BOAZ DAVID your comments bought me back to the thread that post was at least rational debate.
Weigh my posts along side some from conservatives in this forum, look at young Dans effort just yesterday.
Do you see much of my party right or wrong in my posts? seen my anti NSW Labor comments?
I try for balance, and have true concerns for the state of conservative Australian politics.
Yes welded on Labor but my party fails me often heard of Woolongong NSW? a weak opposition , Labor in power no need to perform is death for my party.
Not one state, no chance in federal Parliament for years ,yet some blame Labor?
Is it not clear that most Australians voted Labor in each state?
Look in this forum see people say I will stand, know 2% is the best they can get two in every hundred!
Conservatives turn a federal member away from his branch just because he is not from their right wing faction?
I have a question David would you EVER vote for a party or candidate you thought was criminal or the wrong one?
I never would, have walked into the polling booth and not voted for my party because the candidate was unworthy.
I vote Labor because they best serve my wishes but a balanced Parliament does too, no such animal can exist until conservatives confront the reality of their messy problems.
Wollongong blackens my party NSW shames it too but the conservative right of the Liberal party is as bad as all those crimes maybe worse.

Yes i am proud and 2% well thats a start.

I am proud that i stood as an independent

I am proud that i stood up to represent the people

I am proud that i do not bend over for party politics

I am proud that i can fight against those who are corrupt and deceptive.

We can look at Heiner, the justice project, how the labor party and unions did what they did.

I am proud to be able to have my say and not be threatened with expulsion

So i am proud that i will be running again for the people so that the people have a voice in parliament, where someone will stand and say no that is not good enough for the people of this electorate.

You talk about parties when in fact you should be talking about the people and their communities.

Stuart Ulrich
Independent

Tapp,

Yawn .....

PaulL you make your point however the thread is not about dreams even bad ones it is about the fact conservatives need direction, for this country's sake.
87% of this country's voters vote for them or Labor and will continue to do so, that number is conservative two party preferred has meaning.
Right now getting rid of Nelson is the wrong move he is in fact useful because a new leader in some months time can be seen as real improvement and nelson can be blamed for much.
But surely if he makes some of the unpopular changes now he can serve his party best.
In my view conservatives should
Have one party nation wide ,like Labor have a country branch.
Get openness into Branch's and welcome new members new ideas.
Stop niggling in the house on dead issues and lies but not on good opposition.
Have a national policy's debate asking all to get involved.
Review policy's on Iraq, why fight Labor if most voters agree?
Above all get back to the middle ground they once controlled so well, it hurts the party to insult those who once had been Howard's battlers by idiotic statements like that bankers one from Brendon Nelson, how did it win one vote?

This week started with that poll result 73% think Rudd is the man for the job, but poor Brendon?
Less than 10% the need for change is so very bad that conservatives must act, I was wrong, we all are often.
Brendon must go now he has become a joke, my idea he could be dumped latter and blamed for much was wrong.
Victoria may be the birth place of a united conservative party it has been spoken of for the upcoming by election maybe 5 more Conservative seats will face such elections by this time next year.
The party should look to its selection process and pick the best candidates it matters very much who they pick.

Steel “When you have two choices that are almost identical and revel in their own political rhetoric both wanting to be the mainstream 'centre', you essentially get a dictatorship.”

When I was in UK in 1970s under the pendulum of labour versus conservatives there were traumatic changes to national policy depending who was in power, I used to look envyingly at USA where the US republicans were considered to be something like the UK conservatives and the US democrats were considered to be something like the UK conservatives and wish some commonality of approach could be worked out. In the end the old labour party and its cronies of the left have been assigned to the dustbin of failed political causes. The whole of western democratic politics has shifted to the right as a consequence.

The point, a democracy can work as well with two centrist parties or a centre skewed from where it might seem now.

The “dictatorship” comes in when there is no alternative to the incumbent government, regardless of the similarity of policy/manifesto.

If they have both got it right, what we are left to elect is the individuals, not the party politics and somehow, I think that might be a better thing.

Right or left, every political persuasion has its thinkers. The Fabians or the Monday club. The best way to find the best policies is by discussion, bouncing ideas and values around d with other thinkers. The think tanks are where those discussions take place. Dictatorship would be more at home where the despot decided on everything and I do recall the political intelligentsia were some of the first to go under Stalin.

As for "two oranges from the same corrupt tree."

I would note, both parties have proceeded to respect the democratic process. I fail to see where the "corruption" comes from. Certainly you could not be comparing them to the left of politics when no communist government has ever come to power, except by violent revolution and usually the murder of the democratically elected assembly.