Boazy: "Well..that's my educated and experienced opinion anyway."

And we know precisely how much that's worth, don't we?

Some examples might be useful, Mr Muhr.

>>Pericles misses a vital reality of our parliament which is that even when the Democrats held the balance of power, most legislation passed through the Senate, either through reasonable negotiation, resulting in better laws, or because the Coalition and Labor voted together.<<

GST? Telstra?

Some concept of what you mean by "better laws" would help, too.

Either way, to have a system that by its nature encourages manipulation, corruption, sweetheart deals made out of sight of the public between factions concerned more with power than with responsibility, and eminently unrepresentative of the will of the people at any point of time.

That can't be good.

Pericles,

What exactly can the minor party or independent parliamentarians do if one of the major parties will not vote with them? Drum their heels on the parliamentary carpet? Hold their breath until they turn blue? Yet somehow it is always they, and not the Opposition, who are castigated for irresponsible behavior when they successfully vote against the government. Opportunities for corruption, secrecy, lack of responsiveness to the public, etc. are far better in a two party winner-takes-all system where Big Business can buy both major parties than in a proportional representation system such as in many European countries. Just compare the figures on such matters as social inequality.

It seems that none of you, Malcolm King included, has got a clue what the Australian Greens actually stand for.

So maybe that's where you should all start?

http://greens.org.au/about/policy/

So much crap on this forum, I think I'll stop reading altogether. It's too depressing.

I agree Pericles that some examples would be good. However I'm too busy trying to finish a university assignment that I don't have time to read through Hansard at the moment. (Why did I think going back to uni was a good idea?)

However, I am aware that when Keating and then Howard attacked the "obstructionist" Senate in the 90s, I discovered that the large majority of bills were passed by the Coalition and Labor voting together, often with only the Democrats and Greens voting against.

Obviously bills like Native Title, GST and Telstra are well known because they were contentious. If they were agreed to by both parties, we'd hardly know about them (refugees, anti-terrorism laws anyone?) In these situations the government did require support which they got from Family First (GST, Telstra) Brian Harradine (Native Title, Telstra) and from some but not all Democrats for the GST.

I certainly agree that we need more rather than less openness and accountability in our governments. But in my experience, you tend not to get this when two major parties dominate the political sphere.

At the time that Howard was introducing the GST and needing one extra vote in the Senate to get the legislation through the parliament, I wrote to then Green senator Dee Margetts. I urged her to negotiate with Howard and, in exchange for her vote, to request a raft of environmental initiatives, such as no GST on solar hot water systems and domestic PV systems, concessions for fuel efficient cars, increased funding for the environment and whatever other benefits she could extract in exchange for her vote.
After several months without a reply, I wrote again. The senator then replied to me - no apology for the delay in replying - simply saying: 'We'll do things our own way to achieve our desired outcomes' or words to that effect.
The arrogance of that reply and her disinterest in achieving environmental outcomes confirmed my belief that the Greens were and still are a party of extreme left-wing, anti-development anti-capitalists, who hide behind a pro-environment facade in order to attract votes from naive but well intentioned voters who sadly believe their propaganda.
Should the Greens ever hold the balance of power in the Senate, I have no doubt that the outcome will be bad government regardless of whichever party is in power.
I'm sad to see the demise of the Democrats as they were as honest as a political party can ever be and they genuinely tried to do the right thing for the majority of Australians. The same will never be said for the Greens. May they forever remain an obscure, unrepresentative, elitist, out-dated party, of no relevance or importance to Australia's democratic system of government.