Interesting Q&A episode on ‘Trust’ last night.

It was a telling moment when Jacqui Lambie trapped Liberal MP for Higgins, Katie Allen, and Labor MP for Hotham, Clare O’Neil, like startled deer in party donation headlights.

Jacqui has her shortcomings, but her independence and honesty is refreshing in Australia’s increasingly stultified parliamentary politics.

The ‘yes’-‘no’ of party politics has surely had its day and is obsolete? But stolidly, it remains with us. Oh, for a system of proportional representation voting for the lower house, as with the Senate!

And, yes, Jack Manning Bancroft, there are some of us reading things other than you have. You’re close ….. but no cigar! In fact, our aboriginal people have something to tell us about the sacredness of land: that it can’t really be ‘owned’ – it’s common property.

Yet we choose to treat it like a commodity, bidding land prices up into impossible mortgage bubbles that are about to tank across Australia.

The complete financialisation of the economy directed into land price and share market bubbles is obviously quite pathological – but we persist.

For the sake of Australia, we need to call it out if we are to rebuild trust in our politicians.