I admit that the initial post was a calculated bit of mischief. However, a great deal of value has come from the various responses. We seem to be agreed that on the whole you need governments to manage essential services; you need a bureaucracy that is apolitical and that on the whole, given the alternatives, democracy is generally a good thing.
We can agree on all those things yet still question whether or not the political conventions that have evolved over time serve us well.
Firstly we have prime ministers behaving like presidents - yet the only people who ever voted for either Howard or Rudd were the people in their electorates.
Secondly there is the peculiar notion of a particular party having a mandate. Since preferential voting is compulsory we do not know what vote individuals would have received if people were not required to allocate their preferences - in many instances I would have liked to have the option to vote for just one person (this is particularly true for the senate.) In actual fact if we look at it dispassionately a government is formed generally with considerably less than 50% of the popular vote - it is only when preferences are taken into account that they get over 50%. So it seems that a minority of the Australian public give a particular govt a mandate - no wonder many of us feel disillusioned.

Democracy is important but if politicians put their political party ahead of the public good they are effectively undermining our confidence in democracy. For example I have no respect for the way either party handled the ETS debate - it should have been a situation where politicians had a free vote so that the legislation would have won or lost on its merits. When a controversial vote is a product of party discipline it is unlikely that many people will respect the outcome.
If we take our democracy for granted the danger is that it will be hijacked and eventually destroyed.

Dear BAYGON,

I couldn't agree with you more.

Ignore your rights and they'll go away!

Abandon False Hope … And Get Some Real Hope

Washington’s Blog
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/01/how-can-we-abandon-false-hope-and-start.html
It is easy to be skeptical.

Virtually all of our politicians are corrupt...See this, this and this...[-see link]..

The giant banks are running the show.

The healthcare bill being rammed through Congress “is just another bailout of the financial system“, and law school professors say that it is unconstitutional.

America is on a permanent war footing, when the people (and soldiers) are sick of war.

Our civil rights have been eroded, and yet we are not being made any safer.

Top scientists, economists and environmentalists all say that cap and trade being pushed through in American and around the world is a scam which won’t significantly reduce C02 emissions, and will only help in making the financial players who crashed the economy even more wealthy.

Obama has sold us out.

So there’s nothing we can do, right?

Well, actually – as I have previously documented, things would actually change very quickly if enough people started raising a ruckus.

The ironic thing is that if all of the people who think of themselves as cynics or skeptics made noise, things would instantly change for the better. In other words, the millions upon millions of cynics/skeptics/self-described “realists” aren’t raising a ruckus against the fraud being committed by the giant banks, the corruption of our political system, or the lawlessness and imperial arrogance of our military-industrial complex because they think things can’t change.

But by staying silent, they are actually creating the conditions in which nothing can change.

If the millions of cynics woke up to the fact that they are a huge group – especially when combined with the people who are already actively working for the restoration of a democratic republic, justice, and the rule of law – they would suddenly realize that collectively we can change things in a heart beat.

Don’t believe me?

Read what Daniel Ellsberg and Dean Baker and others say.

And remember that hoping that Obama will change things is a “hopiate”. We must stop smoking the “hopium” – no good daddy or heroic leader will save us.

We have to save ourselves.

The truth is that:

“Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up.”
“It’s time to stop waiting for hope to be handed down, and start pushing it up, from the hoperoots.”
The truth is that real hope is an act of will. Real hope is like a muscle that needs to be developed. Real hope is an act of freedom, defiance and courage in the face of power, corruption and tyranny.

Skepticism, cynicism and “realism” is an act of fear, of cowardice, of apathy. Because if the skeptics just got off their backsides and made some noise, things would change.

So abandon false hope (as the skeptics have properly done). But start getting a backbone, take some steps that can actually change things, and start getting some real hope.

Note: I am not going to tell you what to do. But if you don’t have any ideas, start here
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/move-your-money-a-new-yea_b_406022.html