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.