Just who will choose our next Prime Minister?

But if not, why not, particularly when this local issue generates bigger headlines than his real job as Minister for the Pacific.

ACT independent Senate candidate (and former Brumby and Wallabies captain) David Pocock wants a proper stadium and Convention Centre in Civic and what's not to like about that? But isn't independent ACT Senate candidate Kim Rubenstein absolutely correct when she insists sporting stadiums pale into insignificance beside the need for housing as property prices soar? Meanwhile, how about nine-time national champions Canberra Capitals? Why have they been left struggling to retain their title from a shed, without proper facilities, and is that simply because they're a women's team without any apparent political muscle?

Who you vote for matters. Perhaps, unfortunately, the chance of any change in the ACT federal representation is minuscule.

Last election Labor's Katy Gallagher easily won one of the territory's two Senate seats. She received 20,660 personal first preferences which, coupled with 84,274 party votes, gave her 38.84 percent of the vote. Although only 7776 people voted individually for Liberal Zed Seselja this, coupled with the party vote of 76,827, saw him reach 31.31 percent. As always during elections, wild and exciting talk of finally overthrowing the two-parties' rigor mortis-like stranglehold of the ACT is again sparking hopes and dreams. Maybe. But it would mean taking votes - in massive numbers - from both Seselja and Gallagher. Not impossible, but it's difficult to see a plausible path to victory. With a Senate quota set at one vote more than 33.3 per cent, most experienced analysts believe their chances are slight.

Particularly when Greens candidates like Penny Kyburz can achieve quotas of 16.95; enough to knock out all but those who preform amazingly.

Not, however, as implausible as flipping one of the other electorates in the territory. Conservatives have only twice (in 1975 and 1995) won lower house seats since 1951. Perhaps surprisingly, elections that witness a change of government (as the polls are currently suggesting) often reinforce the lock of two-party division as voters switch from one major party to the other and ignore intermediate options. Disillusion leads the way as voters come to the conclusion the government has failed. It's only after reaching this conclusion they begin to look at the opposition. As long as there are no specific concerns, they'll vote for change.

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Last time the government was able to raise a couple of real issues that directly resonated with, for example, people relying on dividend imputation or closing mines in Queensland. Coupled with some accidentally sloppy campaigning by Labor, this was enough to lose the opposition the election. But this assault was built from the ground up and was policy-based. This combination made it powerful.

The characterisation of politicians from any party as 'mean and nasty' is, by contrast, an irrelevant skirmish. Many voters already suspect anybody attracted to this profession probably possesses unwholesome personal attributes, but that's just because they don't know them better.

If they did the doubt would vanish.

Having made that quip I should admit Gallagher has never, ever, been mean to me. There might be another past or present chief minister about whom I'd use that particular term, but that's a whole other defamation case. The point is I just don't know. The young, ethnically Vietnamese female lawyer who'd be an adornment to a front-bench anywhere in the country and who was booted out of a winnable Labor seat in Sydney's West by Kristina Keneally has a right to be well and truly pissed-off by the senator. She won't, however, allow a negative word about it to pass her lips. And Penny Wong, is she mean? It would seem to me nobody can remain a senator for 20 years and minister under two such bitter opponents as Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard (and then continue as part of Labor's leadership team) without a certain degree of self-interest. Whether that's been used appropriately or not is for others to judge.

And then there's Kimberley Kitching. Before she died alone, and so tragically in a car by the side of a road, she'd been involved in bitter wrestling to hold her Senate seat. She'd never been elected.

She was parachuted as part of a factional deal, but used her position to furiously interrogate - there's no other word - public servants and business people who could never properly answer back. Were they unfairly roasted? Or is this just politics? The honest work of a fiercely determined political warrior pushing hard to reveal the truth?

There are good people in every faction of every party - the only real mistake is to assume all honourable people hold sound policies or the reverse. Often what's left out is far more important than what can be seen. This is at least part of the attraction of independents.

Our two-party model isn't mandated by the constitution; it evolved. Firstly individuals realised they could achieve more by working together and then some understood by becoming leaders they could make the system work for them. Because people are confused and complex many individuals genuinely believe by achieving their own ambitions they are actually working for others.

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This is the appeal of independents. They're not compromised by party structures. They haven't worked for years, scrambling over others and pushing themselves forward in their desperation to reach the top.

This is the appeal of Andrew Leigh. Although he holds one of the ACT's three safe lower-house seats (by 10.6 percent on Malcolm Mackerras' pendulum) he refuses to belong to a Labor faction. Perhaps this at least partly explains why he's not part of that party's leadership team.

You don't play the game; you don't reap the rewards. That's just the way it is.

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