A lot is being written about the loss of electoral appeal and support suffered by Australia's two major political parties. These parties have taken the electors for granted over recent years and are now suffering the consequences of loss of trust and support.   If our politicians and their parties wish to regain electoral confidence and trust, they must change their practices. Instead of avoiding community discussion, or parading token input, on issues and then implementing partial solutions based on party dogma and political expediency, they need to engage the electorate in informed and broad-scale dialogue.  

Jim Chalmers is talking about relieving the pressures on family budgets by indexing social security payments. Yet he says nothing about indexing the personal income tax brackets.It is a shame for all our politicians that they do not call out and correct the insidious impact of inflation on family incomes by not indexing our income tax brackets. This increases personal tax by stealth!If there is a need to tax the population more it should be made to the public, and a case for how to spread the revenue load should be presented.Taxation by stealth is unconscionable conduct.

In Australia’s recent past, there have been many failures by our political leaders to address significant issues effectively. This has robbed many Australians of opportunities for a better life, led some to untimely deaths and wasted billions of dollars. We are now struggling to overcome the legacies of this ineffectiveness, and future generations will bare significant economic and opportunity costs.Examples of what a Royal Commission should examine are:Defence weaknesses in strategy, and procurement; Covid lockdowns and  payments; Turning abundant supply into a gas crisis;Losing our energy competitive advantage;Infrastructure and housing shortages; NDIS inefficiency and runaway costs

Australia has many policy issues that are in the political “too hard basket” for the required level of change. These issues are complex to fully understand, and some surface strong and varying attitudes across the community.  We have a freshly installed federal government saying it wants to re-establish trust in government and build a better Australia. Rebooting our democracy would be an excellent place to start.   https://www.aicd.com.au/good-governance/public-trust/organisation/democracy.html  

Economist Chris Richardson told Inquirer when asked about next week’s budget: “I go immediately to Elvis: a ­little less conversation, a little more action, please.”   We have a federal government attempting to address many significant issues but with a very limited mandate due to the gaming tactics used in extracting an electoral victory from a public who distrusts the political class.   The government needs to spell out the gravity of the gap between public expenditure expectations and revenue streams – and establish a citizen’s assembly to build a legitimate public mandate for the needed changes in expenditure and revenue raising.

Our country has become stuck in the “political mud (muck?)”.   Our government processes have become so politicised that our politicians avoid seriously addressing complex or divisive issues.   The public trust in government and our institutions has been so eroded that many electors are disengaged from our governance processes and cynically reject change initiatives.   As Ireland has discovered, there is a way out of the bog!https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-irishman-who-could-shape-australia-s-future-to-be-sure-20221012-p5bpb6.html