Political rant

[vonstrassburg]

Since I've gotten into another political s**tfight, here's where I stand on such issues in case anyone's interested:

• Climate change is real, it's here, and it's happening now.  There may be a lot of noise in the press saying "oh but wait some climate scientists think it's not all bad" and "there's this guy in Milwaukee who reckons that it's all

Comments

[vonstrassburg]

Abolish the senate because the difference in actual power between a government that has control over the senate (e.g. Howard's last term where he managed to push through workchoices) and one that is not is so large that a government with control over the senate has an enormous temptation to mis-use that power for nefarious purposes, as did Howard.

On the other hand, an opposition that has control over the senate also has a temptation to use it for nefarious purposes, as Fraser did in 1975 or Abbott (with the assistance of the minority parties) did earlier this year.

The only way to remove that temptation is to remove the senate.

If someone set fire to s52 of the federal constitution it would be no great loss.

"I don't endorse the corruption rife within state government" -- I assume you're speaking about NSW here, as shall I. Having seen this at ground level, it might surprise people to learn that as far as I can tell there is no corruption at the executive or parliamentary level of NSW state government that comes close to matching the corruption within the NSW stage bureaucracy. I have seen department heads and director level appointees feathering their nests rather nicely at the taxpayer's expense, and almost none of this gets reported in the news (although a fair bit is coming out at the moment). Replacing Labor in NSW with Fatty O'Barrell isn't going to change that particularly much, what needs doing is a fairly serious dismantling of the entire enterprise. I wouldn't centralise it in Canberra, though, apart from the major departments such as transport, health, education and major highways, I'd distribute it more widely throughout the regions to limit the damage that can be caused by such corruption, or at least reduce it in scale.

[cyberdjinn]

On the other hand: Queensland. Just saying. Yes, I know you want to abolish States too (I agree), but it shows what happens without an upper house.