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.