milkies and fruitgrowers and many graingrowers going broke, but about the sneaky arrangement by the Howard Government that dirtied our bio-custom laws by letting in a shipment of Brazilian carcase beef, suspected of foot and mouth infection.

In WA we got word from Queensland stockies that Howard had successfully quietened it all down.

As an old farming director, could reckon all you other onliners must do your damndest to expose it, otherwise as far as us cockies and cattle breeders are concerned you're not worth a cracker.

I don’t believe we are over-represented. I believe we are not represented. I don’t know what Politicians/Bureaucrats do with their time, but it seems like they don’t have time to actually do their job unless of course their job is just to warm the seat, liaise with the media and accept and sign whatever is put in front of them.

So many times I have heard Politicians/Bureaucrat say that they get so many letters that they can’t read them all and they use that as an excuse. I can’t help but wonder what they do and who is reading these letters and who gets to decide what matter should be brought to the attention of the Minister?

My experiences show that if you have a problem with a Government Department, the Department that you have the problem with is the one that handles the matter, and they present the picture that they want to present to the Minister for signature. Of course the Minister takes the word of his fellow Bureaucrats on face value as he has great faith in his fellow public servants and the matter is deemed closed! That is the problem with the system; the whole way the system is set up acts and works to allow issues and matters to be covered up and closed internally. The public is being denied procedural fairness and natural justice.

Labor and Liberal both use the same process and procedures as at the end of the day they both benefit from it as they can turn a blind eye and ignore what is going on in their Departments and what may negatively impact on their reputation.

You should see how the system has dealt with my families serious complaints and allegations of misconduct and victimization aimed at children http://jolandachallita.typepad.com/education/

Both Labor and Liberal not only use the same procedures they don’t get involved in each others processes.

Politicians are puppets, and the media - well they want to be invited to lunch. Until the public start speaking out they will continue to play their game and get rewarded for it.

The sooner we all get off the nipple of Big Govt,the better our lives will be.The "Nanny State" has created more problems than it has solved.Our Govts have just taken the extra GST dollars and grew impotent self serving bureauracies.

Govt is always finding new ways of making private enterprise more competitive,but they almost never rein in their own waste and excesses.No money for infrastructure,no planning and no guts.

We should rename the NSW Labor Party "The Bonobo Party".Bonobos are related to the Chimps.They solve problems and conflicts by having sex with anything they can touch.

About 12mths ago a Sydney train worker said to a complaining passenger,"It's f.k.d,it's f.k.d ,its always f.k.d,so get in the f.k.g train and don't complain!"

It pretty much summed up NSW Labor our Bonobo Party.

The REALLY sad thing about politics is that when you vote a party out, you don't necessarily get one that's any better - just one that's different for the first few months.

As for Independents, we had that experience in my electorate several years ago. It didn't take long to find out that the Libs had been paying the rent for his campaign office and some of his printing costs before the election, but by then it was too late.

I do concede that there are actually a couple of Independents that are doing what we pay them for but these really are the exception.

The closest we get to a Democracy in this country is a Duopoly or Oligarchy and we are at the mercy of media barons and other vested interests but also of our own self-interests.

We should be less complacent and more volatile on our voting and our reaction to Government Policy. This would keep them on their toes and not take us for granted quite so much.

I think our next great leader is among us now - certainly not in parliamentary office at the moment.

This might be our anthem - while we close our eyes and dream of stuffing those $10,000 bribes where the sun don't shine - in small denominations - slooowly.

Then Freedom couldn't stand the glare
O' Royalty's regalia,
She left the loafers where they were,
An' came out to Australia.

But now across the mighty main
The chains have come ter bind her –
She little thought to see again
The wrongs she left behind her.

Our parents toil'd to make a home –
Hard grubbin 'twas an' clearin' –
They wasn't crowded much with lords
When they was pioneering.

But now that we have made the land
A garden full of promise,
Old Greed must crook 'is dirty hand
And come ter take it from us.

So we must fly a rebel flag,
As others did before us,
And we must sing a rebel song
And join in rebel chorus.

Henry Lawson

*

There is a political party being formed in Victoria called "People Power" and it aims to get some of it's representives into power in this years State election. When I first heard about them, I thought..."Here we go! Another wannabe group of people pushing their own agenda like the gun party or the dope party!!" But lately, they've impressed a lot of people by simply being "ordinary" people. They've now recruited Les Twentyman as a candidate and have some other impressive reps as well. Some of these people continue to suffer from severe disabilities and whilst I'm not sure how the voting public will take to those they unfortunately deem as "different", I for one will be looking at them closely as voting time draws near. In the end, they may simply fade away, but some of their policies make for very interesting reading. Big business certainly won't like them and both the Liberals and Labor will do everything in their power to make a mockery of People Power, but this new entry into politics should appeal to some of the people on this site unless I'm otherwise mistake.

When Gough Whitlam suffered his political assignation at the hands of the Liberals and the media way back in the 70’s, his was a loss with dignity. A point worth remembering at the mention of Mark Latham.

However, one point Dr McMahon, when putting forward in your argument for a” better way”, by the offering of the “Greeens” as an alternative, was the omission to mention their obsession with promotion of the “Queer” set. Posturing policy aimed at legitimising debauchery as an alternative to thievery and lying of our political age, seems to cancel in negativity.

Spot on, Arjay, but one of your comments pulled me up short.

>>Govt is always finding new ways of making private enterprise more competitive<<

Was this tongue-in-cheek, perhaps? It may apply to those who are able to provide regular party donations of a particular size, but it certainly does not apply to us in small businesses.

No government I can recall has at any time, in any way, "made" this sector of private enterprise more competitive.

I see a steady stream of new rules, regulations, laws, instructions, statutes, codes of conduct, ordnances, bye-laws, taxes, duties, imposts, dues, tolls, tariffs along with exhortations that we should somehow become more competitive, but nothing in the way of actual support for the small businessman.

What happened to the promise that a raft of unnecessary and burdensome taxes would be swept away by the GST? I am still required to pay, on the seventh of every month, payroll tax on every one of my employees.

I could employ one more productive full-time body with the money they take. Instead of which they use it to employ someone to watch over me and see that I pay up.

And just to make sure I know what I'm paying for, they send him around to audit my books. Another productivity hit.

Politicians have no ability to make sensible laws governing the conduct of business because none of them has the slightest vestige of an understanding of it. To a man they are either career politicians (the worst) or lawyers, or merchant bankers, or teachers, or ex-government employees.

The first thing to do is to find a way to re-introduce the concept that being a representative of the people involves some form of responsibility to the people. The moment it became a career option, the concept of the politician as "public servant" was lost forever.

Wake up people!

Immigration is the problem. All political systems have their weaknesses and ours has been no exception. Such imperfections seldom come onto the radar of public consciousness. Why are they so germane now?

State governments: are using immigration to seat stack and branch stack their way to political permanency and ultimately dictatorship. This is purely an immigrational gerrymander and if people complained enough it could be shown to be illegal and stopped.
The benefits would include sharing tax revenues across the states and not just in the capitals like Sydney. It would mean that Sydney would stop growing, enabling roads, hospitals, transport and police to get the breathing space they need to solve the chronic gridlocks that are causng voters all this concern.

Federal Government: Since GST the feds under Howard see that immigration gives advantages to the economy but especially it gives them huge GST windfalls that they use to buy their permanent presence in Canberra. Its a kind of federal gerrymander.

If we want to return to satisfactory government in Australia we must get rid of the immigrational gerrymander. It is clear this can not be done by voting. The manipulation of the immigrant vote and their GST component has prmanently polarised state and federal political systems. We must rely on constitutional laws and demand that all gerrymanders to our electoral processes are outlawed including immigration and that this be demanded in a bipartisan and non-racist environment.

A review of FAIR and equitable placement of immigrants to Australia is long overdue. Alas without the current corrupt placement systems I doubt they will want to come here. This fair placement is easy to arrive in the worst affected areas like Sydney. All you have to do is pass a law to stop state governments being involved in major development planning and in the choice of developers.

For God's sake people take away IEMMA'S personal piggy banksand make him serve the people of NSW as was meant to be.

Pericles asked:

Are we going to sit back and allow the current combination of blatant careerism, media pandering and personal nest-feathering to pass for a democratic form of government? Shall we just sit back and mouth off about whomever we happen to dislike at the moment, then slump back to watch the soccer? Or will we decide that enough is enough, and actually do something about it?

I would bet everything I owned that it would be the former.

Arjay,

I too am wondering about your comment about the government making private enterprises more competative.

Are you aware that one of the first things that the Howard government tried to do with it’s control of the senate was to alter the Trade Practices Act was so that the ACCC couldn’t intervene with the merging of big business? Hardly competitive thinking.

Anyway, I also think scrapping compulsory voting would be a small step in the right direction.

We have too many apathetic people with no political nous, voting for/against something they know nothing about. Some classic scenarios:

-I just voted for them ‘cause that’s who my parents voted for;
-I just voted for them ‘cause they’re the evil I know;

…Oh dear, why do I have to take a pay-cut now?

A couple of the many examples of this I know are:

An acquaintance of mine, voted for the coalition because they were the evil they knew. Then, when the IR reform took place, they asked me what it was all about. When I told them, their response was: “But they can’t do that, can they?”

Another example is a girl I know who voted for the coalition because that’s who her boyfriend voted for. She was then forced to sign an AWA and now works for less. She has since said: “But I didn’t realise governments were allowed to do things like THAT!” My initial thoughts were: “Well you shouldn’t be voting then.”

We have too many people voting for something they know nothing about, whether it be The Coalition OR Labor. We only need the thinkers voting.

Pericles,I meant more competitive in the lowering of tariffs.You're right,they just use the rules and regulations to justify their own existence and tell us to compete on their imaginery level playing field.
I think the push is on for the continued lowering of wages here; however countries like India,Brazil,Mexico and China who have so many poor,cheap labour will be in abundance for decades to come.

The multi-nationals and their share holders will do well,but I fear for the welfare of ordinary citizens.This is one of the main areas that Govts of every persuasion continue to deceive us ,because the reality of total free trade has many losers and makes big business far more powerful.

You hit the nail right on the head Mr Man. The voters of Australia don't even have the logic to vote in their own self interest. I have little sympathy for those Liberal voters now having their pay and conditions slashed by AWA's and other individual contracts. Maybe they will learn a lesson.

The author does, however, have an obvious point in his depicting of the high concentration and self-serving nature of our media. It hardly creates an environment of critical thought does it?

Maybe the voters of Australia simply have life too good. Put them in a 3rd world country, in a nation crippled by civil war or by US economic sanctions or both - and see how passive they are then. People need to stop having their votes dictated by selfish fear and realise that they have the power to make it better. Until then, the problems will only precipitate.

People,

Don't listen to these Labor party 'forum-stackers'.
These people would stack themselves to the bloody Moon if we didn't correct them. Who needs NASA! But one thing is certain, we don't need NSW Labor and its perverse political practices based heavily on immigrational gerrymandering.

Australians don't have an effective vote. For all practical purposes we are a dictatorship. States are always Labor and the Feds are always Liberal. This has developed into a status qu over the last 10 years. Big business KNOWS this and this is why we are seeing a significant surge in their blatant disregard for public concerns. Immigrational gerrymandering ensures that no matter how YOU vote this undemocratic perversion will continue. IE YOU don't have a vote.

Only a constitutional-law approach to reversing UNFAIR immigration PLACEMENT strategies like over 70$ of Australia's 140,000 annual migrant intake being shoehorned into strategic seats in Sydney which has less than .0001% of the land area of this great nation.

We the people of Australia have a constitutional right to have our electoral processes free from gerrymanders of ALL types, no matter how subtle they may be or how innocuous they may SEEM.

KAEP, I'm a little puzzled. Why on earth should governing the internal processes of political parties have anything to do with immigration policy? Do you think that stopping immigration would have any effect on branch stacking by ALP/Liberal aparatchiks?

Branch stacking is about the factions using any group (unionists, ethnic or religious etc) that can muster in large numbers for winning preselection. Of course they have to pay them off somehow, which in local govt generally means approving dodgy DAs for "community leaders" (ie dodgy developers who can deliver bums on seats at the appropriate time). So it all comes down to sleazy deals for low-rent scum. Just look at what happened in Strathfield. http://www.icac.nsw.gov.au/index.cfm?objectID=A22F6240-FC79-9A7C-CAB65F8C16F92C37

Having been involved in supporting independent councillors in Sydney's inner west I have seen the same game played over and over again.

If you people are serious about fixing Australian political culture DON'T VOTE FOR THE ALP OR THE LIBS in local government, THEY ARE SCUM!!

Its that simple.

Hi y'all
I'm a bit with the Athenians on democracy as the obligation of the citizen - an ideal never fully practiced I know, but still worthy. For me, compulsory voting means that whether we like it or not the incumbent government represents about 50% of the voting poulation, unlike voluntary voting countries where it can be as low as 50% of 25% of the population. In the latter, disenfranchisement is a choice but there is always someone else to blame - note Timothy McVeigh. The compulsory franchise means that we all own the result even if we don't like the outcome.

JohnJ, there are some members of political parties who are honest, committed, hard-working, and decent people. If people have one of these as a local member, and they buck the party on issues important to their constitutents, keep voting for them. If not, vote for someone who best represents you and your electorates' needs and stop voting for them when they stop representing those needs.

Democrats, Greens, Family First, independents, and all pollies are our servants hired by our votes, and fired by our votes. That my representative doesn't take my calls, return my emails, or represent my views is a reason to vote for someone whom I think might, not an excuse to whinge about "politicians" in general.

Enough of a rant.
odsoc

Athenian democracy, odsoc? Now you're talking my language!

Bring back the Assembly! Remove the middle-men, our elected representatives, and give back the power to the people!

Bear in mind that together with the ability to directly enact legislation, the people of Athens also bore the responsibility for the outcome. If you proposed a law (you were obliged to put your name on it) that was overturned within a year, you were fined a literally ruinous amount. That's accountability.

If you were an elected official responsible for money, your accounts were regularly scrutinised. If a discrepancy was found, you were excecuted. That's accountability.

Our representative democracy has so many holes in it through which accountability seems to just seep away - the minister blames his staff, the staff blame a) the system and b) insufficient resources. No-one is prepared to take one iota of responsibility for their actions.

But please, odsoc, don't compare the willing participation of the citizen in an Athenian democracy with the apathy shown by our society for a representative democracy. We are offered the choice of stale bread or rancid cheese and told to choose one or the other, in the name of democracy.

So if you are serious about bringing back Athenian democracy, just remember my name, 'cos I'm yer man.

It's good to see compulsory voting & gerrymandering getting a mention .

The relative predictability of voting trends by area provide government of the day the ability to almost engineer election outcomes by adjusting electoral boundrys .

One of Mark Lathams opinions I read went something along the line of ; Australian politics is just showbiz for ugly people .

Funny opinion but it feels very true .

The removal of compulsory sufferance is the only way that we will get members of parliment that whilst considering bills, they will take into account fully the potential effects of their decisions on minority sectors while trying to please the fickle mob .

Unfortunatly the idea that those in power would give up some of that power is only a dream ..

COL ROUGE... and now you know why I am neither an Anglican nor a Roman Catholic. (though I am not averse to enjoying fellowship with any who name Christ as Saviour) Further, I would never recommend any particular 'tradition' other than that where people feel comfortable spiritually.

Pericles... the Athenian Assembly ?

"The Assembly" was the regular gathering of male Athenian citizens (women also enjoyed the status of “citizen,” but without political rights) to listen to, discuss, and vote on decrees that affected every aspect of Athenian life, both public and private, from financial matters to religious ones, from public festivals to war, from treaties with foreign powers to regulations governing ferry boats."

No wonder the book of Acts chapter 17 describes the Greeks as follows:

[20You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean." 21(All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)]

yes.. if all the people gathered in the assembly and had to discuss say...our taxation law... sheesh.. they would be tied up for centuries.

[Trivia]
I also see from my reading why Greeks are so adamant that Macedonia is part of Greece.. because it enables them to lay claim to the exploits of Alexanda the Great..who happened to be Macedonian :)
In fact he subdued Athens as well.. duh Greeks, c'mon.. get real about your history, and learn humility.

MY GUESS... is that whether it is an athenian style assembly, or a house of mis-representatives, their will always be the struggle of vested interest, which brings me back to my last post and its reference to the spiritual solution.....boring eh.

Listening to Parliament yesterday concerning lack of Australian skills training and the resultant flood of "technical work visa's" in the vicinity of 250,000 confirms my long held conviction that we are doomed :)...*reaches for the sandwich board*

It was actually Ireland that had the first real workable Democracy (pre-Roman?)on Earth. In Greece it was all philosophy, and only partly practiced. The Greeks also had slaves and didn't exactly have basic human rights for all. They gave us great philisophy and great ideas.

We don't have the balance of power that the US has: the Judiciary can at any time impeach a President if he is found unfit to Govern for reasons of curruption. Then there are the 25th and the 28th ammendments that put their leader under congressional scrutiny.

Our GG and PM have no such accountability.

No PM since the Gough Whitlam, has been faced with real accountability to any section of Government. He faced dismissal. Since the changes of ettiquette, John Howard can do what ever he likes, a quasi inquirey or two, and the ALP is too stubborn or stupid to have him dissmissed.

They had at least 4 opportunities to do so under the old agreement, but the ALP on principal refuses from the professy of St. Gough and Howard knows this. He even stacks the quasi "independent inquiries" and does it regularly. The Senate only blocked bills. South American countries must be writing notes: brilliance in dictatorship!

We have no Bill of Rights in Australia, the only OECD country not to. The two pary system will be erroded, there will be more chaos, which is why things like balances of power between the Head of State, the Judiciary, and the PM should be more defined, and our rights need to be guaranteed by constitution.

If any politician misinforms the country, or is corrupting the system in any matter of national interest, then the High Court, the Head of State or the GG, and the Senate, should in a combined majority, have the right to dismiss any of them, including the PM. Leave Queenie out of it.

The Federal Govt is in serious danger of losing the next election because of their ill planned IR reforms.They need to immediately remediate the present situation to make it fairer for vunerable workers.

Their longevity in Govt has made them arrogant and remote from the real world of survival that ordinary folk face daily.Labor under Beazley however are now in the grip of nutter union minorities that will take us back to the dark ages of persecuting business who will just move off shore.

It is time the pollies did what is good for Australia rather than pandering to big business or union slothfulness.

AWA's Mining Council of Australia - John Howard

Priminister John Howard said that Labor opposition leader Kim Beazley should listen to the comments made by the Australian Mining council.

The Australian Mining council are concerned that the abolishment of AWA's for its industry could spell disaster and fine balance of profit and loss they made.

It was quoted that the mining industry was currently running in deficit and it would make this problem worse which would spell job losses.

It is a concern when our mining industry quotes that they are running at a deficit.

The deficit means that the Mining company will avoid paying tax because of this deficit.

It has been statistically noted that the mining industry has some questionable reasoning on how much it costs to dig our resources out and then sell it for less than what it costs to mine it.

Fuel is another industry example where Australia can produce it for 0.06 cents a litre and it is being sold at the bowsers at international prices for $1.45.

Perhaps the Mining industry needs to get this sum right before it expresses its dismay at not being able to control its costs on the backs of the average Australian worker.

Another point to consider is the majority of Australian Mining companies are majority Foreign owned.

The Mining Industrial criticism of Labor's stance on Industrial Relations could also be indirectly because of their stance on "No" more Uranium mines in which our international brothers need to fuel their nuclear power plants in their best interests.

Mr Howard has added another hazard into this Wages dispute by Businesses ability to source cheap foreign labour, gagging the average workers ability to debate this issue as a community democratically should.

In todays news a NSW coalition representative set upon his own comrade calling him a d.ckhead because the AWA's did not go through the "No disadvantage test" which had apparently disappeared from the process of its registration.

I like it, Peter McMahon. A few home truths expressed in a straightforward manner.

To me the most obvious problem is the intimate relationship between government at all levels and the vested-interest profit motive of the business lobby. This means that governments are forever pandering to continuously increasing everything – the size of the population, humanised landscapes, all sorts of developments, and ever-increasing or at least maintaining high rates of productivity, often beyond sustainable limits.

This is where government most badly lets us down – by not balancing this growth momentum with the necessity of sustainability. We are still absolutely entrenched in a continuous growth paradigm, which is insane given our knowledge and concern about resource issues, environmental degradation and sustainability in general.

I reckon our governments are pretty effective facilitation mechanisms for taking us rapidly away from sustainability and towards the precipice.

For me the most disgusting single aspect (and there are many disgusting aspects) of our political system is something that no one has mentioned on this thread. This is compulsory preferential voting, which means that your vote can often end up counting where you have no intention of it counting. This is antidemocratic and needs to be outrightly condemned, especially when optional preferential voting, which a number of states use, works perfectly well, and is fully democratic.

I don’t have a strong opinion on whether voting should be compulsory or not, but one of my strongest opinions on any subject is that compulsory preferential voting is rotten to the core and that any system of government that uses it is not much better.

All considered, I think we are in a pretty nasty state of affairs. Our very loosely democratic system of government is pretty profoundly screwed up and as things become tighter as they will with peak oil, ever-rising population, evermore degraded environments, ever harder and more expensive to obtain resources, etc, this system is really going cost us big time if we don’t find a way to adapt it to deal with these enormous issues in a meaningful manner, and quickly.

Well said, well written, Ludwig.

Ditto. Well said.

The question is, how can the people actively work to effect change when our Governments do not treat us with respect and they are not even required to care enough to be fair!

On ya Ludwig,

A simple change to make is to limit the number of terms that politicians can use in a parliament. 2 or 3 terms (around 10 years) should be enough. This would stop the politicians from get bought out by lobby groups and would also bring politicians with real world experience in the parliament, hopefully with more focus on their longterm legacy than just getting reelected within 4 years.

I grew up in a country with proportional representation and I must say that there is a lot more respect in politics. No one ever gets an outright majority so you always have coalitions. Unlike the Australian coalition these change from election to election. That means that this parliament's opponent may be the next ally so you never get these situations where one party says white just because the other says black.

A pity that he doesn't delve into how the role of the opposition has been usurped by the media. IMHO the media is much more effective and fierce in its criticism of both state in and federal politics than either opposition

The way to bring corrupt-Australian-Governments to justice is to bulldoze them on LITTLE lies.

You can't get at them on the BIG lies like the truth about post ministerial jobs or the exact remunerations from developers to the NSW Labor Party. They have these tied up tighter than a drum with legislation. They have been in-office-so-long, they get clumsy with the-little-lies and it is here where they can be forced to-SERVE-the-people-of-NSW-as-was-meant-to-be.

Examples:

* Lie #1: 'Keep-Left-unless-Overtaking' signs really mean 'Keep-Left-unless-Speeding'.
The NSW government must-make-those-signs-either "Keep-Left-unless-Speeding" or "Keep-Left-unless-travelling-at-Speed-Limit". Due to obligations to Truckers-and-elite-sections-of-the-community I believe they want the former but for goodness sake MAKE-NSW-LABOR be honest wear the inevitable-electoral-backlash-they-deserve.

* Lie #2: WE-the-people MUST have water-restrictions and bigger-taxes to-pay-for-desal because WE are using-too-much-water and Dams-are-empty.
The truth is that NSW-LABOR has visions-of--Sydney as the New-York-of-the-Pacific where their leaders can ponce-around-like-little-Mayor-Bloombergs. The upshot is a Premier who unevenly splits our water rights between State citizens and future immigrants like a grubby-kid-with-a-lolly. He then eats-the-difference and in the biggest lie of all says OK that's fair now you people have to pay for it.
The truth is if Sydney CULLED big developers and big developments, immigrants would go to other parts of NSW and Sydney could grow at a much more liesuerly and sustainable rate. We would no longer have to suffer gridlocks and life and job threatening shortages of essential services to support what can only be described as a LABOR PARTY wet dream and private developers' grift.
Labor is spending $millions on add campaigns pushing this lie. All we have to do is RIDICULE it as we would any other porkie.

Howard's goverment is just as easy to unravel. It too can be forced to take responsibility for its citizens rather than deferring that responsibility to inSOLent private individuals.

Remember the smaller the lie the easier it is to get between the cracks of corruption, thereby splitting-that-corruption-apart. We CAN HAVE a government-more-responsible-to-the-people with FAIR PLACEMENT of immigrants across the country and a sustainable future for all citizens evenly shared across the divide of Big Cities and rural towns.

So many valid points have been made. I am so disgusted with the major parties that I become quite depressed as elections approach - they are equally corrupt and we are condemned to having one side or the other in power. When decent-minded politicians like Peter Andren criticise the system they are ridiculed and ignored. Did you know that in Costa Rica no politician can serve second term? Works well for them - the policies can keep going, but the politicians change. Just imagine!

I too resent the abolition of optional preferential voting along with many other nasties legislated by the majors for their own benefit - such as politician's exemption from the privacy act and our consequent inability to see the data they keep on us, their exemption from the 'do not ring ' register, the $10,000 'secret' donations that are now possible, the $150,000 each MP and senator gets to print the rubbish they send us, their perks and allowances which provide insulation from all the costs and pressures that affect real Australians, the list goes on and on.

How about a wish list of what we do want? Mine would include:
: optional preferential voting
: no 'above the line' voting
: no 'how to vote cards' allowed at elections
: politicians never exempted from the operation of legislation
: no secret political donations whatsoever
: bribe-taking in the form of 'up-front payments' (as in the Sydney cross-city tunnel) to be outlawed
: genuine debate in parliament
: Dorothy-dixer's banned
: independent speakers in parliament

I'm sure there are lots more.

Good points Candide

I would advocate no political donations whatsoever. There is no reason why parties or elections cannot be funded through taxpayer revenue in a completely neutral manner. Any donation has connotations of favourism, no matter how up-front and apparently innocent it may appear to be.

Donation to political parties is a completely different thing to donation to aid or environmental organisations for example.

I too have become totally disillusioned at election time. Quite apart from the wank of compulsory preferential voting where 99.9% of the time your vote ends up counting for either Labor of Liberal even if you vote for Greens, Democrats, Family First, One Nation or Independents and specifically wish to vote against the big mongrels, there is no party worth voting for, or at least no party worth voting for that can possibly win. So you are left with the choice of either voting for the lesser evil of the two big pro-growth antisustainability future-destroying facilitators of profit for the already rich, powerful and aggressively greedy or annulling your vote (voting for the third donkey), which is easily doable but illegal, and leaves you feeling utterly cheated and despondent.

As far as I am concerned,

Candide is a Labor Party forum-stacking-stooge trying their hardest to stall any real momentum for political
change coming from this forum.

All of the points Candide mentioned have been with us since Federation. The sinister changes afoot have only become apparent since unbalanced immigration principally into Sydney, NSW North Coast, Perth and the Gold Coast has reached critical levels.

Just take a look at this sea height anomaly map of Australia and see the oceanic environmental impact of this UNBALANCED and corrupting immigration strategy. The big red and blue splotches off the cities mentioned are POLLUTED wastewater plumes representative of unsustainable population growth. Further, bcause of micro climatic conditions over these splotches and the second law of thermodynamics, these pollution plumes suck heated air and moisture out of the NSW heartland, causing protracted drought.

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/trinanes/tmp/sha1151317825.gif

The map highlights the environmental impact of an UNJUST immigrational gerrymander. The corresponding social consequences are obvious to those living in the cities mentioned. Candide implies by omission that this immigration gerrymander is fine.
It is NOT and Candide's platitudes just reinforce the injustice and in a very real sense obscure it.

The number of people on this forum that identify Iemma and his mates and the NSW ALP as corrupt is interesting. Is it a groundswell of people wanting this area of politics to be cleaned up?

NSW is the result of more than thirty years of corruption in the ALP. I watched our Branch Secretary rig the books before a preselection where a Head Office functionary that nobody had heard of suddenly was handed one of the safest seats in NSW. When we compared notes, nobody we knew had actually voted for him in the preselection – yet there he was!

Yes, KAEP, immigrants have stacked the branches, but that ploy has been successful because people resigned from the party, leaving the field to Iemma and his mates, who knew enough to work the system to their own advantage. The corrupt politics of Italy, Greece, Vietnam and Lebanon had given their parents excellent training in takeover technique.

These children of immigrants see nothing wrong in looking after their own – after all, that is why they got into politics. Suburban development is dominated by immigrant builders, estate agents, etc; they keep up the pressure for more immigration so the awful houses they build will be bought, and they donate the money to keep the political parties going. So planning laws are changed to loosen controls on developers; outrageously non-compliant DAs are approved. It has been happening quietly for years, Carr’s government was propped up by this system – but it has become really obvious now that he has gone and the “boys” have taken over.

We need both sides to get a fright. We need to educate people to ignore the party system, to vote only for candidates they believe to be honest, both in state and federal elections.

The good people in the ALP are swamped by the others. If people will be selective and refuse to vote the party line, then we might have a chance of getting a decent Government, and breaking the power of corruption.

Cleo7,

Thanks for the personal insight.

Given the truth of what you say it is hard to understand how a FAIRLY run Morgan poll would turn up a Labor win at the March 2007 NSW state elections.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/polls-put-iemma-back-in-race/2006/06/28/1151174269485.html

Do you have any knowledge of who commissions these polls and what if any bias or corruption exists in their execution?

I have no knowledge of Morgan or Labor's involvement with them. I do know these polls can be biased and quite blatantly so. A recent Australia wide immigration poll some days ago:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Immigrants-a-good-influence-on-Australia/2006/06/06/1149359734392.html

took subjects all over Australia geographically when demographically around 90% of the 140,000 per year immigrant intake is stuffed into Sydney and about the Gold Coast. This makes the poll meaningless for a start. But if that wasn't enough, the poll master who should have been unbiased was boasting how this result showed Australia's big heartedness and readiness to accept more migrants.
Sure Right!

I don't think anyone should blame "the people" for the governance we have. Australians aren't apathetic. Most are decent, and I've seen "ordinary people" show extraordinary courage in the face of bullying officialdom.

What they lack though, is power. They can speak truthfully and stand for right ... but they won't necessarily win in the present climate.
And Peter, I think what most of us "ordinary people" want to know is:
HOW do we demand better?

Voting works collectively, it's effective for broadscale change, but for those on the margins, without voting clout ... HOW do they demand better?
Also, the malaise extends well beyond politics. The public service, I understand, now is so heavily politicised and remote from public censure that it may truly be called a bureaucracy.

So, the smart new Ageing Minister Santo Santoro appeared on TV mid-March and appealed to the public to communicate with him about aged care. I did so. Proposition, specific example, evidence attached.
Three months later, I have my reply - from the assistant secretary of the quality management branch (the branch I had complained about). And it is simply one and a third A4 pages of patronising pap. It fails even to acknowledge my complaint.

Now, anyone can scroll down to page 100-or-so of the February Community Services Senate Estimates Hansard report, where they will find the Opposition Spokeswoman quizzing the same assistant secretary (in the presence of the Minister)not only on the same problem I sought to raise with them - but the very same example.

In other words, they all know - government, opposition and department - that there are some serious flaws in the administration of aged care and some obvious conflicts of interest in the accreditation agency.
Yet, they choose not to act (look closely, and you will find they form a fairly cosy clique, this aged care lot).
And, should we humble peasants dare to speak, they will simply treat us like ... well, peasants.
Why?
Because they can!

So, short of revolution ... HOW do we demand better?

Lucy

Lucy, I think that a very large portion of the populace IS essentially apathetic.

From this apathy comes the lack of knowledge and input on political or governance matters and hence the ability for government, and those with very strong interests such as big business, to prevail.

Apathy and decency are very different things. Yes, most of us are decent, but most of us just simply prefer to leave governing to the pollies and bureaucrats.

There are really two aspects to apathy – one in which people do their thing and let others do the managerial stuff for the country or state or shire, and one where people just don’t give a hoot because they are not interested in the greater good for the nation or quality of life. Both prevail strongly.

People tend to get active over ‘backyard’ issues. That is, issues which affect them pretty directly. Nimbyism is by no means restricted to narrow-minded greenies.

So with this background, how do those with passion make things happen? How DO we demand better?

And it is at this point I have to say that I don’t bloody know. As past president of Sustainable Population Australia (North Queensland branch) for ten years, and of the North Queensland Conservation Council and the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland (undisclosed NQ branch), state candidate for the Qld Greens, senior cum principal scientist with a government department for 6 years, avid writer or letters to the editor and occasional articles for 15 years, etc, etc, I don’t fluffing well know!!

And doesn’t it piss me off !! !!

“And, should we humble peasants dare to speak, they will simply treat us like ... well, peasants. Why? Because they can! “

And they can because of overwhelming apathy.

Compulsory voting guaranties the percentage & compulsory preferential voting guaranties the majority of votes roll back to the two major parties .

Just take note at the next election campaign state or federal doesn't matter , You'll notice it's pretty much the same as the last one was , flyers in the letter box or under the door all telling us they'll fix crime & hospital & school & roads & bla & bla & bla , On the tv it'll be the others are bad & you'll be miserable but with us everything will be wounderfull with rainbows & enviroment & stuff .

Many of us won't be fooled by the spiel but many many more will be . You only have to raise the topic of a pending election with your work collegues over lunch to see how effective the tv & news paper campaigns are as the responses you get are exactly what has been broadcast or printed & these issues are spoken of with real concern . This demonsrtates how effective these mass media campaigns are , as if you had raised the subject of politics to the same audience over lunch a month ealier the responce would likely be one of disinterest & cirtainly none of the now important matters would even be thought of .

With non compulsory voting only the candidate who is seen to be honest & responsive will be rewarded , This happens now a bit but the influence & effect of news editors & journalists on how a candidate is portryed is enhanced with compulsory voting .

The safe seat thing as mentioned ealier in this thread , To me safe seat translates to 'we dont have to work hard there' , Just another compulsory voting consequence .

Compulsory voting encourages smoke & mirrors & compulsory preferential voting is just plain dirty .

Anyway just look at who strongly insists on retaining the compulsory vote , It's the we know what's best for you control freaks .

The only revoloution we need is to fair up our electoral system .

Australians who do not have a preeminent obligation to another nation (Ludwig), and who do not just opportunistically suck up all the advantages Australian citizenship offers, are NOT apathetic. We were taught long ago that all races are created equal and we have welcomed immigrants accordingly. Do not equate our strength with simple mindedness and apathy. We are still a majority despite all the constitutionally illegal gerrymanders that stem from organised-branch-and-seat-stacking. Fiji and China both let their foreign immigration overtake their electoral systems and eventually had a REVOLUTION to expel foreigners. Fiji is still judged harshly for this but as we look at the Euro-gerrymander overtaking our island nation it is inciumbent upon us to see that Fiji was right-to-do. Personally I believe Australia has caught the problem in plenty of time for constitutional processes to allow Federal police to investigate electoral gerrymanders and prosecute organising offenders. As I understand it, gerrymandering is ILLEGAL.

And NO, we don't need to eliminate compulsory voting. That would make it easier to gerrymander electorates as votes would become a commodity and could be bought by corporate executives. Only a shill couldn't see that all we need do is outlaw-the-preferences-system.

The only-reason-Australian-politics-has-become-DEBASED is because of the CRIMINAL use of pressure-cooker-immigration into-SYDNEY-and-the-GOLD-COAST as a TOOL-for-economic-growth. The high-cost-of-living, corruption, foul air, lack of water, unfriendly 'we-are-better-than you' neighbours, no police,dentists,doctors or trains when you need them are causing suffering and that-is-a-CRIME. Sooner or later Federal politicians will be judged for this. Australians MUST have the right to demand EQUAL-and-FAIR-placement-of-immigrants across Australia and not just in Sydney and Gold coast so they, their family, their rights, their standard of living and their vote are not diluted and debased.

But as more immigrants-are-achieving-powerful-government-positions in this country and displaying-a-total-disregard-for-racial-equality by stacking sensitive-demographic-electorates and party-branches with their own-particular-race, the pressure is building for a firm-hand to STOP criminal-immigration-strategies. Ordinary people need breathing space to develop in a more peaceful manner with a right to quiet enjoyment of a clean, green Australia and not a gutted-burnt-out-disillutioned-investment with double-digit-interest-rates.

True-progress-is-not-being-FUNNELLED on to the edge of a precipice and being told-to-Advance-Australia-Fair!

“And, should we humble peasants dare to speak, they will simply treat us like ... well, peasants. Why? Because they can! “

And why can they? Because people allow it and turn a blind eye and don’t support each other, nobody is required to care. We are not even required to care enough to be fair!.

I believe that there is a proportion of the public that is apathetic but, as a member of the public who has lodged serious formal complaints and allegations in relation to how serious allegations of misconduct and corruption by a Government Department are being handled and dealt with and covered up, my experience is that most people don’t want to get involved and even go so far as to totally ignore you and avoid you. Those that do choose to comment and get involved tend to harrass you and use bullying tactics in order to help shut you down and silence you, they attack, insult, discredit and abuse and pretty much everybody turns a blind eye and just allows it to happen.

That is what you get if you want to blow the whistle on any form of corruption or misconduct in Government Departments and as a result you stand alone, ostrasized, depleted, vilified, battered and bruised. Usually also broke. There might be Laws to protect whistleblowers within Government Departments, but members of the Public are left to stand alone to face the big guns, vulnerable and with no protection.

Until that culture, process and attitude changes, nothing will change. The system has set up the process of administration so as to cover up their failures and their misconduct and they use bullying tactics to send the clear message to not mess with the big guns as you wont win.

That is the culture that needs to be changed.

Apathy exists on different levels. You could even argue that passionate people who write on OLO under a pseudonym, but don’t make other attempts to directly deal with the issues they care about are apathetic. You can be passionate and deeply concerned, and apathetic about doing something that has a chance of counting. It may sound like a strange contradiction, but it isn’t.

Another huge problem is that people tend to be passionately concerned about individual issues and somehow incapable or completely disinterested in the bigger picture or in issues other than their pet hate.

Then there is the problem of people feeling utterly powerless to contribute to solutions on the really big issues. They can see the essence of the problems but never make any attempt to have a meaningful input.

And then there is the old tragedy of the commons problem, whereby those who practice frugal and sustainable lifestyles or whatever it is that eats away at them as a matter of principle, place themselves at a real disadvantage in many ways and are not appreciated by the rest of us for their efforts.

People should be required to care.

Maybe if there was some sort of test where people had to demonstrate a certain level of knowledge of our political system and certain level of input into it before they could get a driver’s licence or a rental property or own a house or have an electricity account or whatever. Sounds a bit Draconian, but it has merit.

Make people sit up and take notice and we will surely have a much more accountable political system which would hopefully translate into much better long-term protection of quality of life.

"People should be required to care. "

NO that is an impossible BS that only serves the immigrationl gerrymandering Status Quo. Ludwig again comes across as a Labor Party devil's advocate.

People should be SHOWN how to attack and remove corrupt governments like NSW Labor.

The Answer is SIMPLE. You attack the little lies that have crept in with a long 10 year incumbency and due to perverse laziness and incompetence.

People of NSW, you can start by demanding that the RTA change its LIE, "Keep Left Unless Overtaking" signs to "Keep Left Unless Travelling At Speed Limit".

The current signs are tacitly meant to mean "Keep Left Unless SPEEDING" and are meant to allow loopholes for Labor elitists and trucking companies on deadlines to treat NSW highways as AUTOBAHNS. If that is what NSW Labor and the RTA want then they should change the signs accordingly and take the electoral consequences. But NSW citizens must not tolerate this or other little lies that have big consequences for public safety and which are inherently corrupt.

I assure you that if you enforce a change-to-truth in those signs, no gerrymander on Earth can save NSW Labor from defeat at the March 2007 election. The embarrassment involved at being caught red-handed in such a simple but deadly lie will destroy them both with the Public and their Big elite minority backers.

KAEP, how can you be critical of the notion that people should be required to care about their governance and future wellbeing?

What is the alternative?

Just as we should all be required to have a certain level of competence in order to gain driver’s licence or a university degree or a CEO position, so we should be required to understand and contribute to our political and governmental systems.

I am sure you will agree that there are some pretty major problems with Australian politics. Well, if the populace cared enough, the bastards would be kept honest and many of these problems wouldn’t exist.

Apathy is extreme. That doesn’t mean that people don’t care about a lot of things happening around them or things completely removed from them that they hear about on the news. But it does mean that they don’t care enough to have input into these issues. The net result is a government essentially owned by big business, a government that has implemented absurdities such as compulsory preferential voting and the baby bonus without much outcry at all, and a government that is taking us in precisely the wrong direction in terms of sustainability and protection of a harmonious and intact society

Re: HOW do we demand better?

Thanks for responding to my post. In a perverse way, it's reasssuring to hear that others, also, have tried and failed!

Ludwig, what I find puzzling in your response is that you apparently accept you have no answer to demanding better and are frustrated by that, and yet - in dismissing the rest of us as apathetic and uncaring - you seem loath to consider that many thousands of Australians might merely feel exactly the same as you - impotent.

I don't think there's any doubt there's a deep longing in the community for better leadership. But for many of us who - like you - are painfully aware of our individual impotence, the options seem limited to waiting for the right leader to emerge.

I guess the question then becomes, where is that leader? And why, in Australia, does it seem to have become so damned difficult for a true people's leader to emerge?

Lucy

""KAEP, how can you be critical of the notion that people should be required to care about their governance and future wellbeing?
What is the alternative?""

Ludwig,

I answered that question in absolute clarity. You either did not read my post or as I suspect you have an interest in obscuring the truth.

As I understand it you are a minor political aspirant out of SE QLD. Like Newman and the Democrat there, you are probably bought. Only, I gather from your posts that you are using weasel tactics and pretend to protest UNFAIR IMMIGRATION distribution into SYDBRIS by using weak, irrelevant arguments, ignorantly blaming elecoral apathy and feigning mock frustration. I can tell you its not very convincing.

To all others,

If people attack the clumsy little lies like the "Keep Left Unless SPEEDING" situation with the demonstrably corrupt NSW RTA, corrupt governments will crumble and their successors will need to think twice before they believe an election win gives them a mandate to betray their own people in favour of private interests

KAEP. You have an interesting perspective on those signs. The way that I see it the speed limit is the maximum limit allowed on that particular stretch of road. There is no minimum.

The signs are for the benefit of those who like to drive below the speed limit so that they can keep left to allow for better flow of traffic. If you have to go over the speed limit to overtake then you are speeding and that is against the law and you can be booked.

The sign does not give you permission to speed! I think that it is when the public brings up issues like that and calls it corruption, that is when it helps the Government get away with the big things. The system uses these types of complaints to discredit the public and present them as whingers.

Has anybody ever noticed that the Government often picks the most ridiculous complaints to publically investigate so as to look like they are doing their job and then they use it to discredit the public and when legitimate complaints and issues are brought up they just say that it is another one of those complaints and everybody nods and says "yeah we know which ones" and everybody just turns a blind eye and the matter is deemed closed.

What we need to focus on is the lack of accountability in Government. People are a product of their environment and if things are getting out of control and people are not taking responsibility, then our Government is leading the way.

There is Legislation in place that prohibits those in power from even being questioned about allegations of moral misconduct. They are only allowed to question the process of the administration. The same process and laws also allows criminals to get away with murder. How can the Law allow people to refuse to answer questions on the grounds that it might incriminate them? These are the type of ridiculous laws that we should be questioning and fighting to change.

Lucy, you wrote;

“Ludwig, what I find puzzling in your response is that you apparently accept you have no answer to demanding better and are frustrated by that, and yet - in dismissing the rest of us as apathetic and uncaring - you seem loath to consider that many thousands of Australians might merely feel exactly the same as you - impotent.”

Apathy is not a simple syndrome, as I have briefly explained in my last three posts. It doesn't necessarily mean a lack of caring.

After all these years of lobbying and trying to reach out to the community and government over environmental and sustainability issues, I conclude that most people are at least apathetic enough not to do anything at all about any of the huge future-threatening issues that face us, even though many can appreciate the magnitude of the issues. That doesn’t mean they are uncaring. Many are passionately concerned about subsets of the big-picture issues but cannot see fit to spend any of their time on the bigger picture itself.

The feeling of impotence is certainly a factor for some people, but I don’t think it is that big for the whole community. Most people are fundamentally apathetic because life is basically pretty good and they still have faith that the pollies and boffins will sort out our problems.

There is most definitely a deep longing for the right leader to emerge. I keep harping on on this forum about Labor’s enormous opportunity to fill the gaping hole in Australia’s political scene by addressing sustainability and thus setting themselves up as a very different alternative to the mongrels currently in power. If they did this, they could harness the huge latent concern of the currently apathetic masses who don’t do anything, but do care.

continued

As far as my feeling of powerlessness goes, after being president of three organisations, having a go a state politics and producing and presenting an environmental radio program for about three years, I think that the growth-paradigm government and big-business lobby have got it so sewn up that we just don’t stand a chance at the present.

Even with high-profile people like Professors Tim Flannery, Ian Low and others espousing sustainability issues, and one senior politician, Bob Carr, calling over several years for population growth in Sydney to be curtailed, we are still not seeing any significant change. And even with extraordinary resource-stress issues such as water in our capital cities, there is still no indication that governments will address continuous growth, although Peter Beatty has at least mentioned a few times that growth pressure in SEQ is a big part of the problem. So our political scene is still in a very sad state.

But sooner or later, someone will come along and capture the vote of the majority of people out there who are deeply concerned but who feel powerless under the current regime. The Greens tried it a couple of decades ago and then lost their way. The time wasn’t right then, but I reckon the right time is now very near.

“Where is that leader?”

Well, if he or she emerges from the masses, they may well face the same sort of atrocious trampling that Pauline Hanson did. But if they emerge from an already well-established political party, of which Labor appears to be the only possibility, then a very different political direction might just become established in this country. Who is that leader? Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Lindsay Tanner….. I dunno.

Ludwig, I understand your frustration, but you have to accept there'll be no savior coming from current political parties, their to corrupt. As long as we allow the use of public funds and donations to political parties there can be no change, party direction purely depends on who fills the coffers.

All political parties are obligated to their providers, labour has the same providers as liberals, democrats and greens, big business. Nothing will change until we have a revolution of some sort. We saw that with Andrew Bartlett, totally ignorant and determined to maintains his bosses objectives, more economic growth and slaves to provide for the elite.

The power of big business through their political slaves will ensure anyone coming forward with any intelligence and direction will be destroyed, you see it everyday in the current political parties suppression of dissent and difference

Sadly our current society is at its end and we have to go through a collapse and reconstruction. The person you seek isn't around and never will be, the era of executive control is also dead, as the populace is no longer ignorant regarding the events of the world and politicians lies are coming home to roost.

What'll arise out of the ashes will be those with the sense to prepare and an understanding of whats required for sustainable existence. All others will disappear under the weight of their ignorance and illusions. As in the past, it'll be those areas of concentrated population suffering the worst loses. In that way all the planets problems will be over for awhile, allowing the truly intelligent and evolved to reconstruct a society that lives with the earth and not against it.

Alchemist, I almost agree with your ominous outlook.

But I do think that there is a glimmer of hope, and that glimmer hinges on Labor seeing the light and making the paradigm shift. I appreciate the pressure exerted by big-business and the economic-growth lobby, and the corruption to balanced democracy generated therein. But I don’t think it is insurmountable.

Labor is going nowhere. Even with massive outrage expressed over IR reforms, the swing away from the Libs is nowhere near enough. Dare I say it, even if that smirking horror story Costello became PM, Labor would still be battling to win power.

The notion of environmentalism on a large scale is not entirely foreign to Labor. It was arguably instigated by Bob Hawke with the stopping of the Gordon below Franklin Dam. Bob Carr was often vocal about population pressure in Sydney and extended that to all of NSW and to the whole country and to immigration policy. Peter Garrett, the most high-profile environmental advocate in the country at the time and for many years prior, was courted by Labor.

So it should not be an insurmountable change for them to take on true sustainability.

The problem of suppression of bright and innovative thinkers could be overcome as well, if it happens within the party and within a groundswell of perceived new political opportunity, or if it happens from the top down, triggered by Rudd or Gillard for example. Outside of the party – yes, suppression would kill it off in all probablility.

I think we really are sitting on an absolutely critical knife-edge with our political direction right now.

An exciting new direction for Labor, that is totally in keeping with its roots and philosophies, that will take it out of the shadow of the Libs and into its own space…. and win it power…..and save the country from a horrible fate of slow decline, rising civil strife, ever-increasing demand for ever-decreasing resources, massive increases in inequality, collapsed health and welfare systems, etc, etc.

There is surely a real cause for optimism here.

Ludwig, hope is a religious concept, fraught with illusions and denial. Theres no way labour will change its direction. Try naming a new and exciting direction, I did.

The plan would've allowed Tas to become self sufficient in all aspects of society, reduce crime by 95%, no unemployment, zero electric costs and fuel for less than 65c a litre in 5 years, a constant growing export economy and improving environment. A wonderful example for the world.

The response was derision, to simplistic and advocating giving responsibility of government to the people and making politicians and bureaucrats accountable for their actions, paying them for results, not for turning up, was totally unacceptable to them.

Gillard and Rudd, are fools with no intelligence whatsoever (religious). They don't want to solve anything, just want power and benefits. They've just given themselves a wage rise whilst throwing people of welfare. Now they want full control of the country, so they can try to cover up the reality of their idiocy.

Nothing can be new unless you remove the old. Labour's support for removing ir's laws is just a ploy, they won't, their backers won't let them. All political parties rely on funding to promote their lies, without funding, they'd be exposed as the useless fools they are, note the dozens of lackies writing everything for them. The problem is the whole system. If a machine fails to do what its supposed to, the most logical approach is to get rid of the machine and build one gives the outcome the owners (citizens) want.

To change the direction we're going, you need to start at the beginning, with education and work your way up. I wrote more than 120 pages of detailed approaches and outcomes covering every spectrum of society, waste of time.

The alchemist, and of course the Education system is dumbing down society and victimising those that speak out about neglect, misconduct and/or corruption.

http://jolandachallita.typepad.com/education/

Personal remarks in KAEP's post are unacceptable.

In his/her post of Sunday, 2 July 2006 6:18:23 AM, s/he goes off making comments directed towards a person, rather than participating in actual argument.

I remind KAEP that flaming is prohibited under the rules of the forum.

If KAEP has anything worthwhile to say, then it should be possible to say it without making personal attacks.

DLatimer,

""This resulting value is wrong, so the other claims and general argument falls down""

You cannot cancel out Eric Claus's brilliant work on the strength of one putzy calculation. That is your lie and you well know it. Perhaps you would prefer if I called you a weasel. Because that's how you come across here. It is not flaming to best describe you with whatever language fits your behaviour.

You know it would be easier for everyone if you just got it through your head: The Australian immigration scam has been exposed for what it is -- a SCAM. Everyone knows this by now!

Find another way to make money OK? Not on the backs of your fellow citizens and fellow sojourners.