How convenient, some can not remember John Howard's letters, his fridge magnets and unwanted phone messages. Balance please.
Ah Belly, that makes it alright then ?

I think you all know my Christian roots and the propensity of some to prophesy, but I am going to make a prophesy, that we will see either come true or be proved false. My prophesy is that before Kevin Rudd goes to the polls again, his government is going to run all State governments up the crush, as we used to say in the cattle industry, and clip their powers back, enormously.

They are currently a burden on society generally, and Bligh and her lot are just one of the four on the East Coats, and underbelly, with one on the West Coast, run by the other lot, that are going to be jerked back into reality. Forty years ago, a major shift in power occurred in New South Wales and all real power shifted from the people to the legal profession. This shift was illegal but it has continued for forty years, with all the States eventually following suit. It depended on a lie, and that lie is the concept of State Sovereignty.

I happen to believe that State Sovereignty is a complete abomination, and as a student of law, an absolute and illegal alternative to a belief in either Almighty God or the Rule of Law. I am a fan of Lionel Murphy. Lionel was an atheist, an industrial chemist before he studied law, did a stint as Attorney General, and ended up on the High Court where he died of cancer at 62 years old. However Lionel understood that you had to have a Rule of Law and only one Top Dog. That Top Dog is the Commonwealth. In a country of only 21 million, we don’t need States anymore. They are inefficient, expensive, useless, and costly, and Kevin Rudd has the tools in his garden shed, to create the greatest stimulus package the country has seen since 1900, by curbing State power.

I do not think it matters how much Blah Blah Bligh pumps out. The Mutiny on the Bounty is about to be repeated in Queensland, and Fletcher Christian Rudd’s government, will take charge

Xammy, I agree with your list of priorities. But they aren't mutually exclusive. If our system worked as it was supposed to, then our pollies would have to concentrate on your point 4 in order to achieve point 1. They'd go hand in hand, perfectly.

Even with our somewhat corrupted system, they are still pretty closely related.....aren't they?

But then we have the problem that what the majority of the people want is not always the best course of action. This is particualrly true right now, in a time where the pursuance of a sustainability paradigm is of the utmost importance, but is not of the utmost importance in the minds of most voters.

So it leaves governments in a very difficult position - of striving to maximise their direct appeal to the populace and be seen to do what the people want as far as they can, or to lead and take the hard decisions, promote them vehemently and hope like buggery that the people come around to see the merit of it all without condemning them for using taxpayers' money to promote said policies.....or some combination of the two.

When an enormous degree of inherent mistrust for politicians is factored in to this mix, the whole business of governing becomes just about impossible, without a massive dischord developing between the governers and the governees.

There is another major problem - just about any government that is elected is elected on the basis of being the lesser of two evils. It is a case of the other mob losing, not of them winning. So right from the start they don't have much genuine support.... and don't have mandate to do a bloody thing!

So how on earth do we get around this and engender a healthy relationship between governments and constituents?

Ludwig,
Fair point particularly the governments losing rather than winning in most cases.
The perversion dynamic you missed is the swing seat power and swing voter.

In reality parties strategize on the basis of swing voters in and swing seats . They rightly assume there are a rump of voters on both sides that they are never going to to win over the opposition's so they concentrate on on the swing-set.
Howard got the demographics wrong confused his ideology/legacy with what the swing-set wanted. Hence government (seats) change on 3-8 % on average.

Wannabes need to capture their seat % and not upset their base . One seat in Qld the decider was was self gratifying interest V scientific and common sense (the bay and increased inheritance.).
This is one reason 3rd parties tend to be more policy conscious.

At the base of all this are emotional advertising focusing on the trivial 'sensation' ...Note the importance of the Silly ACTIONS of a PS in this topic. One could ask where is the relevance to the topic...Labor are the enemy (prejudice).
NB the presidential style of elections based on public personality rather than substance or ability as in forward thinking. Howard survived by playing on fears and pork barrelling, and steady as she goes even though evidence was mounting against this i.e. AGW.
Now we have Labor power structures and negative perspectives...not for the party to lose we have massive watering down of policies.

With such small margins to play with Govts/ parties are reticent to offend ...the result is policy sclerosis, glacial change and relative party effective interchangeability.

While raising the public level of information and though is in the long run clearly the best solution. In the short run they would be picked off by the conditioned public's short attention span.

I think that factual no party/ personality spin advertising would help but then again policy is second to gaining/holding party power.