Belly I don't think that we are as different as what you would like to think. I am not in love with the liberals as you are with Labour. Put Turnbull in charge of the Liberals and they lose my vote. Does Labour keep your vote if Gillard hangs on by a thread? I would consider voting Labour if they cut with the feral Greens and had someone like Stephen Smith as leader. I am actually feeling sorry and embarassed as an Aussie with the current crop in power. They are extremely incompetent on every issue they touch.

I've always thought that a political life is a continuing education in human nature, including one's own. However, Peter Coleman writing in the preface to "The Costello Memoirs," said:

"...Whatever they may say, most of them do not go into Parliament to bring about particular reforms, they go in because they find the life irresistible. They want to be in it all their lives. They enjoy its exhilarating highs and take in miserable (and tedious) lows in their stride. They face long years in the wilderness with equanimity. They take for granted the slander of fools. They also believe that the voters will get it right in the end. Their day will come. They are politicians in the way others are poets. They can't help themselves."

The best we can hope for is that we've made the right choice. That we choose people who are not like that. People to whom all that stuff is the excuse of the seat-warmer, the hack, the careerist, or at best the adventurer. That we choose people who belong to a different parliamentary tradition. People who go into Parliament to make changes to the Australian settlement for the good of all Australians.
We can all hope that the voters will get it right in the end.

Lexi,
I have absolute faith that Australian voters will continue to get it wrong.

Dear Squeers,

Thanks for making me laugh. I needed to today. However, fingers-crossed they won't in the next election. Hopefully things would have changed a great deal by then to give voters a much better choice.

Lexi,

These two parties seem to represent varying degrees of the same thing.

What do you envisage changing - except maybe the leaders?

Both sides of politics talk the talk when in Opposition but when in power the walk is definitely a limp.

I was disappointed with JG's decision to exclude the NBN company from FOI scrutiny. Big mistake. Private companies are often asked permission to release correspondence under FOI if it comes under the purvey of the request. Often it is done as a courtesy because the reality is the information is not protected.

This is a misrepresentation.

In any case, in principle, if a company or charity is working on behalf of government using taxpayer money surely they are accountable in the same way. Otherwise why have government audits of these outsourced programs.

Ludicrous.