Betty, yes I read the article. It was about corruption and our political culture. I am concerned about an issue which reeks of corruption - the trashing of our Sydney drinking water catchments by mining operations approved by the NSW Labor Government. Therefore I took this opportunity to offer it as an example of the culture of corruption Warhurst is discussing. The Gordon Nuttall case is no doubt the tip of an iceberg (The Qld minister who accepted a $300,000 "loan" from a mining company).
Do try to join the dots, Betty, as I did. And do try to understand that water is quite important to you as well as to me and that it would be of benefit to you and to everyone else to protect rivers in our catchments.

I don’t think we hear about most of the corruption in politics. There is a sad history in Australia. I remember Rex Jackson as minister for Corrective Services in an earlier Labor Government going to jail for arranging early release for Calabrian Mafia figures. Eddie Obeid and Tripodi have some stains on their reputation but they are still there.
Morris Iemma and John Howard fortunately seem to be straight and stain free. Richardson or Richo as he is known looks a sort of Brian Burke figure embroiled in tax evasion and probably insurance fraud.

One way of gaining political power in a democracy is to alter electoral outcomes by fraud.

Getting away with fraud for a prolonged period, say around a century, will have a distorting effect upon not only the structure and policy of the political entity that is the initial vehicle for corruption, but upon the policy and composition of opposing political organisations, and indeed the whole of society. Perhaps the most confusing fraud imaginable would be one of altering genuine electoral outcomes without allowing any of the participants, electors, parties, or candidates for election, to know of its existence.

Candidates in good faith of all parties in such circumstances become demoralised and disillusioned without knowing the real reasons for their frustration. Such may explain the climate of resigned acceptance of pervasive corruption within Australian political culture. Better insight into the disease affecting Australian politics may be gained by audit of the historical electoral process, rather than focussing upon the individual partipants, their parties, or proposed changes to electoral law.

John Warhurst is Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Arts at the Australian National University. Based in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University and supported by the Australian Research Council, is the Democratic Audit of Australia. If this body could be induced to focus more upon auditing the administration of past electoral events , despair about the health of the Australian political system may be less obligatory. It should have looked for departures, no matter how seemingly minor, from the letter of the electoral law by those charged over the past century with its administration. It should have looked for the slightest departures from manner and form: such are almost always signposts to more serious impropriety. Believe me, such departures have been found to have taken place. It was as to their possible meaning for the future that there seems to have been so little consideration given in academe.

Can you get the Audit to ask around about past electoral impropriety instead of riding hobbyhorses of proposed change to our system of governance, John?

At the risk of sounding trite, people get the governments they deserve. They also get the oppositions they deserve. How many people, in their short-sightedness, will vote for the ALP later this year simply to get rid of the Coalition? Then, after two or three terms of the ALP, people will be falling over themselves to vote the Coalition back in. Doesn't anyone ever get a sense of deja vu in all of this? Where's the sense of irony in people whining about the system/parties/corruption/whatever yet participating so eagerly in that process?

I figure either vote for a minor party or an independent, or opt out of the system as much as possible, or shut up about the whole thing and embrace the BS the mainstream politicians go on with.