Gary Sauer-Thompson looks at the recent comments by Tony Abbott where he admits he will say anything to get himself out of a bad situation in an interview. The wider issue is checks and balances on politicians saying whatever they like.
Gary argues that the deeper issue is that it is more difficult to check these political behaviours through the ballot box, hence greater checks and balances in the political system are necessary;
Checks and balances on executive dominance would be a good start by giving greater power to the committee system in both houses of Parliament. Proportional representation for the House of Representatives, along the lines of the Hare-Clarke system, would be another place to start. This would ensure that we citizens have a choice about who to vote for and against within all political parties.
The Hare-Clark system came out of Tasmania, which in my opinion, has one of the more innovative electoral systems in Australia. I can recall looking at the effect of the Robson Rotation and it seemed to indicate that its introduction
reduced incumbency.
Another alternative in the Parliamentary system is to separate the Executive from the House of Representatives or the Assemblies and have a Governor or President. This fits the doctrine of separation of powers in the same manner that the Washington System has and the US States do.
It is not a perfect system, but it is preferable to the parliamentary system where the executive carries out the laws and legislates the same laws they execute.
The downside of this is that the House Of Representatives will have to do policy and here the US Congress has not been the greatest, but then again, Congress has had to deal with large tent parties that are highly factional rather than the absolute discipline the Australian parties have.
However the Washington System is an improvement over Westminster and Australia should start innovating constitutionally at the state level if not the Federal one.
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
