Consensus Building

Quite a few commentators have berated Julia for her plan to establish a community consultation forum involving 150 *ordinary* Australians - to help gain consensus on what to do about the carbon problem.

Those who are against the idea point out that we already have such a forum in the Australian Federal Parliament. And the rest of us point out the obvious - those people can't agree on anything.

The Federal parliament is particularly ineffective - why? Because 150 odd years of *party* politics means that it is impossible to gain real consensus on anything much at all.

You want consensus? Get rid of the political parties and revert back to individuals representing their electorates.

But I do like Julia's idea. It is an attempt to remove the political puppeteers and bias from the process and it will also allow a real engagement with the Australian people over this "diabolical problem". It is a neat way of reducing the influence of the vested interests - and negating the lies that they have been peddling.

Plus the simple truth is that the power of Government is limited these days. We saw how vested interests combined to reduce the impact of the mining tax - big business is now much more powerful than our elected Government. So if the nation needs to introduce significant change - like a carbon tax or emissions trading scheme - then the *only* way to go about it is by gaining community consensus.

And this is especially so because many of our people either can't or won't inform themselves. If Australian's would only read the Stern and Garnaut reports then they would understand the problem and realise that early action is necessary. If they were to do that then they would be insisting our MP's take early action - but instead they seem to be more interested in MasterChef.

Now lets sit back and watch as every interest group attempts to subvert the process and impose *their* views on the forum.