Social democracy could be said to be a model of government in which the state intervenes not just when markets and market-type arrangements fail but before they fail - a safety net, if you like, that is put in place at the outset to ensure that those who might otherwise miss out on an opportunity to learn, or to pick up a new skill or to set up a new business or to be treated by a doctor will not miss out.

This can be distilled down perhaps to something as basic as: decent state schools offering every student a chance to enter an affordable university or TAFE; a real universal health-care system; enlightened and far-sighted industry policy; the retention of the right to collectively bargain and not to be turned unwillingly into a casual employee.

That might be it. What's not clear right now is if this is what the majority of Australian voters want.

MATT BROWN: The children overboard issue doesn't make them think about the Prime Minister's credibility? What does it amount to, in your view, to these people you've been speaking to in Swan?

JOE HOCKEY: Oh, I think people are saying that look, you know, we're getting close to an election, and this is the sort of politics you'd expect in the lead up to an election, where the Opposition will throw any mud it can, and we're not interested in that. They have a very strong instinct, where they are saying they are not interested in political muckraking. WHAT THEY ARE INTERESTED IN IS THE FUNDAMENTALS OF HOW THEY ARE GOING TO HAVE MORE MONEY IN THEIR POCKETS.

Has there ever been a more cynical time in Australian politics in recent years? This is an era of deception, thuggery and sell-outs. But fortunately there are some glimmers of hope on the horizon. More...

FROTHING MADDOG SCREAMING ANNOUNCER MAKING THE CALL:
"Jana's cleared the first hurdle well in front; the greatest athlete of all time since the last greatest athlete of all time is running the race of her life. And here she comes to the second hurdle, she's up and going over, but oh my God, her leg has come right off, it's flown up into the air, there it goes, it's sailing into the stands where it has exploded in the face of one of the three or four spectators who've been good enough to come along today, there's blood everywhere and the spectator does not appear to be moving, but Jana, our dear brave Jana, is not deterred, she's hopping for glory..." More...

The Federal Government was warned repeatedly by intelligence analysts before the Iraq war that the conflict would harm the war on terrorism by fanning Islamic extremism and spurring terrorist recruiting.

An investigation by the Herald, which has included interviews with several serving and retired intelligence figures, has uncovered that John Howard and his senior colleagues were briefed on the dangers, verbally and in written reports.

Yet the Prime Minister told Australians on the eve of the conflict that the war would lessen the terrorist threat, contradicting his intelligence advice.

The revelation raises serious questions about the inquiry into the intelligence services commissioned by the Government and conducted by Philip Flood. The inquiry never mentioned the warnings about an increased terrorist threat.

"Yibbida yabbida bladdle bloddle shreik shreik ooh ooh eek eek"

On the balance of probabilities it is likely that the Prime Minister deliberately misled the people on November 8, 2001. Even more importantly from the constitutional point of view, it is likely that he deliberately misled Parliament on a dozen occasions in February 2002.

We have become so accustomed to thinking of parliamentarians as party ciphers that we are no longer shocked when the condition reaches grotesque form. Last week, during the children overboard affair, Liberal senator George Brandis appeared on ABC TV's Lateline program. In his former life, Brandis was a lawyer; it showed. Every syllable he uttered would have been appropriate to a barrister whom the Howard Government had retained.

The duty of barristers is to present their client's case in the most favourable light. The duty of the parliamentarian is not merely to serve the interests of party or government but those of the nation as well. The generation of Menzies and Evatt instinctively understood this. Ours does not. Senator Brandis' incapacity to differentiate between the role of barrister and parliamentarian is a striking instance of the damaging impact on the parliamentary spirit of the iron-tight enforcement of party discipline.