the nature of the beast

Just as a leopard does not change its spots it seems that the thug style approach to politics in the Liberal party (if not established during of the Howard era certainly consolidtated) in Australia remains. I was reading tonight that Tony Abbot has had to reign in his fellow representatives after reports that

Liberal MP Alby Schultz threatened independent Tony Windsor

great. I know that many voted for the Coalition to demonstrate dissatisfaction with the Labor party (and there is much to be dissatisfied in) but this is a stark reminder (if the other post election bullying have not been) that the nature of the Liberal party has not yet turned away from the lies and twists of the Howard era.

If you've forgotten babies overboard then perhaps you may ask who it was that got us into Afghanistan and Iraq, that would be Howard and the Liberals.

Just as a reminder, lets look again at the break down of the so called unified coalition:



That table is sourced on the results so far from the AEC. So making up the "liberal nation party coalition" we have:

• Liberals
• The Nationals

but as you can see in that above table they aren't even that unified as they have further splits into:

• Liberal National Party of Queensland
• Country Liberals

seriously ... its worse then the Monty Python skit about the fragmentation of resistance to the Romans.

so where is this "two party preferred" heading to when we have 4 parties (if they are not distinct entities then why are they listed as being distinct?) making up the two party system which underpins our democracy. From this source

it is possible to derive a two-party-preferred figure, where the votes are divided between the two main candidates in the election. In Australia, this is usually between the candidates from the two major parties

Ohh ... I guess that Tony is thinking that they were the popular front ... splitters

Reading comments by The Australian writer Paul Kelly:

But where, exactly, is Labor heading? Its tactical skill at clinging to office is impressive. The risk, however, is that Gillard is affirming Labor's weakness and accentuating its decline into a situation where, with a falling primary vote, its future is to share power with Greens and independents as the once mighty Labor Party fades into history.

I feel that he may be bang on the money. Which isn't what I think of as a bad thing. I think that here in Australia we may be ready for politics where its about what we want rather than about what a party wants.

Perhaps this is something we can actually do with modern technology. Perhaps debate in Parliament could be aimed at people (instead of the other bored pollies) and we could direct our members with our intentions based on polling by some electronic method. I think its possible to have politicians turned back into servants of the people rather than some sort of "seat of power".