What real choice do the voters have ?

Most of us, its pretty clear,  are not sure we have much choice this election. The choices we do have,  though are best observed in debate and chatter,  not in the pretty coloured brochures and news blurbs we get every day .
So on that basis,  it was great that Colac Business Inc group organised an opportunity  to hear most of the candidates in a good chat last night;  To their credit CBInc  allowed the candidates to make clear where they were all coming from.
The common level of agreement among the speakers about some of the more difficult  issues ( young people's lack of engagement, the talk but little action to improve school education , the absence of the sitting member ) was refreshing, and set a good tone for a meeting which was interesting and informative .
Mike  made a very impressive sales pitch for new methane energy supply sources from farms claiming they had together with new geothermal somehow solved the problem of the trains running out of power last week ( base load) .  The other green  candidate Sally -Anne was advocating all things alternative as well .
Anne from Family First spoke of her qualifications to speak up for families and why it was important people thought about the minor parties and how they can represent the things that major parties left off the agenda .

Sarah contrasted with several who spent most of their whole time featuring what they personally were concerned about , by talking in some detail about what the people in the area were concerned about. She was obviously interested and engaged on the ground in the realities of representation and she was prepared to get on the phone and try to fix them- whatever they were, already.
Sarah 's defence for her parties failure to support Labor's innovative broadband plan was an interesting example of the challenge of credibility in science and technology matters,  as she  pointed out that Labor's commitment to a grand optic fibre plan   ( maybe a bit like the grand heating up everything energy plans of the greens) was not necessarily the most appropriate technology for giving fair access to all Australians for broadband ; She made the point that adoption rates with associated mobile access were increasing, making some adjustments to our technological and infrastructure commitments not only sound , but more cost effective  .
It was refreshing to hear that the advice was coming from scientists and not polys locked into their own ideas of what works.
As an applied scientist on the ground here its very hard to watch wannabes blundering through a list of wonderful sounding  ideas with no idea of how to implement them - trying to pass themselves themselves off  as scientists . With them usurping others role,  its no wonder when we can't even keep some of the best science teachers in this country who live right and used to work here .More here
With some candidates clearly setting themselves up as gurus on the subject of science and technology we ought to know that something is wrong .
If your kids as scientists ever got to work for them , would they get a word in edgeways ?