AS OUR societal and political relationship changes, we as a community must suggest and support change aimed at keeping our government relevant. Social media has guaranteed that every political thought bubble is analysed to the greatest degree whether it was ever intended to reach debate or not.

This has resulted in limited forward thinking as there may be a risk of putting voters off side before a case can even be properly thought through, and has resulted in a dearth of political statesmen as no one proposes anything far reaching that might benefit Australia in the long term due to the fact that our terms in office are too short to implement and prove a concept.

The cost of elections and the re-branding that political parties go through when they come into office must be minimised, but the most important change we need to make is to give federal politicians greater opportunity to make momentous decisions and put them in place for the good of our nation without backing away out of fear of losing power in the three years now available.

If a political party has adequate time to take power, have faith in making decisions, and the introduced changes are given time to bear fruit and be seen by the voters to be successful, we will see greater productivity and economy. Three year terms are a barrier to taking big decisions and four year terms are short enough to allow for the removal of a non-functioning party. 

Let’s have the debate, alter half senate elections to suit, and allow the government we elect an opportunity to be visionary and not hamstrung by a three year election cycle.

I AM more than a little bewildered as to what is happening with Australian politics at the moment. Here we are with the self-proclaimed champions of the free market, the Liberal party, running around trying to strong-arm private companies into regulating their prices and keeping open an old, outdated clunker of a power station.

They are willing to potentially spend billions of taxpayers’ money on refurbishing old or building new coal fired power stations at a time when the almighty market (the thing that they used to tell us will solve all our problems if we just let it work) is actively walking away from coal fired power.

Ironically, while this is happening, they are also gobbing off decrying Bill Shorten as an East German socialist. The most East German thing going on in politics right now is the Coalition’s attitude to energy policy.

THIS is something of a bottomless pit for the state.  Even with the record amounts the present state government has spent or committed, we still supposedly have ‘the worst public hospital system in the country’, although news from other states might suggest that scenario could be argued.

While we have a population seemingly not prepared to make the effort to live healthy lives, with obesity and smoking two major problems, our health system will always struggle.  Every effort should be made to turn this around with diets and physical activity emphasised.  

There are great rewards for those prepared to make every effort to be healthy as life then becomes so much more pleasurable and prolonged.