[LINK] 'World's biggest Luddite' in Telstra plasma TV row

[Jan Whitaker]

At 12:31 PM 14/02/03 +1100, Chris Maltby wrote:

>For voters to fulfil this role they need access to the necessary
>information so they can form a judgement.  This means that we need to
>expand scrutiny and transparency of the influences on political decision
>making.

Sort of like the workings of the supposed open market -- only works when 
the participants in the trading have all the information needed to make the 
choice.

Re the second part, I reckon secrecy in governments [along side the 
contempt that politicians hold the public in] will be the downfall of the 
'West'.  Adam's point about being required to vote for someone you had no 
involvement in nominating in the first place isn't democratic at all. It's 
only marginally better than having to vote yes or no on Hussein and calling 
it an election.  Sort of misses the point, doesn't it?

Back to the TVs, there was something on local radio after this story broke 
about someone else who had to resign office [state? cwlth?] because they 
were provided with tvs by some group.  I think it was Jon Faine and Barry 
Cassidy, and one of them said that this Alston/Howard situation showed how 
things had 'changed' [they didn't add 'for the worse'].

Another change appears to be this reliance on 'registers' and 'admitting 
I've done something that I don't think is wrong but you can't do anything 
to me because I reported it, so there!' attitude in government.  What has 
happened to these people?  Do they realise the damage they have done to any 
remaining credibility they may have had with the public by doing these 
things?  The hypocrisy is astounding!

Jan [who is wondering how Tony's patience is holding out on our off topic 
discussions]


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