Let’s start again

IT MUST be starting to get through to the average citizen by now that politics in this country (in most countries actually) is taking us all down the gurgler. We seem to be stuck in an endless game of tit for tat name calling while critical infrastructure planning has been pretty much taken over by developers and corporations. Of course they are all in cahoots with the ‘financial wizards’, who are the people actually in control of what can and cannot happen. I don’t know which lot I trust the least.
There is a critical need for a new paradigm.
Sometimes I think we might be better to leave the pollies to the parliamentary in-fighting about the everyday issues and select a completely different set of independent professionals to actually take charge of the long-term planning of development and investment priorities. Something like this does seem to be available at the federal level but it is hard to tell from ground level if this is really working or not. Perhaps a judicial inquiry might tell us.
On the other hand – they are not all complete idiots so maybe the joint committee system could be adapted so that individuals from each party are assigned to specific tasks about which they have genuine knowledge. (This might help with some of the pre-selection issues too). Carefully balanced groups would then be locked up to hammer out the issues behind closed doors until they arrived at mutually acceptable decisions. Backroom lobbying and internal party wrangling would not be allowed although the committees should openly call for specialist knowledge whenever required, much as they do now.
Their deliberations and decisions would have to be summarised and brought back to the house before a limited but more general debate for final approval or rejection.
Obviously there would be much more detail involved in implementing such a process but it would certainly curtail the demeaning and offensive shouting matches that we currently endure.
Real debate would be great but we absolutely are not getting it in the current environment.
Lyn Kennedy,
Wesburn.