Robp,all Govt Taxes should be limited to a percentage of GDP.It should not exend beyond that limit unless there is a national emergency or war.

We also need to pay our pollies/Public servants on performance.Pay key decision makers more but if they stuff up,they lose bonuses and pay.The Public Service wastes $billions,yet there are no consequences for their debacles,waste or poor management.Until this is addressed,we are wasting our time having this conversation.

Thank you Lyn Allison and Andrew Bartlett for fearlessly raising these topics for public debate. It wasn't till I was handing out how to votes on election day that I realised your contributions to Online Opinion had raised my awareness and formed my opinions about what was happening in Australian society.

For what its worth I think you are better than Don Chip was. Pity about Meg Lees.

Like Peter Garrett, I too, was hoping that Rudd was pumping non core promises. I am gravely disappointed at the Bali posturings.

Yes, pity about the Democrats, Billie, though they do come up with good ideas, they do not study certain controversial areas enough.

Typical was their support for banning mulesing of lambs, which as a retired farmer who got upset when the Country Party lost it's independence to a National Party, did try the Dem's for a while.

But got angry with an ageing Don Chipp when he tried to make me look a fool at a meeting to which I had to travel a long way to get to.

It was about me refusing to support the silly ban on muelesing lambs against blowflies.

All I said as I went to walk out, have you stupid bastards ever seen a mob of fly-blown lambs shaking their back ends to high heaven. In fact, mulesing is the most sensible thing brought in, and as far as wether lambs are concerned having their knackers ripped out or rubber ringing them is scads worse.

But because the Dem's have many academic historians among them, they do have that philosophical sense proven to have initiated the most beneficial political changes back through history - and I guess which is so much needed now.

Arjay,

Can't disagree with any of that: you're right, there's a lot of waste happening in the Public Service and Government.

The problem's that big, that every time they try to do something about it, it just seems to get worse. For example, despite some pretty sharp contrary analysis by ASPI and the Defence Department itself, the former government went ahead and procured new jets for the RAAF which were reportedly already obsolete at the time of the procurement. How dumb's that. All to make Brendan Nelson look like an Admiral??

Billie/Bushbred,

I agree that the Dems came up with some good ideas that were well thought through and fair. They deserve credit for filling a niche that nobody else was interested in. I particularly liked the ideas, intellectualism and policies of Andrew Murray, for example. I hope that the Dems' ideas and values don't die and are subsumed into the policies of governments in the near-future. It's a real waste if they aren't.

The problem with the Dems, though, was that they were never going to be in a position to implement any of their ideas, except at the margins at best. Whitlam's political quip "only the impotent are pure" certainly applied to them.

'All the pre election promises will -um- not be possible to carry out because-'the Howard government left things in a terrible mess' and we do not have the finances to fund them.' This will be the ALP's cry.
It was ever thus and will be again. Promises are very thin airy things,you can't eat promises.

None of us ,I suspect our grand children too, and theirs will ever see the Democrats again.
Nit picking just weeks into this governments leadership, it has only been weeks.
And from the only party that suffered more than conservatives, is the poster sure they will be in the senate till next year?
Next week is one month after the election while every one has the right to an opinion I expected better.
No sorry that is untrue my expectations are about what we got nothing!