Daggett/Sinnamon Thursday, 23 August 2007 9:05:33 AM reminds us how elections no longer give voters a chance to canvas important issues. And neither do the newspapers and television.

It is even worse than that. Day by day more and more vital issues are being taken right off the public agenda and privatised as if they had nothing to do with the rest of us in the client-state.

Policy and practice in population growth and development which affect us all in every way and are primary concerns of democratic government are being quietly taken off the agenda in every state in a manner which seems orchestrated.

Issues which are of vital concern to the commons are being removed to distant State Governments quasi-run by professional developers who behave like feudal kings and queens. They have neither empathy nor conscience of duty towards the rest of us who wish to preserve what we have, incidentally stopping them becoming even more obscenely rich.

These State Government poohbahs want to create planning bodies with existences outside state or federal government, manned by commercial apparatchiks who do the bidding of the developers because there is no independent work left in the construction and development industries.

As Quentin Dempster said at http://www.abc.net.au/stateline/nsw/content/2006/s2008528.htm "New ideas in planning or new ways to fast track development? After a day locked in with the politicians and the planners Stateline reckons it is the later. Will anything stop Frank Sartor's steam roller?"

The Beattie/Howard show regarding amalgamations will have the effect and is almost certainly designed to keep the status quo in power (never mind the label) and preserve State Labor's private/public partnership with professional land speculators and their banking, mining, and forestry buddies, in the creation of a land where the pinnacle of achievement will be the shopping mall.

For this reason, as Sinnamon says, we must be alive to the trickery here and and .... Gosh, what was it that Sinnamon was suggesting should be done to stop Howard and Beattie tightening the noose around democracy and choking it to death?

"Forrest, your mission, should you accept it, is to explain, in the remaining 281 words, that Australian elections State and Federal may be routinely subject to massive unlawful manipulation. You shall then have to explain how such manipulation has resulted in policy and alternative policy that is, in terms of nett effect, effectively the same across the political spectrum. Should you make the slightest mis-statement in so doing, ........."

daggett, I think the last paragraph of Kanga's post says it all. Without any criticism as to your views on this dictatorial conduct, I am merely trying to suggest that your talents may be better employed in a different and more immediately urgent battle. Whether they personally understand why or not, a referendum, any referendum, is what Howard and Beattie both want, and 'the oligarchy', as represented by the so-called independent umpire, the Australian Electoral Commission, needs. Just don't help any of them get one in this context: you will only be playing into their hands.

In saying "closing off the electoral rolls so quickly after the announcement of the date of the election will almost certainly be to the advantage of the Government.", you are just parroting an electoral myth. A central thesis of that submission 161 which you indicate you have read, is that the surge in nett enrolment numbers that was CLAIMED to have occurred in the week's grace after the calling of the 1987 Federal elections looks like it was already in the enrolment accountancy BEFORE that election was called. Whatever the cause was of that phenomenon, it clearly was not one resulting from the actions of hundreds of thousands of electors reacting to an announcement of an election and updating their enrolment particulars. Curiously, that anomalous timing of a surge was accompanied by an enrolment accountancy discrepancy of around 200,000 enrolments on that 1987 occasion.

Such surges are a feature around roll close time under the centralized computerized roll managment system put in place in 1984.

Perhaps this post may help: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6267#91291

Merging "green" Councils like Noosa and Port Douglas is not a smart thing to do - these Councils are leading Queensland on sustainability - doing a much better job than the State.

I think we need to have more local elected representatives - more local Councillors per person. Currently a local Councillor in Brisbane Council represents sometimes 10 suburbs.

Within each Council ward there should also be Citizen Committees that get to take a vote on decisions on funding, development and policy in their local area. Obviously the Councillor's vote would count for more than a citizen member of the committee, but there needs to be more real communty decision making.

Is there any way that local government boundaries and administration etc. could be altered to encourage population decentralisation away from Brisbane?

For example, perhaps the State or Office of Urban Management should be setting limits on the number of residential developments (X bedrooms per year) and commercial/industrial developments (X sqm of floor space) to cap residential growth in Brisbane and encourage employment and residential growth in certain decentralisation "zones".

Tristan,

What is wrong with Brisbane simply capping its building permits (which is the same as limiting population numbers) and doing the same for the hinterland?

Queensland has already pushed its demand on the environment far beyond safe limits. There can be no sane argument for expansion so why give any time to the developer fall-back of 'decentralisation'? All that ever means is getting a foothold on some resort or farmland area which later will be used to spearhead intensification, to the financial benefit of speculative landholders and future corporate owners of water and energy resources.

Australian government gives every sign of having departed from the real interests of the majority and of having morphed into a malignant form which apparently intends to have sway over those who are still in a capacity to resist both Liberal's and Labor's nutty and dangerous pursuit of material excess on pseudo-economics bases which would not fool most children or dogs.

Only the Milgram experiments of the 1970s go some way to explain the strange paralysis of critical thinking in otherwise intelligent humans when it comes to evaluating and resisting State and Federal government madness and superficially 'caring' totalitarianism. The Milgram experiments, as you would be aware, showed how around 50% of humans simply cannot bring themselves to doubt anointed authority sufficiently to save themselves and their peers from obvious danger.

Noosa is NOT a "green" council, it pumps sewage into rivers, does no meaningful recycling and has high rise all along its main beach.

Thanks for all the interesting posts. I can't respond as fully as I would like to right now.

You may have a point, Forrest Gump.