Dear Aidan,

Julia Gillard was a totally different case.
She was our first female Prime Minister who
had to deal with all that it entailed including
all the obstructions that were put in her path. She
had to also deal with a minority government and
with a very obstructive opposition -
yet she managed to have quite a lot of bills passed.

As for 4 year terms? Many politicians have expressed
the view that it takes one year to prepare for an
election, one year to get anything started once
elected, and the rest of the time is trying to get the
job done in a rediculously short time. Other countries
who do have longer terms have the opportunity to
achieve more depending on the quality of the government.

"Plenty" is not a sentence.

Perhaps.

Foxy we were achieving more than most, until we lost the plot & elected first the total ratbag KRudd, & then the Labor party swapped him for the vicious & vindictive Gillard. We would be paying for a decade or so for those mistakes, if we did not then have the Libs go crazy & put the disgusting Turnbull in the lodge.

Turnbull by himself is stupid enough to get most things wrong, but with him following on the catastrophe of the other 2 twits, we are rather unlikely to ever rectify the accumulative damage.

has anyone ever done the maths to see how much more debt the country would be in if Rudd/Gillard/Rudd has the purse strings for 8 years.

Debt might well be much the same runner, but taxes would be significantly higher.

Dear foxy,

Thank you. It really does beggar belief.

Even today we read reports of Barnaby Joyce's reaction to the Four Corners report on the huge amounts of water being stolen by the big irrigators in collusion with senior NSW government bureaucrats.

"You know what's [the Four Corners program is] all about - it's about them trying to take water off you, [to] paint a calamity," he said, according to the recording. "A calamity, for which the solution is that they're going take more water off you, and shut more of your towns down."

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/stop-greenies-running-the-show-joyce-unloads-on-four-corners-water-report-20170727-gxjp8s.html

Virtually all Australians who saw that episode would have been outraged and viewed at his statement as utterly ludicrous. This from our Deputy Prime Minister. How many more votes do you think he lost the Coalition today? They really need to understand how it looks very much like they are determined to hand Shorten a win. Joyce needs to be stripped of the water ministry forthwith but that will not happen. I repeat my assessment that the Nationals are the best lobby group in the country but it is bringing the rest of us down for their own ends.

Yet all we hear is whining about Turnbull. In reality he is one of the few senior figures of the party who seems to feel measured politics and policy is the way to go. Just mindboggling.