On trust in the broken system
Sheila Walkerden writes: I want to see immediate and decisive action on climate change, raising of Newstart allowance and closure of offshore detention. Also federal ICAC and control over political donations.
Phil Anson writes: The problem is people do this type of survey and complain. But there is no change and problems are very clear and yet we keep getting the same result from elections. When will enough be enough? Do bush fires have to been seen in city streets, or when you turn on a tap in the kitchen in a city and no water comes out is that when you start to see the problem. So much inaction by people has allowed the government to treat the country with contempt. I believe there will need to be a generation change and someone it either party can show leadership, rather than the way it is now; and stop wanting to be treated like a celebrity but rather engage with the country on where it needs to go.
Marilyn Peters writes: Because I am a bit long in the tooth, I can remember the Paddington Bear “scandal” of a Labor politician. He had to resign. Angus Taylor should be reminded of this event in our political history for a start.
Jaki Rogers writes: Nothing — totally impossible after the last ten years.
Joe Boswell writes: Bernard Keane’s take on the 2019 Australian Election Study is certainly better than Radio National the same morning. RN’s report said the big problem revealed in the study is the electorate’s growing lack of trust in politicians! So, all will be well once we fix those pesky distrustful voters. On the other hand an amazing 25% of voters currently say politicians can be trusted. Perhaps this means they trust the politicians to look after themselves and their mates (and everyone else can go to hell). Wasn’t something like that one of Morrison’s more credible declarations after he took over the Liberal Party? When Keane says the political class is “no longer fit for purpose”, I wonder. For certain purposes it could hardly be improved: the best self-serving political class money can buy, and a political system set up to ensure it stays that way. Would it actually be any worse if the franchise had never been extended from where it stood 200 years ago?
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I had not expected that the day would come when I would be ashamed of my country.
crolly, I`m not only ashamed,I`m disgusted and appalled, the early convicts were treated better than we treat the unemployed,the sick, the old,the disabled and the young.
I could not even begin to contemplate trust in the political class at a federal level until Morrison, the liar from the shire, is gone and we have a proper federal ICAC along NSW lines.
While the economy stagnates and poverty and in equality rises, I blame the voting red necks and ideologues as much as I blame the miserable heartless conservative redneck coalition politicians, if they did note vote these punishers of the poor and helpless into power they would not be able to get their cruel policies passed, while these so called christians sit in their churches and chant and wave their arms around like voodoo priests and chant their mystic spells there are people living on the streets and kids living in abject poverty, how they sleep at night is hard to imagine. .
Go back a hundred odd years ago when the franchise was gradually being extended to “male” house owners in Great Britain.what did we get but the complaints of the Christian Socialist author and reformer, the Reverend Charles Kingsley.”They are rightly called the deserving poor, because they work scab, vote Conservative and richly deserve all the hardships and indignities that are thrust upon them “. Unfortunately, the working class in Australia don’t seem to know or care and are quite happy to live their lives of quiet desperation. However, we have to suffer with them.
A bigger issue is still not being faced; unlike the Right, we get too easily lost in debate.
Attacking the crony network has long been essential, yet virtually ignored. Whatever the Misgovernment, the political class can only be forced to represent us instead of themselves by relentless criticism of institutionalised corruption such as the jobs for the boys and girls as they switch between politics and profit-seeking.
“Morrison needs to look after Abbott” wrote a columnist in The Oz on the midnight of election day. As a typical example of the class war we’re told we rejected, Newstart recipients need not apply.
Only when we break up the network of favours and rewards that allows the decision-makers to be so thoroughly controlled by the ruling clique, and so willing to serve its interests, can be expect more representative and responsive government.