13 June

Doesn't matter who you vote for, these trends in Australia should bother us. 1. People who get paid millions of dollars to mouth 'opinions' every day, like shock jocks and newspaper opinion columnists, are allowed to whip up intolerance and hate, and produce such an atmosphere of poison towards politicians that even kids feel justified in throwing their school lunches at them. Australians pride themselves on 'put up or shut up', yet lap up the daily vomit from these unelected windbags. Let them run for parliament if they're so sure they know how things should be done (they won't - much easier to get paid millions to just sit and have opinions all day.) 2. Everybody is angry or outraged about everything. 'Illegal' immigrants, guns, governments, pink batts, taxes - endless list of whines and anger and even hate. Calm down, go and live in Sierra Leone for a while and get some perspective. 3. Most people in the country are fed up with public services, but then vote for people who gut them even further. 4. None of us want to pay any more tax but then we whine about how the government services we all want are run-down and can't cope. See 3. Then we end up paying private companies 3 times as much for the same services and think that's much more efficient. 5. Parramatta is coming last again.