Easily the finest place on earth.

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It had a chance of becoming so, then blew it. Here's a random selection some of the nice things Australians are doing right now:

	* the public health care system is being dismantled
	* we're imprisoning refugees for years on end without charge (http://www.refugeesaustralia.org)
	* we're upholding the right of UN members to torture their citizens
	* we're destroying the Great Barrier Reef (though this seems less severe than the blight of other reefs elsewhere)
	* we have turned our back on our indigenous population, and effectively shut down the reconciliation process
	* we're supporting expansion of the UsMilitaryEmpire.
	* cutting education budgets, allowing entrance to universities only to unqualified rich people.

Australia is undoubtedly a great place to live for urban professionals. But it is squandering its human/ethical/social capital just like Britain and the US.
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''Could we have a distinction between "Australians" and "The Australian Government" please?''

Nope. You voted them in and/or permitted them to be voted in. If you don't like 'em, and you don't do something effective about 'em, they represent you individually and collectively. Same way GeorgeBush represents all Americans, so long as they're apathetic enough to sit in front of their TVs and watch talking heads. Sorry, that's just the way reality is. Change it if you want to. (see CollectiveVoterResponsibility)

''Actually, just like the US Presidency, John Howard got in on a minority of the two-party preferred popular vote and clever manipulation of the electoral system. The difference was that manipulation also delivered him a friendly House of Representatives, whereas the RepublicanParty got control over the US House Of Representatives and the US Senate via different means.''

I think the representative relation you're talking about isn't quite what we see in government.  You'd agree that we describe battles as confrontations between two generals, but that when we do that we are speaking pretty roughly.  The men on the field make it a battle just as much as the generals do.  Sometimes it's just not possible to tell the whole story; George Bush's representative role is convenient to invoke when you want to denote the whole decision making body including voters.  But it can be misleading because it suggests that the decision making body bears a strong resemblance to a mind.  Wiki and voting do bring the 'we' closer to the 'I', but 'we' are still quite a ways from functioning as a unit.  Is it really a problem of apathy, or knowhow too?

''Actualy, I'm well aware that there's no way to describe the opinions and action of "Australians". Which is why I asked for the distinction to be made in the first place.''

And on a more prosaic note, on several of the above points the Australian government does seem to represent the views of its people:
	* Australians have always been suspicious or hostile towards refugees (don't bring up the Vietnamese boat people episode: Australia's relatively humane policy then was hugely unpopular) ''Please tell us about the WhiteAustralia policy''
	* killing education: there's a very strong anti-intellectual current in Australian society at large
	* destroying the Great Barrier Reef: it wouldn't be popular if so stated. But Australians are in practise indifferent to green issues. We're one of the most wasteful populations on the globe
	* Indigenous reconciliation:  hard to say. I suspect we're deeply split.
	* US intervention in Iraq: Public opinion was massively against it before the war. But it supinely lined up behind 'our' forces once the destruction started. (see SupportOurTroops)

So I'm  not so sure about the distinction. The loathsome Howard, Ruddock et at seem to be the government its people in large part deserve.
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