So the Alliance should be trying to make government smaller, which is possible, rather than more flexible, which is not. The tendency of governments to close ranks, deny the obvious, assert the preposterous and behave callously is, to be sure, infuriating. But it is hardly to be overcome. You can give committees all the power you want, but at the end of the day legislation will impose the view of the majority party on everyone. And it always has been.
Legislation is arranged between important financial interests and the front benches.
Being mostly principled chaps, though, the Founding Fathers then tried to establish an institutional structure to limit government, and explained superbly in The Federalist Papers what they were trying to do, why and how. It didn't work perfectly, but it doesn't get any better than this. It can get much worse, though. The loose time allocation rules of our parliament, like most badly drafted rules, do encourage arbitrary action. John Robson is Senior Writer and Deputy Editorial Pages Editor.