MPs would do well to heed the message from the founder of the scouting movement, Lord Robert Baden-Powell: “If you make listening and observation your occupation, you will gain much more than you can by talk”. Another example, from personal experience, was the suggestion to an MP that instead of modern-day governments bleating about falling tax revenue they should increase the GST and put an end to the practice, especially by trades and retail people, who dodge that tax by seeking cash payment from consumers.

It always seems to be the taxpayer's fault, according to governments, especially the past two federal coalition administrations who are generally petrified about taxing the big end of town (miners, bankers and others).

Tax dodgers of any kind have, as the ABC's excellent Four Corners expose on tax havens so eagerly patronised by Australian companies revealed, treat governments and the Australian Tax Office with contempt. This may be due, in part, because we have a rotten electoral system that allows political donations to which these people are only too happy to support.

The federal opposition continues to call for a royal commission into the banking industry, and while many readers say they support this, it needs to be noted that the ALP did little to curb the excesses of greed and profit by either the banks or the mining industry when last in power, not forgetting the excesses of theft and misappropriation of unions and their leaders.

Kevin Rudd (with taxpayers' support) and Julia Gillard and their governments had the opportunity to increase taxes on mining companies (remember, resources mined belong to the nation) but both went to water.

There has been a similar stance from Treasurer Scott Morrison and PM Malcolm Turnbull lecturing ordinary taxpayers week in-week out with colourful phrases about "the handout generation, we cannot pull the doona over our head, the taxed and the taxed-nots", but very little about expenditure soul-searching within governments.

That would take courage, a commodity in short supply in Australian governments in modern times, otherwise we would have already increased the GST to 12.5 per cent and be talking now about increasing it to 15, which New Zealanders have been paying on all goods and services and other items sold or consumed in that country since 2010; prior to that it started in 1986 at 10 pc and then went to 12.5; it remains a broad-based tax with few exemptions. In the UK, its VAT is now 20 per cent with a reduction to 5 per cent for power and fuel charges and is the nation's third largest tax revenue after income tax and national insurance.

On the subject of government expenditure, the impudence of the current government allowing its deputy PM, Barnaby Joyce, to move (as an election pork-barrelling exercise) a government department to his electorate at a cost of $25.6 million, confirms ordinary Australians do have a case to maintain the rage and create a party more in tune with their needs. We need better government. There are some good individual MPs but too many are merely concerned about their survival.