Terry Murphy writes again to add to his original 'List of Questions' idea. Let's keep to 'em coming,,,

I was pleased that my idea of presenting a list of questions to candidates was so well received by Antony, but immediately felt the significant pressure of having to come up with more than the two questions that had originally occurred to me!!! A little thought and a quick flick back through NHJ provided sufficient inspiration. See what you think of these.

1. What steps will you/your party take to restore the convention of Ministerial responsibility?
2. What steps will you/your party take to depoliticise the Commonwealth Public Service and the Australian Defence Forces?
3. What steps will you/your party take to return Parliamentary Question Time to a real opportunity for the Parliament to hold ministers to account for their actions or those of their departments?
4. What steps will you/your party take to ensure that Australians are never again barred from entering the public areas of our Federal Parliament building?
5. What steps will you/your party take to ensure that the roles of Governor-General and Prime Minister cannot be interchanged at the whim of the latter?
6. What steps will you/your party take to ensure that taxpayers money cannot be used to advertise government programs in the leadup to an election?
7. What steps will you/your party take to ensure that Australia can never again embark on an aggressive war without a full Parliamentary debate?
8. What steps will you/your party take to ensure that senior appointments to government instrumentalities and corporations are not political appointments at the whim of any government minister (but avoiding the star chamber process of US politics)?
9. All non-government political parties always promise to radically free up freedom of information legislation. These promises are routinely forgotten once the treasury benches have been achieved. What steps will you/your party take to ensure that freedom of information legislation provides a genuine avenue for the community to find out what government is doing?

I hope these ideas can spark some others (perhaps more appropriately worded, since I've dashed these off rather quickly?).

NHJ! (JR): Sounds like a damned good start to me, Terry. Incidentally, with regard to Question 9 - and without wishing to recoil in the slightest from my own personal Lefty-bedrock conviction that Rupie is the devil - you may care to check out Crikey's coverage of 'Che' Murdoch's Glorious People's Struggle against the FOI Fascists of the Treasury. (Still - Christian (S)K(Y)err's gushing duly noted & acknowledged - I remain unconvinced that a Billionaire Media Mogul throwing money at lawyers for the primary purpose of obtaining tax bracket-creep information to boost his own 'Less Tax Now!' campaign ranks up there with Gruber and Solzhenitsyn in the Free-Speech-Fighter-in-the-Face-of-Tyranny stakes...but call me a grump who's never for pleasing.)