Here is an idea which I've previously mentioned here for determining a politicians pay.
The policitians should tender for their job like. This can be implemented by printing on the election ballot-papers, right next to their name, the total amount that they offer to do the job for. Each politician sets their own individual bid. This binding bid is the TOTAL remuneration they receive- it includes their salary, super and any other monetary entitlements. In this way the politicians within an electorate are now competitively bidding against each other. This solution determines a politician’s salary according to a pricing mechanism common to almost all transactions of goods and services in our economy.
It should be pointed that by this system it is possible for politicians to be paid a lot more than currently. This is expected to happen, because if the voters think they're worth it they should be paid more.
Its also possible that some are paid less. However, since their salary has been determined by the market they have no grounds to complain. (Almost everybody else has their wages/salary determined by the job market).
This is the simplest, cheapest and easiest system to implement that provides a mechanism of negotiation between the politicians and the public.

I love this bit about the average wage, the vast majority around 76% of working Australian's earn less than the average wage.

So the income our politicans earn puts them in the top 15-20% of income earners. Lets not forget about, the fact that the taxpayer pays for the fuel they put in their taxpayer funded motor vechiles. Plus they can salary package their income, not available to most Australian wage earners.

Why is it that there is a bun fight to get preselection, if life as a politican is so tough? and poorly paid.

Personally I think politicans should be working for free and donating their time to their country.

It would save about 3-4 billion a year.

Should politicians get more money?

No, they are paid enough.

Pay has got very little to do with getting good quality people. It will be set in accordance to the society's standards and willingess to pay a certain amount.

What happended in 1901 is not relevant; society was much more un equal then.

Out of the numbers that are attracted to politics, there are enough talented people who are prepared to work for a reasonable wage, and have a passion and the intellect to uphold the public interest.

And the CEO of Norway's Oil fund only got $500,000 a year (at least a few years ago), and his company has outperformed many Australian corporations which paid their CEO's ridiculous amounts.

I'm with you on this JamesH

>>I think politicans should be working for free and donating their time to their country.<<

And forbidden to take donations too, so that they can stay relatively uncorrupted.

Another option might be to give them performance targets.

Even, in the spirit of thinkabit's earlier post, targets that they themselves set, prior to the election.

They can call this their "manifesto" (from the Latin, manifestus adj. obvious, unmistakable) and be paid on the milestones they achieve.

They must also declare those policies that they will oppose - "never ever a GST", for example - and either be disallowed from voting if that bill were ever presented, or even be fired for changing their mind.

Or, as it should actually be termed, "reneging on a commitment made".

Because let's face it, in any other walk of life, accepting money under false pretences - which is what acting against the manifesto laid before those who elected you actually amounts to - is an offence punishable by a jail sentence.

Articles like this appear every so often, and signally fail to address the underlying issue: forget for a moment the amount they are paid, and concentrate on what they are tasked to achieve by those who elect them.

I don't want people who think that $127 000 isn't alot of money in parliament and please, no more lawyers.

What a good article. Finally, some good information on how politicians wages effect performance. I personally always thought the Prime Minister was underpaid.

A political career is a high risk job compared to other professions. An engineer, lawyer, successful business man or doctor can reply on his profession to deliver a steady job with a good income for 30 or 40 years. If you want to give that up and for a political full time career, paying a premium seems like it would be required. And it _is_ a risk for them. Once they are out of their profession for a full electoral term it is unlikely they will be able to return to their old profession.

What that means is a backbenchers pay should be compared to say the top quartile of the professions earn, not the minimum wage. And it has to be substantially higher than that.

As for the idea of putting the salary on the voting form and letting the electorate select the lowest bidder - the idea gives me the willies.

rstuart:
When you drive down the street have you ever noticed that we don't all drive the same type of car? Some people have bought and drive really cheap cars like a Hyundai Getz while some drive a Rolls-Royce. It is the same as when buying the services tendered by a politician bidding on an ballot paper- you DON'T HAVE to buy the cheapest one. This system doesn't require politicians to be paid less. Indeed, I would expect most politicians elected would be paid more than they did now if such a tender process was introduced.
Almost everybody else in society has their wage determined by a market process. Why should politicans be any different?
(Note that when the Liberals were in power they did everything they could to impose a strict market mechanism on us- they wanted employees to bargain directly and individually with employers- that's what work choices was all about!)
Also, it is possible for a professional to return to their previous role. Infact a stint in parliament can even give them advantages and an extra edge.
Lastly, I would consider a job such a farming, fishing, building to be high risk because in these jobs you can easily be physically injured which prevents you from ever again working in the same job or even from ever working in the same industry

I reckon if I was elected and paid half what these guys are being paid, I could easily retire a millionare.

Anybody noticed that the labor party and developers appear to be sleeping in the same bed.

JamesH, Pericles
Houuuuu! you are smart! You want ONLY millionaires to become politicians!
GOOD FOR YOU! Good for the rich people!
What about labours interests? Do you expect from us, from the mass majority of Australians to support your ideas?
Who will represent and support labours interests? How a labour MP can cover his basic needs, his family's basic needs?
You do not like a labour MP! You want ONLY A RICH MP!
In the next life you may be have the opportunity to realize your dreams, but not in this life!
We have to pay our MPs BUT their salary should be logical and fair, not provocative salaries for MPs.
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide

I have no problem with politicians being paid more -- although I think it should be performance-based -- but I would like to see the penalties for incompetence, deceit and avoidable failure made much greater. Politicians like Howard who lied about refugees and sent troops to die in Iraq for no good reason shouldn't get away with a lost election and a generous pension: they should be liable to prosecution, fines and imprisonment for criminal negligence. Likewise the various NSW Premiers and Ministers for Health who have got the State into the mess it is in today. When your job involves the lives and welfare of thousands of people, the penalty for stuffing it up should be more than just losing your job.

I think the aristocratic class develops when tribal leaders realise they have more in common with other tribal leaders, than the lower members of their own tribe. This is the start of "us and them" style policy making.
Our politicians are supposed to be 'representative'. As James points out, they actually represent a very small fraction of the total population, and guess which sector always seems to get the tax breaks?
I think the true strength of the Westminster system is that elected officials are not supposed to be lawyers or economists; they are supposed to be representative of their constituencies. It is their job to report their constituents' wishes to the national assembly, and decide on policy. The public service should then take over, and implement -as far as possible- those policies.
Of course, this will create real and often comical tensions (a la 'Yes, Minister), but it is democratic.
Offering higher pay doesn't get more caring politicians; it just gets hungrier, greedier ones.
I think we might be better off without career politicians. Perhaps one or two termers would be more appropriate. It will always look good on a resume (if they do a good job).
And I agree with performance based pay. Politicians pay should be linked to the median wage, on a dollar for dollar basis.
For an expansion of this argument, and a chance to vote on your preference, go here:
http://thecomensality.com/avasay/

Woebegone - Scarry As! Rather then help bind business enterprise to responsible citzenship, by representing both with vigor, I find the payroll set for politicians sets politics in satire.

All this hype about 'how good it is to have business experienced' politicians unfortunately is a furfy. I find most lack general life experience, and much less diversity. Due to their comfort zones, the tale tattler environmental aspects booming from the corridors of power, ... the gullible, credulous whoopee-train is no more than a magical mystery tour.... at our expense.

Local Government is particularly lugubrious. We need more transparency in this area given the lack of resources, before we can deal with the self-interest of developers, the regional party stacking or anything near fair.

Not to discredit "goodwork". To point out however, that for many getting a political job is a gravy-train. All you have to do is show you can be 'ocker' and that you can ear-boot the other like a half-baked ape bape star.

It is "a classic example of self-interest being peddled as economic logic or public interest. There is enough hypocrisy flooding the airwaves on this to make even the most cynical politics watcher want to spew."

http://ambit-gambit.nationalforum.com.au/archives/000177.html

Thanks for raising the question Andrew Leigh, I am not indignant nor ill willed, but rather tired of the shams and shades where there is a strong case to make about the authenticity of a politicians role in the wake of politicians pay: foxes guarding the hen-house?

http://www.miacat.com/

Grim, I like the idea of limiting the number of terms a politican can serve.

Base pay on performance. What are the KPI's?

How many lies are told without taking a breath?

Antonios Symeonakis, the Labor party has become a capitalist party, but pretends to be socialistic.

During perhaps the most posperous time in Australia, where has the money gone?

Where was the investment in infrastructure?

Responsibility for roads were sold to private companies, public schools have been allowed to deteriorate from years of neglect, whilst private schools are doing very well from government handouts.

Given the fact that there has been an unprecident boom in immigration, where are the new hospitals to cope with the increasing population?

Just think of all those retiring politicans on taxpayer funded welfare, welfare which is tax exempt.

Where does the funding for the worlds most generous retirement scheme come from?

Grim
I wrote something about democrats in the other thread as an answer to your call to become member of democrats. my email is asymeonakis@hotmail.com, write to me!
If politicians are good and people like them then I do not understand why we must limit their time as MPs. Experiences in parliament etc are not bad if MPs are honest and serve people's and australian's interests.

JamesH
I love the labour party because they are champions in hypocricy! but I wrote for labours not for ALP and I MEAN LABOURS +FARMERS+SMALL BUSINESSMEN+ PLUS JOUNG PEOPLE+ PLUS AGED PEOPLE +, +ETC.
I mean all people with low income who can not become MP because withought salary they and their families will die from hangry!
JamesH withouht salary only from the top 15% of australians could become MPs!
DO YOU WANT, DO YOU TRY TO BLOCK THE RIGHT TO BE ELECTED MP FOR THE 75% OF OUR POPULATION?
I do not understand why you did not suggest to abandon the elections, to save even more money!
What if the MPs appoindet from employer's associations? We will not have to pay them and we will save the money from the elections!
Are joking JamesH? We try to extend and deepen our democracy and you try to block the low income australians to become MPs?
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide

If wages were set by the electorate, then the wage must be just high enough to induce better candidates to run for office, thus ensuring that the extra surplus that candidate generates goes to the voters.

However, the wage is set by politicians themselves rather than by the electorate.

This means that there is a disproportionate spread of responsibility given to some candidates who preside of large electorates versus those with smaller populations.

Factor in overlaps in responsibility for good and services, legislation and policy, within electorates between the three levels of government and it becomes even more complicated.

Millionaire / silver tail politicians such as Turnbull and Rudd who have no real need for the wages they get - make a mockery out of our system of democracy - a system that espouses that those elected will come from and are able to represent "the people".

Neither of these two politicians would have anything to do with working class people if they were not elected representatives put up by political parties that purport to know what is best for all.

The current system of representative government(s) needs to be overhauled big time

Politicians are not highly paid. Departmental Heads get a lot more - usually double or more. In large departments there will be maybe a dozen who get paid more than their ministers. I would class ministers as being underpaid, relative to their private industry counterparts (who are definitely overpaid).

The work of a front bench politician is difficult - it requires skills. While most noted politicians have very good verbal skills, and are hard working, they often lose out in the area of decision making skills. We are increasingly seeing politicians with a lack of common sense, which in my opinion is simply a reflection of same in society generally (sense goes out the window in good times, and believe it or not we'd have good times for 20 years. Isn't it hilarious how we have been lead into working longer hours during these good times - clearly the media influences people in ways that supports the interests of the wealthy).

While paying pollies extra will attract some folk who would be better than the current lot, I doubt it would achieve much over the long term. In fact I suspect it would be a negative. I suspect corruption would increase. Firstly, it would attract materialistically selfish people out for the money, who will side with business. Secondly, due to the very wealth that the pollies would have, they would mix more and more with the wealthy people in business- they would start to adopt the crude snobbish egotism of wealthy people and be lead into creating policies that provide these people with guaranteed incomes. They would think of themselves as being a class above and beyond the need to justify their actions.

cont.

These factors already exist in pollies to a very high degree, but going further down that track would make it even worse - it would be like having two of the totally corrupt US style Republican parties running Australia. At least nowadays, the Federal Labor party has to at least give the appearance of making policies for the whole population, and this restraint means that they sometimes do.

The difference between the two parties is minimal. On one side you have the Liberal Capitalist Technocrats (relax laws to let big business and liberalists set all the rules for the masses) and on the other you have the Labor Collectivist Technocrats (create more and more laws, so that our individual lives are managed almost totally, but consort with and use big business to put these centralist constraints into practice).

A technocrat is just overly confident semi-bright young things, with almost no aptitude for lateral thinking and a high level of egotism. It is these types that have been in the process of ruining NSW government over the last 10 years (a lot of them have been put into senior departmental positions), and worldwide are a major cause of the Global Financial Crisis (which is still only just starting - not finishing). These technocrats create schemes that require departments to use big business for solutions - solutions that appear cost effective at first but ultimately are more expensive. Privatisation/Outsourcing is like long term leasing - you take the benefit now but the real total ongoing costs keep increasing.

Your council rates are increasing for three main reasons - poor management, heeding the media/lobbyists, and outsourcing. If pollies would concentrate more on good management, learn to ignore the media (it's all just sensationalisation nowadays), and keep technocrats away from running departments or advising on policies, then your government taxes would be about 20% less and would not be increasing above CPI - in which case they would then deserve a pay increase.

It would be worth twice what we pay our Pollies, if they took their job seriously, and were jealous to ensure that when they make a law, the lawyers carry it out, to the letter. A case in point is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It was passed in 1986, got the Royal assent in December of that year, but not one court has upheld its provisions, and not one politician has ever raised a matter of privilege about it in either House.

The Orders of the Parliament of the Commonwealth are expressed in Acts of Parliament. It is a court of law, and we as the public should be entitled to expect when they make a law, it will be upheld. We could easily pay them twice what we do, if they were diligent to ensure when they actually work, that their handiwork, is not made for nothing, by unelected public officials, many of whom are taking home twice what they are, and paying no taxes.

Perhaps they should get a bonus, every time a Public Servant is cited for contempt and fined, in the Parliament of the Commonwealth, for failing to uphold a law made by their efforts. The entire High Court in place in 2004 should be cited for contempt, because they have deliberately contradicted the will of the Parliament of the Commonwealth. S 33 High Court of Australia Act 1979 says the Queen’s name should be on all process issued out of the High Court. It is on none. High Court Rules 2004. They can cite anyone for contempt, and call them before either House. Once cited work stops in the House until the contempt is dealt with. There are four on the High court who took no part in that imfamy.

Yep they should deliver and be paid at least as much as a High Court Justice, if they do the same work, and deliver justice to us, the hard trodden working folk of the Commonwealth. A High Court Justice gets $7000 a week to treat all and sundry with contempt.

On further thought we definitely do not pay our politicians in the Parliament of the Commonwealth enough, or they would have insisted that the States pull their heads in, and enforced their superior laws over all inferior legislatures. We probably pay our State Politicians way too much, and local government is just a further parasite on society.

I suggest we double the pay of a Federal Parliamentarian, provided he or she will take any complaint raised against any other member of the Commonwealth and bring it to the Parliament to be dealt with. It is no good saying all persons are equal before the law, and having no way to ensure this is so. If a Federal Member of Parliament was required to bring any complaint laid upon them, from their electorate to the High Court of Parliament, about the law they have made, so that they could either be scrapped or confirmed, they would be worth their weight in gold, as they used to say.

Take the Trade Practices Act 1974, if enforced by contempt proceedings in the Parliament of the Commonwealth, ninety nine percent of local councils would stop a lot of their unfair practices. Ninety nine percent of planning laws offend the Trade Practices Act 1974 as well, they restrict land for house building, and push up house prices. Many of the worst practices by banks and building societies, and lenders of all description, would cease almost immediately if the Australian Securities and Investment Commission Act 2001 was upheld by a parliamentarian citing a Bank for contempt, and my God, how the money would roll in.

We would not need a stimulus package, we would get a boom from good old honest dealing, and restore honesty and integrity in every industry, stop rorts, and all the homeless would find a home within twelve months. Utopia, not necessarily, but the value of a seat in Parliament would raise the stakes, and we would get the cream of society attempting to become a leader in the Parliament. That would have to be a good thing

The discussion here should recognise some points:

The relative risk factor of being in politics, on which politicians pay and super was traditionally based decades ago, must be discounted by the obvious risk that all in employment now wear. Politics is not that risky, particularly in a "safe seat".

The Superannuation contribution conditions which prevailed until Latham upset the rotten apple cart were always extravagant. If you have a heart for the failed would-be PM Costello, who has declared that he has "to earn a living", on top of an indexed-for-life pension of $175,000 plus, just contact any Financial Services company or actuary who can do the figures, and ask what it takes in today's dollars to buy that pension and you will see that politicians in their 2nd/3rd term are automatically multi-millionaires.

The field of politics has attracted and will attract wealthy people, for the power it bestows. Where it doesn't, it manufactures them. The peanuts-for-monkeys argument just doesn't wash.

Tonights episode on Nine news about the cost of all the ex-priministers should be interesting.

It is amazingly hypocritical that all sectors particularly health and education have cut backs and are pushed for cost effectiveness, yet the huge money pit of ex politicans entitlements is untouched.

Maybe it is the savings made in cut backs on public services like health and education that is used to fund the ex politicans money pit.

That's one way of looking at it Antonios.

>>Houuuuu! you are smart! You want ONLY millionaires to become politicians!<<

On the other hand, you are smart for wanting ONLY politicians to become millionaires.

As rexationary explains:

>>just contact any Financial Services company or actuary who can do the figures, and ask what it takes in today's dollars to buy that pension and you will see that politicians in their 2nd/3rd term are automatically multi-millionaires.<<

I'd like to know exactly what you believe they do to deserve our largesse at this extraordinary level, compared with, say, an entrepreneur who puts his life savings at risk, as well as a massive overdraft, to build a business that employs a dozen people?

On the one hand you have a band of brothers dedicated to extracting the maximum possible from the public teat, not caring as they do so whether they lie, cheat or simply "forget".

On the other you have some poor ignorant sap, too honest to stand for parliament, but who is prepared to risk his health, wellbeing and family life simply in order to build a small business.

Does not compute.

Pericles, I think the original post was advocating that politicians should work for nothing; obviously only the likes of Rudd and Turnbull could afford to do this.
I fully agree we pay the pollies too much. By doing so, we simply ensure they forget what it's like to struggle for a buck. So long as they are in one tax bracket, and the bulk of us are in another... just look at the evidence.
Maybe they should work for the pension, since they clearly believe the amount is adequate to live on.

I think that when perks such as their "superannuation", which is really a pension, are taken into account the pollies are doing all right.
All careers are risky these days, the age of "profit is sacred" saw to that. So long as they are obvious industry lackeys I don't think they deserve more than middle management salary. If they start showing some statesmenship and/or leadership then maybe they can earn more.

Jud200609
Mr. Leigh, you seriously believe that politicians are here to stay for ever?

How gloomy a prospect it would be for humanity if it were to be so!

Keep them and the ground will go from under our feet. Disobey all of their rules and the planet will last a little longer.

All politicians want is to control and play with others’ lives, all they do is make Laws that enter into the very life of each human and wreck it to insignificance.

They sense their own superfluity and dread the contamination of their tyrannical order by free spirits.

In the scale of Man’s time, they have not been around long, though long enough to take this planet’s life to the brink of annihilation.

“Control” is all they are about. Not one of them has not some traits of Mussolini’s, or Stalin’s or Hitler’s characters.

I have lived long enough to see them as romantic saviors before and brutes after election.

Aesop, two and half millennia ago saw that: “We appoint big thieves to protect us from petty ones” he said.

And as idiots we continue to give them our vote and pay them, de facto unconditionally, for accepting it.

This must have been what Adam Smith saw at the “free Market”.

What a paradox

Is not politicians our people? Did not we vote them?
Is not enouph that they humiliate their self?
OK they take more money comparing with their services, but why we do not blame our self for this kind of politicians? We elected them we are responsible for them!
Generaly our behave to politicians weaken our democracy and damage our interests.
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide

Fair point, Grim.

>>Pericles, I think the original post was advocating that politicians should work for nothing; obviously only the likes of Rudd and Turnbull could afford to do this.<<

I had in mind the eighteenth-century landowner, dedicating his time to representing the welfare of his constituents. And I agree, it would not work today.

But there is still a major discrepancy between the financial conditions under which politicians work, and those that apply to the rest of us.

All my working life I have been judged on my in-job performance. In the early days, this was accomplished by sitting down with my manager, agreeing goals for the coming year, and at the end of that period assessing how well I had performed against those tasks. We both knew that i) my survival in the job and ii) my salary level hung on the outcome.

Since staring my own businesses, the feedback mechanism is much more direct. If I don't succeed, I lose my entire investment, and put some good people out of work.

Surely, it is not beyond the wit of man to devise a sensible measurement mechanism for politicians?

Simply meeting the commitments they make before the election would be a start. The penalty for not doing so would be consistent with the private sector - fire them, and disallow them from standing again for a period of time.

The prospect of losing one's job - especially one that is surrounded with so many perks and benefits - should have the effect of sharpening up their attention to both the promises they make, and the efforts they put in to meet them.

Pericles: "Surely, it is not beyond the wit of man to devise a sensible measurement mechanism for politicians?"

More to the point, is it beyond the wit of Pericles?

I take the answer is it "yes". But I don't blame Pericles for this. I blame the guy who posed the question.

He apparently doesn't appreciate that we have a workable way of measuring politicians now. Their job is to represent their constituents (customers). Every few years we get their customers to rate their performance by asking them if there is someone who could potentially do a better job.

It ain't perfect system by any means. But we have tried a few ways of selecting and measuring our leaders over the past few millennium and this is the best we have come up with. Asking someone to come up with something better is asking too much.

"Asking someone to come up with something better is asking too much."
So there's no more room for refinement, even though the system "ain't perfect"?
While I concede your point about essential democracy, Rstuart, I think Pericles also has a point.
Most businesses these days offer a clearly defined (albeit often rose tinted) mission statement. It is curious no political party offers such clear goals in their election promises; ie "in our first 3 year term we intend to do this, with the clear understanding that we will achieve this result, before the next election". Currently, as much as they love making promises, they never seem to mention a time frame.
If governments had to go to a fully independent bank to finance these open ended schemes (without the wonderful backup of almost infinitely variable tax dollars), I wonder how they'd fare?

If this was meant as reproof, or even an insult, it was far too subtle for me, rstuart.

>>More to the point, is it beyond the wit of Pericles?<<

My proposals were actually serious. More to the point, they are actually workable, and I make no apology for comparing the mechanism to that of an ordinary company.

A company works at a couple of levels, as Grim points out. At the top level, they have mission statements, goals and objectives, against which they are broadly measured by the public and by their shareholders.

In my scenario, this would be analogous to the Party's general manifesto - we're pro- or anti- unions, for example, or we are pro- or anti-ETS.

A company also works at the basic levels of Sales and Marketing, Service and Support etc. where the mission, goals and objectives are turned into daily work patterns.

This is analogous in my proposal to the individual's approach to their electorate.

The "if elected, I shall..." commitment.

This would encompass the more tangible stuff, like whether the candidate is pro- or anti- a desalination plant or a nuclear power station in the electorate, or whether they would support or oppose legislation banning the morning-after pill.

It should not be too difficult, given the wealth of technology available to us, to document these agreements that were voluntarily made in return for our vote, and to hold the elected member accountable for them.

We as the citizenry would actually have a personal reason for monitoring the cations and activities of our representative. In turn, they would be aware of this, and be far more assiduous in the discharge of their obligations to us.

On the whole, a system that is a heap more responsive, I would suggest, than simply trooping along to the polls every four years to elect some faceless twerp who cares for little except the fact that he or she has finally made it onto the gravy train.

>>But we have tried a few ways of selecting and measuring... this is the best we have come up with<<

So far.

Pericles: "It should not be too difficult, given the wealth of technology available to us, to document these agreements that were voluntarily made in return for our vote, and to hold the elected member accountable for them."

The problem with what you describe is it requires far too much work of we, the apathetic citizens. The major parties already do a reasonable facsimile of what you describe. You can go the the ALP's page or the LP's page and look up their electoral promises for 2007. Journalists busily compile lists of those kept and those broken. So the promises are documented using today's technology, and they are held accountable for them.

But how many people actually looked at those pages before voting? Did you? I bet you didn't. I didn't either. And that is the problem.

I have looked at their promises in hindsight, when they did something that annoyed me immensely and claimed "it is an electoral promise". Well, it may or may not have been. Given their words, a lawyer or judge would have to decide. It certainly wasn't what I envisaged they would do when reading now. And that is the second problem.

What you suggest sounds to me like it could become a bureaucratic nightmare, or a lawyers picnic. It might be worth it if there wasn't a simpler solution. As it turns out there is - the one we have now. Rather spending huge amounts time trying to wade through legalise before the election, at the next election we look back and see what they _did_ do. It's simple, fast and reliable.

Politicians are all sort of scared of lawyers. They are lawmakers, but have lost the plot as far as ensuring their efforts are not in vain. Knowingly or unwittingly they have created a monster that has absolutely no respect whatsoever for their efforts. They have created Courts, instead of courts, and these Courts are the cause of much of our dissatisfaction with politicians.

The Courts created by the politicians are undemocratic. We don’t know how they have been fooled into creating these monsters, but it is time they woke up to themselves and uncreated them. The Courts they have created are filled with lawyers who take home many times the salaries a Politician gets paid, even a lowly Magistrate gets more than a politician, as a backbencher, and he is simply a rubber stamp.

When we created a Federation we had courts, in which the Constitution could be enforced, and which had integrity, because they had 12 ordinary people as judges. When the lawyers persuaded the Parliament to make them into the trustees of the Courts, and abolish jury trial as of right, that really put the cunning foxes in charge of the henhouses. The foxes have been running with the hounds ever since 1970, in New South Wales and 1976 in the Federal Court of Australia and if you want to make a small fortune out of litigation and you are not a lawyer, start off with a big one. They will take it from you by hook or by crook.

I knew Sir Joh Bjellke-Petersen. I heard him tell a Conference once, that you can ask us to do whatever you like, but we cannot do anything that will not be passed by the courts. He knew the score in Queensland before 1991. In 1989, a Labor party dominated by lawyers was elected in Queensland, and one of the first things they did was abolish jury trials as or right. People have been getting ruined ever since.

It is not the Politicians who are the foxes. Lawyers must know they are doing the wrong thing

Back before the politicians decided to abdicate their responsibilities, and dump them on an unelected judiciary, the procedure to resolve a grievance was simple. You issued a writ. A writ was like a summons, that called upon the person you were annoyed with to come to a town meeting, and explain why he or she was causing you grief. It was quick, it was certain to get a result, and had a guaranteed jury trial as a condition of its issue.

In 95% of cases Writs got results almost immediately. Some settled on the courthouse steps, but most settled quickly. It was a great way to get someone’s attention. Today their stringing out of litigation is an art form, and every step costs money, so that the lawyers have prospered enormously, and the state has suffered revenue loss in proportion to their winnings.

Now the politicians have permitted substitutes for the writ process to be instituted. This is not a good move, and if the High Court can be believed is illegal. However without a High Court Writ to test it, or any way of having a guaranteed right to do so, the lawyers are riding high.

If politicians again took charge of the country, instead of leaving it to lawyers, in practice, and unelected Judges, they should be getting the big money, and Judges less. I think an increase in politicians salaries would be justified, if they were willing to supervise the judiciary, using the powers given to them by Standing Orders

I think you are being unduly pessimistic, rstuart.

>>The problem with what you describe is it requires far too much work of we, the apathetic citizens.<<

On the contrary, I think that the introduction of some visibility and accountability in the process would galvanize the citizenry afresh. Nothing like putting a little power into people's hands to get them excited.

It would also give the timeserving party apparatchik something to ponder as they clamber up the greasy pole to pre-selection. Responsibility is not a concept that comes naturally to them.

>>The major parties already do a reasonable facsimile of what you describe. You can go the the ALP's page or the LP's page and look up their electoral promises...<<

Yep. That's the top level stuff I was outlining. The important new bit is making the individual candidate accountable for those promises. And for the detail.

>>What you suggest sounds to me like it could become a bureaucratic nightmare, or a lawyers picnic.<<

In the twentieth century, I suspect you would have been right.

But the speed and precision of communication these days is actually making this practically a walk in the park. Facebook, Twitter, all these "social networking" gizmos finally have a real-world value.

>>It might be worth it if there wasn't a simpler solution. As it turns out there is - the one we have now<<

There's nothing so simple as inactivity, rstuart. We can all do it, and nothing will improve, ever.

For a real simple example of how Politicians can interact with their constituents, go to my place:
http://avasay.com
If I can do it, surely pollies can. Admittedly my polling is not bullet proof, but it does -or can- at least give some idea of how connected people feel about just about anything.
And it could be made bullet proof, if necessary.