Ludwig,

Whooops I think I might have misread what you meant

<<What we need is something like the ACCC, which can assess just exactly what constitutes a promise and therefore what constitutes a broken promise>>

But picking such a body would be a huge problem --and if the ABC was the selector!

So Ludwig, I guess come next election we will have to choose between broken promises, and getting things done, boats, carbon tax repeal, to name just two, or total mismanagement of our finances with failure after failure.

As for broken promises, how do you think you would cope if you had made promises only to find out you have no money to spend. But at least the up side is Abbotts ridiculous PP scheme is unlikely to get through.

Something the look forward to, hey!

<< As for broken promises, how do you think you would cope if you had made promises only to find out you have no money to spend… >>

Rehctub, the government and opposition need to have a full handle on the financial situation and know what they can and cannot promise in accordance with said finances. It is NOT acceptable for them to make promises and then renege on them by way of them not being financially viable.

A promise needs to be a promise, end of story. It is simply not acceptable for promises to be broken. And when they get broken at the top level of or society, by our government, then there is just no way in the world that it should be accepted.

We absolutely need something like APES (Australian Promise Enforcement Scheme) to make sure that governments, and individual politicians, who break promises, are seriously punished for it.

That'right SPUD there are no crooks in the Liberal Party, just have a look Liberal MP's and the ICAC in NSW. Are you that naive? Sorry you are that naive. Remember the Liberal Jackie Kelly in the seat of Penrith, No!

Well where do we rate the promise to 'Stop the Boats' now that the 157 asylum seekers have landed on Australian soil? The spin now is to be claiming 'we said we would get them back to the Howard level of 2-3 boats a years not that we would stop them completely'.

"the government and opposition need to have a full handle on the financial situation and know what they can and cannot promise in accordance with said finances"

Thats a much bigger issue, the way things are structured now there is as I understand it far to much detail thats not available to an opposition. The processes are set up help the incumbents rather than to provide transparency to either the people of the country or the subset represented by the opposition of the day.

Clearly some promises made in the hope of being elected are rash and to often politicsl pretexts for breaking committments are very flimsy but there is also a good case to be made for the true state of affairs to be much more visible.

R0bert