If you look at Wikipedia you will find a lot of stuff about the definition of Democracy. What I have always understood to be its roots, and what I suggest in essence it ought to be, are:

Responsible and capable citizens devoting their time and abilities to the conduct of national affairs for a single, fixed, period of time. Then returning to their lives as private citizens.

I have my own ideas on how and by whom they should be chosen, and on how their powers should be curbed and controlled by the electorate to prevent abuse, but basically those are the sort of people who are competent to do the job. And that rules me out.

If you want be a Plumber or an Electrician or a Builder or a Doctor or a Car Mechanic or even – God forbid – a ‘Financial Advisor’,  you are expected, and indeed obliged, to achieve and demonstrate specific levels of technical knowledge, ability, qualification and, in most cases, compliance with regulatory requirements.

Whether or not we agree with the creeping (and accelerating) development of the ‘Nanny State’ will be dealt with in other blogs.  The requirements exist and, where they appear to be within reason, nobody with any sense questions their necessity – or at least their desirability.

What do you need to become a politician?

There certainly are studies bearing on political development and, to be fair, many of our politicians are well educated in politics and history. And many aren’t.

There are other useful types of knowledge and training, in business methods and communication for example, that can help the representative to do his or her job well, especially those who aspire to ministerial office.

I won’t try to give a complete list of useful or even desirable basic requirements here; my point is simply that none are mandated. No ‘Certificate 4 in Representing the Public Interest’ exists, as far as I know.

The single, essential, qualification is the ability to get elected. I will return to that later.

What we do have is far too many lawyers. The place is crawling with them. As undesirable and difficult to get rid of as bedbugs. Quite  few years ago I was curious to know how many of these we had in South Australia – out of a total population of about one million people. So I looked in the phone book and there were 47 pages of them. I didn’t bother to count the number per page – a ludicrously excessive number seemed close enough. I don’t really want to know how many there are now. But their inclusion in our government is a poisonous and totally undesirable element.

And governments. Although we have a national population a little less than that of, for example, Tokyo, we are apparently so unruly that it takes nine governments – 6 State, 2 Territory, 1 Federal – to Rule us. Note my words; not to serve, not even to control, but to Rule us. And I made a typo there and first wrote ‘Rile us’; that too!

It made sort sort of sense, in this huge country, when travel was slow and the population far smaller than now, to localise much of government. Now it simply duplicates tasks that there are far too few competent people to perform. Brisbane City Council does a terrific job over an enormous area;  I was not entirely joking when I have often suggested that we should ask them to take over the whole task of governing (sorry, Ruling) the country.

Now this is an early blog on the subject and, although I have been developing these thoughts over many years, both during the early part of my adult life in the UK and a somewhat longer time here in Australia, I have not previously tried to commit them to the written word, in some sort of structured manner. So do not be surprised if it does not read smoothly and seamlessly.

And here I will leave the development of my thesis to deal with a relevant development in current political activity that I think should have a blog to itself.