Paul
"Start with Howard, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, the man lied through his teeth. Is he on your list?"

Sure! He belongs in prison for the rest of his life. Why not? Can you imagine if any private person made the same blatantly false misrepresentations that he did?

The idea that the major parties stand for any kind of significant difference is for gullible fools. They are two wings of the same exploitative class, who live by their double standards in declaring for themselves a necessity, what they criminalise in everyone else as a fraud.

"If it refers to promises a politician makes and breaks it would be impossible to enforce for obvious reasons. "

The obvious reason being that the politicians themselves get to decide whether or not they should be liable for fraudulent misrepresentation. Yet we have people in here flying to their defence when there's any talk of cutting back their fraudulent thieving from the people

A vital first step in making politicians more independent and accountable would be to limit all political donations to a maximum $100. And why should they be tax deductible? Our representatives aren't charitable institutions, or deserving of charity. This is a deliberate incentive for the rich to buy and own governments -whether they be rich individuals, corporations or unions.

For starters FOX should be abolished. How can billionaire broadcast media be anything other than an instrument of biased free market propaganda, which is exactly what FOX serves up, 24/7, ad nauseam.
 
If the free market thrives on competition, why are free marketers afraid of non profit based media?
If there was such a thing as a free market in media, we would have a choice of tens, if not hundreds of independently owned stations, instead of just a very small handful, all supplied through just one carrier -on cable/satellite.
When will libertarians learn that Liberty is a finite resource? The more liberty one person takes (like Murdoch) the less liberty is left in the rest of the market.
In a conversation such as this, I would suggest it might be helpful to automatically replace the words “the government” with the words “the people”. Do we really want 10% less input from “the People”?
(Bureaucracy is a beast of an entirely different colour, and is firstly the product of the People's desire for better service from their government, but largely a product of itself; good representatives should be aware of this, and IF independent, guard against it.)
If the People aren't truly the Government in a democratic society, then we should make it so.
People get the government they deserve. This current mess is entirely the fault of an apathetic, disconnected constituency, which fails to demand better of it's representatives.

Dear Grim,

You wrote: If the People aren't truly the Government in a democratic society, then we should make it so.
People get the government they deserve. This current mess is entirely the fault of an apathetic, disconnected constituency, which fails to demand better of it's representatives.

I disagree with the above. Australia is not a democratic society. It takes more than elections to make a democratic society. To form a representative democracy there must be adequate information for people to make an enlightened choice, an electorate with the tools to make such a choice and elected representatives which consider the wishes of their electorate, their conscience and the good of Australia and the world and not only the dictates of the party room.

None of the foregoing exists. Our media are controlled by a few big interests. For the most part our schools do not educate students in critical thinking and evaluating arguments. Our representatives must in general follow the dictates of the party room.

I think it's unfair to blame the constituency. We did not set up this system and do not deserve this government. Democracy might be good if we had it. I was one of the many who demonstrated against the Iraq War. Howard wanted Australia in the Iraq War so Australia was in the Iraq War. It doesn't matter what we the people demand. Most of us do not have a voice in selecting candidates, and our wishes are ignored in what they do. If we were a democracy it would be fair to blame the constituency, but we are not a democracy.

G'day David f.
How very peculiar. While I largely agree with your points, you seem emphatically opposed to a point I did NOT make.
I never claimed Australia was a Democratic society; or the USA or anywhere else in the 'Western' world, for that matter.
I merely pointed out that “If the People aren't truly the Government in a democratic society, then we should make it so.”
While the current situation may not be our fault, it is still our responsibility; simply because if we the people don't do something, no one will. It's blatantly obvious all our representatives, of every stripe aren't interested in reforming the system which sustains them.
Your reference to Howard in particular is interesting, as -near the end, especially- he was something of a populist. If your -and my- protests went unheard, it could only be because we were outnumbered by that same apathetic, disconnected, silent majority I referred to earlier.
The current “Getup” movement is proving relatively more successful, simply because it allows people to protest with remarkably little effort. In fact, it could be more literally described as “Don't getup”.

Dear Grim,

You did not claim Australia is a democratic country, but you did claim the Australian public is to blame for what is wrong as it is apathetic. However, when one feels that nothing one does will make any difference apathy is quite a reasonable attitude. Our nuclear furnace is casting its benevolent rays on the lomandra, the cycads, the poinciana, the ixora, the mock orange, the bromeliads and me while I write this. There is great human suffering going on in the world at this time. Beulah. peel me a grape. I just got a most friendly email from one of my sons.

I agree with you on getup.

G'day David f,
apathy may be reasonable, but it can't be helpful or effective. Please understand, I'm most certainly not putting myself on the other side of this fence; I'm as prone to apathy as the next person.
Nor, as an egalitarian and democrat, am I suggesting that “the majority must change” (although isn't that precisely the attitude the over achievers, the movers, shakers and formers of our society, take?).
Clearly, if we can't bring the majority to Democracy, then we need to bring Democracy to the majority.
In this techno-info age, that really shouldn't be so challenging. I am suggesting we follow the example of Getup and bring the act of protest -or simple engagement- into people's homes. Imagine the Getup model, operating in every constituency, and making the representative answerable to the claims made.
I also agree with the US's founding fathers, that a constitutional republic offers greater freedom for the majority than a pure (lawless) democracy. Nevertheless, I believe our representatives should be representative, and not public servants by another name.
While I agree with all your points about what the Gov. should and should not be doing, may I point out that they are all more about Gov. expenditure than actual size of the Gov. This I think is more to do with the number and income of bureaucrats. BTW, Jardine (Peter, Wing Ah, K. Hume...)'s point about flexi time is nonsense; flexible time is about being able to work more hours one day in order to work less on another. It doesn't change the hourly rate, and has no effect on the total wage bill.
The only (free market style) way to cut down the size of bureaucratic departments that springs to my mind would be to allocate fixed sums to departments (Department Heads), so they can determine how many employees they share the income with. Unfortunately, like so many free market solutions, it offers no benefit to the comsumers/taxpayers; we'd still be paying the same amount (most of which would be pocketed by the DH), but have more unemployed to cater for.