I'm sick of this and I'm not going to take it anymore Matt Zurbo

​I’m a rare breed. Right now, I’m listening to Parliament. Not many people do. It’s one of those odd sports I partake in, information before opinion. Even if I don’t like it. The information, or the sport - petty people lying at and badgering each other. Self-serving grandstanding, blatant manipulations – of truths, of facts, of the press and people.

It fires me up. Agreeing or disagreeing, it helps sharpen my opinions. Thirty minutes usually does me. An hour, tops. After that I get too angry.

If I had my way, I’d inject everybody in the room, lower and upper house, square between the eyes with truth serum, ditch the Dorothys and give the Speaker a gun for interjectors. That’s the worst of it. The constant, petty yammering from the other side. The total lack of respect. Give good, get good, why should I then offer them any of mine? 

Of this batch, one thing’s becoming clear - the latest mob in power are lying, almost about everything, and was always going to, because they always were to begin with. And everybody knows it. And everybody knew. 

Just like they knew children were not really being thrown overboard on the Tamper. Just like they knew there weren’t really any weapons of mass destruction. That’s what gets me.

They knew. The people. Us.

I don’t blame Tony Abbott, we knew what we were getting. Sleazy little men and woman will always strive for power. It’s our job to listen or not. It’s our role to elect or dismiss them. 

Everybody knew Gillard and Swan ran one of the best economies in the world, but they hated Julia. Yes, the Press told them too, in the most disgusting, irresponsible, undemocratic ways. But very few people were swayed by the Press. All it did was let them voice their spite. It backed-up already existing prejudices. It never told them to hate, it said “It’s okay that you hate.”

When John Howard first came to power I loathed him and the backward path to racist, self-centered 50s ideology he was dragging us down to. Then he got elected again, then again. By the forth time I stopped blaming him. I blamed us. All of us. He wasn’t forcing us into such a world view, he was reflecting what we are. His face was reflecting us. 

We ARE a racist country. 

We WOULD rather eject a popular Prime Minster for daring to take on filthy rich miners in the name of working class people. We LOVE those vile, greedy magnates ahead of our own. We ARE subservient. 

I’m talking about responsibility. Responsibility and leadership. 

As a nation, Abbott is all our fault. 

Popular opinion is petty, fickle. We’re children. If it was left to the public we would have voted against the vote for women, indigenous citizenship, against entering WW1, America would never have freed the slaves, we never would have modernised our economy or forged ties with Asia. We would still be living under White Australia. But each of these times, there came a time. There came a leader. 

As a nation, we have not had a leader for the longest time, not since Paul Keating, because we keep demanding politicians. As a nation, we know it. If someone dares to lead, like Rudd did on the mining issue, we knee-cap them. Until we create the room and platform, the ear, for another leader, morally, spiritually, we’ll keep spiralling downward, to the bottom of the barrel. 

I don’t blame Tony. He’s our fault. Just another little man. What we need is some grass roots leadership.