Politics: Is it a profession, trade, job? Nobody seems to know what it actually is.

One problem myself and so many others have wrestled with is the question of
how do you quantify politics in the sense of working out how to remunerate
someone who enters parliament for what should be a lofty and worthwhile
endeavor of serving the public. This has been bastardized by some intensely
dislikeable and disreputable individuals, intent on usurping the public in publicservice as a goal and becoming self-service. They seem to be content with
selecting the salary of a lawyer and doubling it to work out what theyre worth. In
the real world, this would be highly suspect, immoral and in some peoples eyes,
illegal. The political pressure exerted on the remuneration tribunal must be
enormous with so many snouts in the trough at once, eagerly gobbling up
money, sucking it up like a DYSON vacuum cleaner.

Participation in society is vital for all citizens as well as highly desirable for
society to function to its fullest capacity. To do so you need a decent wage and
an adequate safety net. The only way to keep all citizens participating in society
is to have a decent minimum wage. I viewed a meme that had a message, the
gist of it being that not everyone can have a profession or a trade. There are jobs
people do that aren't strictly professions or trades, but they have skills that are
learnt on the job. Obviously the professions are skilled. Medicine is a skill,
nursing is a skill, the list of skilled jobs is very long, which would include teacher,
plumber, electrician, working in IT, farmer, building worker, truck driver, taxi
driver etc; even being a lawyer is a skill. The point is that everybody in work or
looking for work has skills.

The most important thing to remember is that everybody is skilled, but we need
to enhance skill-sets of people, get employers involved in advising the
government of what skills they require and economic conditions that are best for
creating sustainable jobs. If your goal in life is to destroy a nations economy, the
quickest way to do that is to reduce workers wages and cut holes in the safety
net, and reduce spending on education which gives opportunities for the young
and not so young to enhance their own skill-sets, its economics 101. This
appears to be too complicated a concept for our Treasurer, who isnt an
economist or an accountant for that matter.

Politics, however, is not a skill in the true sense of the word. It shouldn't even be
classified as a profession and the job doesn't ever come close to the prestige the
public holds the aforementioned professions/trades and skilled jobs in general.
Politicians should be paid what they're worth, which in the grand scheme of
things, isn't much. They aren't worth a pile of shite. They do virtually nothing
tangible for the country. At best they are the voice of their constituents, at worst,
they are first class passengers on the 'gravy train' and leaners of the highest

order. They should be focused on what the people of their electorate want, not
what's best for the party they belong to.

It seems that there is an increasing amount of time invested by these 'leaners'

into courting donations through fundraising events and some highly suspicious
lobbying by corporations and media barons (yes Rupert, that means you) as a
means of getting re-elected instead of governing the country and on the
oppositions side, making sure the government is doing its job honestly. Politicians
don't need the generous travel allowance granted to them by a population who
mistakenly gave them the benefit of the doubt on the basis that said allowances
were sparingly used.

Politicians are well paid for the little representation they actually do so their
travel expenses should be limited to travel back and forth from their electorates
and Canberra and definitely NOT for anything resembling a fund raising event for
the party coffers, as demonstrated by the recent antics of Bronny and the
#choppergate affair. It's not surprising that there is a preponderance of lawyers
who most likely couldn't get a job in a decent law firm, so become politicians as a
fall back career. Who better than lawyers would make sense of the confusing
regulations regarding 'entitlements' and are able to skirt around said regulations
enough so as to not actually 'break' the rules in those circumstances, instead,
just 'bend' them.

The time of the 'career' politician should be over. A cap on the tenure of people
going into politics should be brought in and 'entitlements' should be severely cut
back so the days of making a quick killing for MP's as a motive for entering
parliament would be lessened. I leave you with the latest list for the "Business
Insider" 2015 most trusted professions/jobs. The results shouldn't surprise. I
wouldn't be writing this if politicians were paid commensurate with the esteem in
which they are held in the public arena.