Politics is a dirty word

The excellent result in the Wentworth by election demonstrates the bankrupt nature of our political system. Party politics should be condemned to the scrapheap. Voters demonstrated very clearly that they don’t trust parties. Hopefully after the next Federal election, parliament will be dominated by independents. It will be interesting to see how a government of independents works. We are sick of political parties and their stranglehold on the community.

Chaos at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation with the sacking of its managing director and resignation of the chairman is likely to be repeated unless there is a radical overhaul of the organisation and its structure. The top executive should never have been a director. The role should be that of a Chief Executive Officer. The only role of directors is to set direction and policy. Implementation of the policies and day to day administration must be solely in the hands of the CEO. To ensure editorial integrity, an Editor in Chief should be appointed. Perhaps the funding model should be changed. Rather than the Government handing over a bucket of money each year, perhaps a better model would for the Government to allocate an annual amount for public broadcasting - the ABC, SBS and any other entrant could then put together bids to provide particular services.

The action of Australian politicians in allowing poultry farms with stocking densities of 10,000 hens per hectare to describe their eggs as free range, opens up some major issues. One is the level of unfair competition from big business against small family farms.Another is that consumers won’t accept that definition. Most planning authorities are unlikely to accept such a density because of issues like odour, contamination of land, aquifers and waterways. It's likely that many planning authorities will refuse permits for new free range farms because of the absurdly high standards developed by politicians.

Voter apathy throughout Australia is nothing new but it will be more pronounced with the next election, following the performance of our politicians in Canberra. Why would anyone vote for a member of a political party? Parties subvert elected representatives to the point where they no longer act in the interests of their constituents or the community at large – their only concerns are for the party and their own benefit. There is scant voter choice between the ALP or the coalition. It will make little difference which forms Government after the election, the same bureaucrats will run the show anyway. We are voting for local members, not for a particular individual as Prime Minister. The only way for real change is to vote for representatives who work for us – not for their party. So we need far more independents in parliament, people who consider issues and fully debate them rather than just trot out party mantra and rhetoric. Before casting a vote, talk to the people seeking to rep...

The unfolding muddle in Canberra confirms the absurdity of our political system – we simply don’t need the draining cost of a Federal Parliament. The country would be more efficiently run by COAG – already made up by representatives of all states. We don’t vote for a Prime Minister, we vote for local members who then appoint a PM. That’s how it works so why go through the charade of Federal elections. Politicians put their parties before the interests of the community – so the problem could be solved by eliminating political parties, ensuring that candidates present their own views and intentions to their constituents.

Turkey’s proposed stealth fighter jet may gain wide sales throughout the world following Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on Turkey. UK firms BAE Systems and Roll Royce are assisting Turkey with developing the fighter TFX programme. Britain and Turkey have signed a deal worth more than $140 million to develop the stealth fighter jet which is being designed as a weapons platform superior to the US F35 Joint Strike fighter. Pakistan is already interested in buying the plane for its airforce, and many other world sales are expected as confidence in the US declines. First test flights of the plane are scheduled for 2023 with already-designed turbofan engines but later models will be fitted with locally-produced engines.

The unfolding nonsense in Canberra within the Coalition Government demonstrates yet again the stupidity of our political system. For years, successive Governments have been enmeshed in internal party politics. Politicians owe more allegiance to their parties than to voters in their electorates. The people do not elect Prime Ministers – they elect local members to Parliament who appoint the PM. The best way forward is to dump preferential voting and go back to a ‘first past the post’ system for elections. That would eliminate the absurdity of candidates winning a seat (particularly in the Senate) when they only received a handful of votes. The next step would be to ban political parties – they corrupt our political representatives by imposing a duty on them which is seen as more important than governing the country for the benefit of the cdommunity. 00