But you wouldn't read it in the papers, which have performed the most amazing political smiling assassination.
I have no faith in Australian politics anymore, every campaign seems to be entirely focused around mud slinging and fear mongering.
Based on coverage, there are three major parties. The only microparty that gets any coverage is the Australian Sex Party and that's only because of the undergraduate boorishness of their name.
Katter and Palmer will get coverage this time in the "lighter side" columns and then we'll go back to having the majors take turns at the Treasury benches while the Greens get to pretend they are a genuine alternative because nobody actually reads their policies.
I miss the Democrats. They were boring centrists and it was wonderful.
In terms of coverage, Family First gets more than the Sex party, as does One Nation.
Family First gets coverage because they are very good at faking noise and movement. They learnt well from previous generations of protest movement. The body of media hadn't yet innoculated themselves against it in the way they have against weekly the National Days of Action and Marches Against Whatever that take place in Sydney and Melbourne CBDs every 20 minutes.
All I'm saying is, keep your head up: things can still change over time!
And it's not just a small amount more in the way of new bills, it's close to 40% more than the last term of the opposition in power. Even if it's inflated, it's still indicative that they're able to do stuff. Cut the number of bills passed in half and you still have a number competitive with any other modern government.
I mean really, are you saying moves like curtailing middle-class welfare are meaningless legislation? I'm not saying that this government is particularly awesome, but I am saying that the picture painted of them by the media is remarkably off-kilter.
Worrying about passing lots of bills or few bills is really silly because, as you pointed out, almost everything goes through on the nod anyhow. The amount of legislation that is genuinely rejected by Parliaments is miniscule. The government is able to command a majority of one vote: that's all it ever needs, especially with fellow-believers in Magic Pudding economics having the balance up in the Senate.
I care less about the amount of activity and more about the quality. I don't think this has been a good government. I didn't think much of the previous one or the one before that. Hawke/Keating and the first 2 terms of Howard/Costello were about as good as this country's had so far.
I also note that whatever their position in Parliament, the government is perfectly able to paralyse themselves quite without the help of the independents.
As for meaningless metric, what other metrics do we have? Is not the quality of legislation a measure built almost entirely of opinion?
I guess my problem is that the focus has almost wholly been on the soap opera of politics rather than the pointy end that actually affects the country. Only the barest mention of policy is required to try to explain the bad polling, which will then set off the next week's round of "the polls are bad because the polls are bad". There's also been a surprising amount of misogyny and general lack of respect throughout - which is another argument - but I note that I've never seen another PM referenced by first name so much. Hrm. Perhaps Gough, though I was in nappies when he was also run out of office :)
When the cabinet spends more time phoning each other to check numbers than acting in their roles as Ministers of the Crown, that's bad for business. Compare and contrast the dying days of Howard, when for several months Hamlet of Higgins hovered with a knife.
> As for meaningless metric, what other metrics do we have?
Process metrics aren't output metrics.
More generally, I don't like a lot of the policy settings, so understandably I'm agin' it.
I agree that the media of person and personality has crowded out everything else, including the discussion of whether the bills being presented advance the national interest. I think Gillard is quite sincere about the NDIS and Gonski and it's a pity that neither policy has received more than a fairly surface level consideration.
I'm sure that an element of the bile directed towards Gillard is misogyny, but a lot of it is plain old politician-hate. I can't think of a single PM who hasn't been honest-to-god hated by at least 30% of the electorate.
What I would LOVE to see is a viable third party. Unfortunately, the Greens are not it.
Maybe Palmer's party? GAG VOMIT