Chris,

Forgive me if I've got the wrong end of the sick.

But you say:

"I reme4mber being arrested at age 9, put before the children's court, sentenced to 9 years incarceration as a ward of the state and see my family disintegrate, my mother die of depression and my father become a chronic drunk because they wouldn't tell them were we kids were being held."

That happened to you?

And yet you appear to be lamenting that it's not instituted these days.

Odd?

Poirot,
I got an education, whether I liked it or not, got my Matriculation, joined the military, became a 'gentleman' went off to numerous skirmishes, confrontations and wars (including an aborted assassination attempt on Sukarno) came home with a baked brain after Vietnam. Lasted three weeks on the streets of Sydney with no uniform, no discipline, no gun and nobody to tell me what to do.
A girl picked me up out of the gutter, cleaned me up and pointed me in the direction of the law. I joined up and with my military background found myself at home. I married the girl and spent the next 30 years as a hard nosed detective in the Sydney squads.
Many of my peers ended up in the prisons of Australia or dead at the hands of police. I might well have been one of them.
Institution for the right reasons under the right conditions has its place. I include National Service in the list of institutions.

Rather than hitting the ground running as promised, the new Abbott government has stumbled out of the blocks on a number of issues. Much of the early incompetence might possible be put done to inexperience, naivety and a distorted sense of political ideology or in the case of Bishop and Pyne all three.
On the question of a hike in GST, such would make the carbon tax look like small beer. I envisage that in 3 years time the Abbott government, assuming Abbott is still at the helm, given the mans incompetence that is highly unlikely. Going to an election as the most unpopular government the world has ever seen, and that includes the Papa Doc government of Haiti, it would be absolute political suicide for Abbott to go to the voters promising a massive hike in the GST. Then again like Papa Doc, Tony may resort to personally counting the votes back at Lodge.
Just an observation, has anyone else noticed the extraordinary similarity in apperence between Tony and Papa Doc, they could be taken for identical twins, agree,.. no.

Paul,

Talk of incompetence, Christine Milne's staff are abandoning ship due to her incompetence as reflected in the drop in votes by 30$.

As for TA, what do expect? complete set of new legislation in 10 days?

It took Labor 6 years to do all this damage, fixing it is not going to happen overnight.

Where's Tony?

....the Abbott govt has borrowed over $3 billion since election

So what did they borrow it for Poirot, pay labor interest perhaps!

Paul, nice rant mate, about six years too late I would suggest, as you have pretty much summed up the labor government.

Nice work!