They weren’t telling you to buy? Ouch.

One of the worst tropes of modern politics is the ‘Everything is terrible and I’m the only one who can fix it’ approach to campaigning. Yes, things can always be better, but give me a bloody break. The average Australian is luckier and better off than probably 98% of the world’s population. And, frankly, while I’m not an Australian exceptionalist, if you can find a country you’d prefer to live in, you’d be doing pretty well.

Our pollies are like the apocryphal father who, when his daughter gets 99% in an exam, asks ‘What happened to the other 1%?’. They sow seeds of discontent, reminding us of our problems — caused by the other guy, of course — as a way to try to grab our votes.

Talk about miserable.

How about…