Voters

Summer’s not over yet but those of us lucky enough to have secured a decent break over Christmas/New Year are mostly filing back into work this week or next.

Joy!

So too our politicians where at the national level, a snap poll theoretically can be called at any time.

Continue reading "The end of Kevin 747" »

Some twenty years ago the clamour among reformers of our democratic institutions was for fixed parliamentary terms, the argument going that they would provide greater certainty and prevent the expedient manipulation of the political process.

What has happened instead is that fixed terms have become a protection order for mediocrity and incompetence, where dud governments have been shielded from the voters‘ wrath, premierships have been passed on like a baton with no direct and immediate input from voters, and policy cynicism has been entrenched as the political cycle is loaded at the front with harsh decisions and back-ended with decadent cash splurges and reckless pork-barrelling.

NSW is the most compelling case study - a dysfunctional basket case, the state that by rights should be the powerhouse of federation, now resembling some kind of anarcho-syndicalist commune whereby the elected representatives on both sides of the chamber are so incapable of achieving anything that the Speaker recently lost control of the House and had to ring a long bell to shut the joint down, saving a government which, if it were a dog, would have been taken down the back of the yard and shot some time ago.

Continue reading "Scrap fixed terms and give the voters a mercy rule" »