I wonder how many of you are like me: absolutely sick of politics! Good government seems to play second fiddle to politics - which is the art of gaining and maintaining power. So we have tons of spin, lots of our goodies handed back to us as bribes, and 95% of the energy of gifted people spent on political rivalry rather than working through good policy.
I say eliminate the political profession. Limit a pollie to one term of office. Have two main parties and alternate them every 4 years with 51% of the seats allocated alternately to one or the other.
I have other crazy ideas too, but I hope this stirs some creative thinking about alternatives to our present sorry system.

Dear Fencepost, at least you are thinking about alternatives, which is a good thing.

I see our present system as terrible. I don't have much to offer by way of replacement, apart from spiritual renewal of all members of government.

One problem I see, perhaps selfishly, is that having the power, and the face2face contact with large trading partners like China, it must be soooo easy to simply shuffle and structure our trading relationship in terms of benefit for particular well funded, politically connected segments of the country, at the brutal expense of other segments.

If the Coalition represents "National"(Country) party and "Liberals" (big/small/medium business) I suppose they feel it is in their interests to support/develop policy which reaps rewards for those they represent. Clearly they do NOT represent the 'national interest' but 'vested' interest.

It would be possible to make a list of various industries which will simply die because of being told
a) You have to be competitive in worlds best practice.
b) China will not re-value its Yuan significantly nor will it raise the pay of its workers.

Those 2 points might make a good epitath on the gravestone of the car parts manufacturer CEO who blew his brains out because he was so hard pressed to be 'competitive' he re-invested the super entitlements of the workers back into the busines, just to keep them in jobs.

The Chinese want 'resources' and to send them back as 'value added product'.
They want better resource prices, they have a LIST of Aussie industries which they feel are too protected... what about their LABOR MARKET ?

The Coalition will not tread on this toe, when the lure of selling more stuff dug out of the ground, or grown on a sheeps back is giving short term reward.

Taking the idea of 'New System' and the problems I outlined in my last post, perhaps we need a 'Senate of National Interest'... which would supervise 'segmented bias' or.. 'political opportunism' based trade policy ?

What a responsibility would be on their shoulders, and how many enemies they would make :)

If only we human beings were not so fallen. I cannot think of any place or government, even in totalitarian states, where people don't govern in the interests of their supporters, rather than the nation.

Your scheme would give us a pendulum effect. Each time the government changed, we would see a different set of 'consultants' used to develop government policy, and different contracters receiving 'open tenders' haha... but at least the average would be ok :)

The Senate was intended to put a stop to things which would disadvantage the smaller states. Perhaps its time for it to be totally non partisan or party linked ?

Nationalise banks and all major industry in the hands of the workers without compensation.

Hey Tao.... I think we should rename your nick to MAO :)

Actually, on the banks, I disagree, instead I just advocate ONE 'Peoples bank' which offered low interest, sympathetic yet responsible lending policies and had almost zero 'fees and charges'.

That would probably be enough to bring the others into line.

At heart I am a socialist I guess, in the best Christian sense, not the usual political one. But my socialism would never destroy the individuals right to persue personal excellence and advancement based on their skill and insight.

So, in that sense I'm a 'centrist'.

Well Boaz,

I believe usury was frowned upon in the bible.

Jesus did throw out the money lenders :) Perhaps he was a socialist himself. If you’re interested, here http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/luxemburg/1905/misc/socialism-churches.htm is a link to an article by Rosa Luxembourg (a socialist who was killed by the Germans) discussing early Christians.

My point about nationalizing banks and major industry was rather simplistic, however if you think about it, it holds within it some profound implications.

What if banks and all major industry where owned by workers? What if charging interest on money and extracting private profit from social production was outlawed?

What changes would that make to the world? I’d really like people to think about it.