Hi Les. Another analogy I use to highlight the systemic problems in our political system, is again centered around planes. You have a jumbo jet full of passengers and you want to go on a flight, there is a choice of a politician or a pilot to fly the plane. Who do you choose? The response is obvious! So why do we have politicians running the country when a country is far more complex than a plane? Most politicians (but not all) are either far to conflicted (subtly or overtly) or to limited in understanding to have the capabilities to run a country well. When these deficiencies become really, really obvious are the levers of the country handed over to specialists in the area (RBA, Murray-Darling are examples). This was driven home to me when the last Mars lander was successfully landed onto Mars through an incredibly complicated set of events. At the same tie US Congress went on holiday as they could not come up with a way to deal with the financial mess they had created in the US.

Hi Herbert. That’s a powerful analogy about plane crashes: we investigate them in minutae, but our politics is a plane crash that flings wreckage far more widely…it deserves equal attention. I think I’m going to say “our politics is a plane crash” a lot from now on!