The past fortnight has been nothing more than a continuation of downwards spiral for our nation's governments - particularly the mediocre federal government Australians will need to endure, even survive, for at least another two years.
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Heading the list was the aged care industry Royal Commission's interim report, a horrifying account which the SMH said "highlighted a broken system".
UnitingCare Australia's national director Claerwen Little said it was a system that was unfair and ageist. "Despite the long history of efforts to improve the industry and visions of change coming out of more than 20 major reviews over 20 years, we have an outcome where systems are not fair at all."
Getting that time frame into perspective, community group Aged Care Crisis confirmed what residents and the community already know, and which is highlighted by the dereliction of all governments to protect people in aged care. But as the group explained, the interim report fails to highlight why this has happened.
As explained in this column last Friday, issues like aged care and the long list of other mounting issues, all our governments cannot find the cause, the best they offer is a Band-Aid approach.
I am indebted to a column reader who points out that despite the current Reserve Bank governor and many other non-political national leaders hammering this non-descript federal government to get cracking on a national infrastructure program, nothing has emerged. Nor is it likely to.
Our reader sent a short tape that told of the eighth wonder of the world - China's motorway system of 84,000 miles (not kilometres), more than any other country in the world. "We can't even get a railway line into Tullamarine Airport," he added.
All our state and federal governments have no urgency about either understanding or developing infrastructure for a food, agricultural and water security policy; and it is suggested, although it is doubtful that Liberal Party leaders have ever even considered it, development of regionalism by legislating to end further development or growth in our metropolitan cities.
What is it about the fact that water is the nation's most precious resource that these puerile major party politicians do not understand? Or that regionalism infrastructure is the way to go? There's nothing new in all this except that in the last 20 years politicians have sat on their wallets and done little.
Certainly with no plans, policies or ideas about how to do it - or where we, as a nation, are headed.
All our governments cannot find the cause, the best they offer is a Band-Aid approach.
I spent several days last week re-examining old files. In March 2012, Jessica Irvine, writing in the SMH, said: "Minerals are our resources and it is time miners paid more to dig them up.
"Our mining magnates got rich because state governments sold rights to extract Australia's minerals and didn't, as it turns out, charge enough."
To be fair, Kevin Rudd and, especially, Julia Gillard, did try to up the ante on mining magnates and the tax the industry failed to pay. But Bill Shorten and his parliamentary mates ended not only those ideas but the careers of both PMs.
Then this gem from the column's files, from DA letters correspondent Noel Nolte of Coolamon on October 20, 2012: "History has shown that the Liberals do not deserve a place in regional Australia, in fact even the Labor Party of old was capable of better government of regional Australia when a well-remembered Eddie Graham was our local member."
By coincidence, Wagga Labor's local branch will hold the annual Eddie Graham Dinner on November 30 when Ed Husic, one of Labor's brighter young sparks, will be the guest speaker.
Then there was this, sent to me by Ernie Hayes of Lake Cargelligo, with his submission to Rudd's 2020 summit held in 2008, headed "Australia's future is infrastructure and water - populate the inland and the north or we perish".
Ernie attached a handwritten note, "Graham, I prepared this to take to 2020, but like 7000 others we were not far enough up the social scale to get an invite."
Ernie also quoted at that time a statistic from the SMH: "One in five Sydney residents want to go somewhere else".
To which he made this response to the state government: "Solution, build a new dual highway over the Blue Mountains to open up the west of the state."
The party political system is failing Australia at an astonishingly rapid rate.