They fill our airwaves and our letterboxes with their constant plaintive cries for our love.

They do their best to run our lives while telling us they’re offering us choice and protecting us. They engineer scare campaigns, dog-whistle, divide and conquer, censor, hide, prevaricate and lie. For a while, if they’re lucky enough or they play the perfect game at the perfect time, they actually get to run the show for a while. And then they’re gone, voted out by us, or, more likely, shafted by their colleagues in the party they used to run with an iron fist. The new boss takes over, and the only difference to us, the supposed beneficiaries of their wisdom and work ethic, is the haircut and the Deputy.

Where do politicians go when they’re surplus to requirements? Some disappear into utter silence (other than the Diaries, thank you thank you thank you, Mark Latham). Some toddle off to convenient diplomatic posts more appropriate to their abilities than Parliament ever was. Best example being our current ambassador to Ireland, Amanda Vanstone, whose talents always lay in drinking and fighting.

Some, more insidiously, grab at an enormous salary consulting in the industry for which they used to be minister. I have to be careful here because we can’t afford a lawyer, so let’s leave it at: Peter Reith retired from Parliament as Defence Minister, and within an hour was working for a Defence contractor.

The best ones, though, stay in the public eye, just a bit, and remind us how much we miss them despite hating them (Keating), how good they could have been (Downer), and make us wonder what exactly the fuck was going on while they were in power (Fraser).

It’s been amazing over the past twenty years or so to see what a decent man Malcolm Fraser appears to be. The grey-faced, cold-hearted, do-nothing bastard who let Howard be his treasurer through the seventies suddenly turned into a well-spoken, human rights-loving advocate for fairness and commonsense.

He’s spoken out on so many issues in direct opposition to his former party that it’s hard to believe he once presided over the Wage Freeze and the boycott of the Moscow Olympics.

Paul Keating really hasn’t changed, and that’s actually a good thing. We all hated him, and with good reason, but nobody can deny he was the most entertaining parliamentarian of modern times.

Since he lost to Howard in ’93 he’s pretty much stuck to polishing his clocks and brushing the lint off his Ermenegildo Zegnas, but every now and again he launches back into the public sphere, and don’t we love him for it. The high point of the last election campaign was his “all tip, no iceberg” comment; When he blasted Costello with that we all sat back and said “Jeez I miss him”. Breathtaking arrogance (and that’s coming from me!!) but a fine command of the English language.

Bloody Jeff has been a revelation; he evinced absolutely no concern for his fellow man while Premier, but as the public face of beyondblue, he’s shown us that he is a human being, with actual compassion and care for other humans. Furthermore, as president of Hawthorn, he behaves with a lot more class and sense than some other club presidents with Liberal party connections that we could mention.

What is it about being in politics that turns otherwise good men and women into lying, conniving hypocrites (no, Tony Abbott, I don’t include you in that - you’d be such whether you were in politics or not)? Is it the machine, the party, the realities of policy and decision making? Or is it just that having the steering wheel in your hands makes you forget which way it is you meant to go?

I don’t know and I can’t know until I become Prime Minister. Get me there, and I promise I’ll tell you.

That’s a Core Promise, by the way.

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