It has been said that if you don't vote, you get the government you deserve. And if you do, you never get the results you expected.
There is no doubt that the quality of our political class is waning, yet we cannot deny our complicity. Why would anyone who has achieved any measure of success in their chosen profession even consider a tilt at a political career nowadays?
A budding politician is effectively setting themselves up for an absolute shellacking from the Twitteratti, can look forward to tenuous job security as a result of a fickle electorate and is on a hiding to nothing with a media pack that is constantly baying for fresh blood.
Public confidence in the media is at an all time low, which is unsurprising given the last few years, as some reporters now seem more interested in the ephemera of the 24-hour news cycle than covering issues of substance and whatever is trending on Twitter.
Given the recent treatment of politicians in Canberra, with the denial of natural justice and the presumption of innocence road kill in the rush for headlines, this problem is only getting worse.
There is no doubt that there are many fine men and women among our current crop of parliamentarians, who hold a genuine desire to improve the lives of everyday Australians, but there is also a rusted-on rump who would struggle for relevance or promotion in any corporate environment.
In 2018, approximately 74 per cent of our federal parliament was constituted by former political advisers, trade union officials and lawyers, which is clearly far from representative of the wider community.
More often than not, these politicians are not familiar with running businesses and have insufficient life experience outside of politics. One could argue that the lack of long-term planning and policy malaise are an inevitable consequence of this lack of career diversity.
It now appears that the days when a teacher, nurse, bus driver or business owner could represent us in parliament are looking increasingly gone.
We need the dreamers, the lifters, the innovators, the ambitious, the confident. We desperately want people who have excelled at life in general, not the pusillanimous plodders whose sole purpose seems to be the gathering of power for the sake of power alone.
The greatest threats to democracy are comfort and apathy. Well, I would submit that most of the electorate has become utterly disengaged from the political process and is totally apathetic about the critical influence that they wield at the ballot box.
With sincere apologies to the Bard, don't waste your vote on somebody who doesn't value it.
- Trent Thorne, agribusiness lawyer
