I have just finished reading your book and reviews on these pages and am startled to realise so many other people from all walks of life have similar opinions. Margo's comments about making a difference do start with us. I come from the Hunter region where cronyism and nepotism among our State and Federal representatives is blindly accepted. We also accept that as we are so strongly Labor that neither of the big two parties are interested in us. How wrong can we be? Our problem, like most seats with long serving backbenchers and time servers, is the quality of our member. A way around it is to join your local branch and elect better representatives. Our local branch picks our candidate. We vote for that candidate. So how many people and who are these people that pick our candidates? In other words a very small number of unknown people pick our representative, we vote for the party we choose and the minor parties and independents are left to fend for themselves. This is our democracy. Regards Frank from Fassifern