You know what I get sick of?

I am sick of hearing people complain about the need for a progressive government with big bold ideas, a solid direction, and the courage to lead us. Hearing this moaning shits me to tears.

What really irks me about this pissing and moaning is that we actually had that government, and instead of appreciating it, we held it up for ridicule. When I say “we” I mean the bulk of Australia led on by a main stream media with their own motives.

“What we need is the next Snowy Mountains Scheme” we keep hearing from a country yearning for a big infrastructure project.

Well we had it.

It was called the National Broadband Network, the information super-highway that was going to revolutionise the way be looked at health services, education services and the way we did business. However one of the side effects of the NBN was that it was going hurt Rupert Murdoch’s Foxtel business so News Ltd and the Coalition went to war against it.

What was the Coalition response?

Too expensive, a Rolls Royce, more than we need, blah blah blah… Now we have a half-arsed lame solution through a prehistoric thinking government that relies on outdated copper technology and will cost taxpayers a fortune to maintain.

If Labor had the Snowy Mountains Scheme as policy now the Coalition would have their spin doctors assuring the public the same power could be generated by bringing cheap labour in on 457 visas and having them peddle exercise bikes to generate power.

It was not just the NBN, there was also the BER scheme. Building the education pumped much-needed funds into an area so badly neglected during the Howard years, or as those in the educational industry refer to them the “Dark Days”. Australia’s educational standard had dropped out of the world’s top 10 during those bleak days when previously under the Hawke/Keating government Australia had been a top 5 performer.

Instead of receiving credit for giving schools valuable resources and keeping unemployment levels at record lows through the boost to the building industry, the government faced a barrage of attacks over a tiny percentage of projects that were over-quoted.

People also crave a government who would take the lead on important issues such as climate change, yet when Julia Gillard finally put a price on carbon as she had promised to all her campaign look at the result. Sexist slogans and pathetic campaigns fuelled by the climate change denying shock-jocks and right-wing commentator nut-jobs with their tin foil hats and flat-earth logic.

The mix up between a carbon price and a carbon tax gave Tony Abbott the opportunity to brand Gillard a liar. This is despite Gillard promising to put a price on carbon prior to the election, and actually stating that she would consider an election win as a “mandate” to price carbon.

This now seems quite ironic given we have seen that Abbott slings more bullshit than someone in a stockyard with a shovel.

But you know what? We let him get away with his hypocrisy with our defeatist attitude, and as a result we now have a government full of climate change deniers that think coal is the way forward, and that giving out taxpayer cash to the big polluters is a good idea.

We yearn for a government that is willing to stand up and fight for our benefit and stare down opponents fearlessly no matter how big they are.

Not that long ago that’s actually what we had.

We had a government that was willing to stand up to some of the world’s wealthiest drug barons and slug them right in the kisser.

When we had a Labor government we had an Attorney General in Nicola Roxon that was willing in a world first to take on Big Tobacco with a push for plain packaging for tobacco products. The idea of this was to take the glamour out of their branding and hopefully slow down the rate of young smokers picking up the addiction.

And guess what? Roxon won. Australia blazing a trail forward for others to follow.

We also had a government willing to tackle the sexual abuse of children, particularly by members of the clergy, setting up a Royal Commission into the sexual abuse of children. This was despite the best efforts of Tony Abbott as opposition leader seeking to protect the church whose clergy was abusing children on a scale that could be considered industrial and then attempting to conceal the crimes.

A government that takes on the tobacco giants and the child abusers, seeking to protect societies most vulnerable and takes drastic action to protect our health, that doesn’t sound so bad.

Now we have an Attorney General in George Brandis who thinks his time is best devoted to seeking extra rights for bigots to offend minority groups.

However we also need a government that can manage money, which is apparently where Labor fall a bit flat… Or so some would have us believe.

Australia so skilfully negotiated a path through the Global Financial Crisis that we were the envy of the Western World.

Yes having a surplus to work with was advantageous I’m sure, however during the mining boom that preceded the Labor government a chimpanzee with a copy of MYOB could have been Treasurer and achieved a surplus.

I guess that is why when giving out awards, the highly regarded Euromoney didn’t give a “Best Previous Government Award” to the Howard Government, instead giving a “Finance Minister Of The Year” award to Labors Wayne Swan, making him the “World’s Best Treasurer” that year.

However, we not only avoided the recession so many other Western Nations suffered, through Labor Party initiatives we managed record low unemployment, and even made changes to the tax-free threshold to take tens of thousands out of the tax system, many of these students, the same ones Abbott wants to take overtime and shift allowances away from.

Now we have a government with a budget deficit that is spiralling out of control and is far worse than it ever was under the former Labor government. The path towards a surplus this Coalition government fantasizes about is now so distant in the future that Dr Who couldn’t find it with a supercharged Tardis.

The point is we had a good government. Of course they were not perfect, no government ever is, and yes the Rudd/Gillard years were plagued with damaging infighting.

However what we have now is a government that is known for its backwards agenda on environmental issues, hideously unfair budget, and a frighteningly long list of broken promises.

In Tony Abbott we have an allegedly misogynistic leader who appoints himself as Minister for Women and then appoints one woman to his cabinet, only appointing a second after a former male Minister has so badly screwed up the health portfolio that a woman is needed to take the heat.

A government that has chosen to attack Medicare, something that the vast majority of Australians hold as sacred.

A government that treats pensioners and those with disabilities as a burden and seeks to cut their income despite promises to the contrary.

A government that wastes millions of taxpayer dollars on a Royal Commission set up in a bid to weaken the union movement just before the government goes after workers with attacks on penalty rates, wages and working conditions and entitlements, seeking to bring back the WorkChoices Abbott told us was “dead buried and cremated”.

A government that has seen its Assistant Treasurer forced to stand down over corruption allegations, while a string of its members including Ministers, the Attorney General and the Prime Minister himself are exposed for alleged travel expense rorts whilst they were in opposition.

A leader so out of touch with reality he chooses to award a Knighthood to a foreign Prince on the Australia Day weekend.

I wonder if Australia had its time again if we would treat Kevin Rudd and particularly Julia Gillard differently.

It’s like the song says, “you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone”.

We are certainly feeling the pain now and I suspect and fear worse may be still to come. Who would have thought that the country could look back on those tumultuous Gillard and Rudd years and think of them as the good ol’ days?

Maybe next time we have a Labor government with a progressive agenda we won’t be so easily duped by an opposition with the media in it’s pocket.

There that’s my dummy spit done with, I feel better now.