I was in my early 20s I abandoned all thoughts of becoming two things: a princess or politician.

Too many skeletons (or too many good nights out depending on which way you look at it) would scupper my chances at either.

As the decades have rolled on, I’ve amassed more life experience than polished folk perching in glossy ivory towers have seen on Netflix. I’ve lived domestic violence, been shattered by toxic relationships, battled booze and travelled the world in crazy circles.

The problem with expecting politicians to be perfect is they don’t have any skeletons that could help them step off their glistening skyscrapers of deluded elitism. Their truths have no realism. Common sense and compassion comes from making wrong turns and adjusting your compass.

A life lived solely to secure a place in the top cluster means circulating in a shiny flock with no dingy secrets or dropouts. This is a straitlaced life where your bins are continually empty to ensure hungry birds find no crumbs when they swoop for tasty headlines to snack on. Your resume remains sparkly and pure under the most intrusive spotlight. That’s not real life.

The world presented in PowerPoint and discussed in perfectly chilled air-conditioned boardrooms is as honest as the hefty salaries are common. Statistics highlight key problems, public pressure forces issues to the top of the agenda, but sterile, misguided approaches are all we can expect from blinkered minds that have never had to fiercely fight to stay alive.

Appointed middle-class fainting feminists and laughable think-tanks conjure up deceitful gender fantasies which belie the reality of the squalor of relationships where domestic violence hides, thrives and breeds. Grandiose visions and fraudulent gender-biased policies tied with white ribbons don’t come close to the core.

media_camera No wonder your average Joe and Joanna are so embittered and goddamn disenchanted. (Pic: iStock)

Taxpayers’ hard earned cash gushes into funding clockwork box ticking and back patting as high earners calmly attempt to prove they’re doing the right thing. Research is commissioned to fit agendas not find solutions. After all, why would you want answers when faux strategies line your diamond pockets so handsomely long term?

Who are they kidding? They’re not fooling me, or millions of others whose life experience hasn’t been set to the calm, gentle whirring of a cool fan while wearing a twin-set.

Real life, when you don’t have a convenient surname, family connections or gifted leg-ups, can be repulsive, exhausting and relentlessly tough. Show me a politician who can hand on heart relate to the all-consuming, steely determination it takes to keep breathing when life’s dealt you blow after blow and you desperately want to give up.

Show me squeaky-clean members of the political elite who have a genuine understanding of addiction that’s running rife in communities and causing violence in our homes. Who’s lived it, drowned in it, battled with every last ounce of their being to beat it? Who will confess we’re not winning the struggle against substances because life is too hideously hard for many to endure? Who’s brave enough to concede our Family Court is destroying lives?

No one who has drowned in dark despair away from manicured golf clubs, designer labels and midmorning soy lattes would even think about preaching gender politics because they know domestic violence, substance abuse, homelessness and seeing suicide as the only viable way forward does not gender discriminate.

In a system that gleams with self-important arrogance, within a land of constantly rolling crisp red carpets and open doors, real life experience is not on the guest list. No wonder your average Joe and Joanna are so embittered and goddamn disenchanted.