It’s remunerated, but it’s not a job. That’s where we’ve gone wrong. Somewhere along the road from federation to now, the idea of public office got confused with professional employment. It was never meant to be. We pay our politicians not because they work – God knows that’s not a reliable metric – but because without payment, only the wealthy, the idle or the lunatic would stand. That salary paid the bills, not the ego. It let working men serve without going broke. The cost to the public was, as we say in Australia, bugger all.

You can almost hear Joe Hildebrand – the caffeinated carnival barker of common sense – belt it out with a wink: ‘The reward was representative democracy!’ And of course, Mr Hildebrand would be right.

What we’ve got now is a caste of careerists with their super sorted, their staffers scuttling behind them, and their titles polished like heirlooms. They’ve mistaken the remuneration for a mandate. Worse – they’ve mistaken it for talent.

The rot set in when ‘Minister’ – once a bureaucratic courtesy behind closed doors – leaked into public life. You never heard it pre-2007. Then suddenly it was everywhere. ‘Minister Smith announced’, ‘Minister Jones defended’ – the title stuck like a permanent rank. Sir Humphreys multiplying like rabbits – but with the nasal earnestness of Campbelltown, not the clipped tones of Kensington.

I don’t mind if a policy wonk in Canberra calls Dennis Goanna ‘Minister’ in the briefing room. That’s protocol. But what crept into the bloodstream was deference theatre. The title stopped being functional and became spiritual, something akin to the same trembling reverence normally reserved for a swing voter in Eden-Monaro.

Somewhere in the drift, we stopped saying, ‘Mr Smith, Minister for Roads’ and started calling them ‘Minister Smith’ – like it was their baptismal name. A formal role became a personal rank. What was once internal shorthand became puffed-up reverence. It’s not respect. It’s just dumb.

Then something even worse happened. The minions ran with it. Young grads in poorly fitted suits, older apparatchiks with clipboards and scowls. Because they worked ‘for the Minister’ they assumed they too were above question. Obsequious up, contemptuous down. The culture shifted: no longer public service – service to the office.

Even the serious journalists who should have known better got in on the act. You could almost hear the salary negotiations ching-ching: ‘Of course I deserve more than half a million – I absolutely dismantled the Minister on air.’

We now have a generation – call them Gen Whatever – who think politics is a career path. Study politics, intern somewhere with ‘Institute’ in the name, staff a backbencher, slide into the chamber before thirty. And you can. That’s the problem. The system wasn’t designed for aspirants. It was built for citizens – people who’d raised kids, fired staff, buried a parent, been wrong in public. It was meant to be a detour, not a destination.

All political parties in this media-saturated era have agreed: politics is a job. They’re wrong. You swear an oath, not sign a contract. The delusion crept in at the end of Howard’s tenure, when ministers began to carry themselves like they were born to it – and some, like Alexander Downer and John Anderson, actually were born to it. Rudd and Gillard didn’t start the fire, but they threw on kerosene – titles burnished, announcements televised, authority performed rather than earned. By then, politicians forgot about public service and started behaving like a priesthood.

Once, you needed a knighthood and a wig to walk around thinking God was on speed dial. Dixon, Barwick, Kerr, Stephen – all GCMGs, Knights Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George. The joke back then? God Calls Me God. These days, it’s just ‘Minister’, said with a straight face and a staffer in tow.

Meanwhile, Sussan Ley – once propped up like a guest of honour at a Weekend at Bernie’s cosplay – has unexpectedly stirred. She’s shelved the novelty and brought the back bench to heel, canning net zero with a decisiveness few saw coming. If she can now make the Coalition seem less bumptious, less puffed-up and pleased with itself than Labor, she might just have a shot at something rare: credibility.

One miracle at a time. Labor’s still behind the wheel.

Anthony Albanese now governs with the breezy conviction of a man who thinks consultation happens after the press release. The Voice referendum was his signature move – launched without detail, pressed without compromise, floated on moral superiority. He walked into it like the boyfriend picking up your daughter for her first real date – panel van idling, stereo thumping. He assumed Australia would be on the porch waving proudly, but no one wanted their daughter anywhere near his free-love corroboree.

It wasn’t 1974, and the purple shag pile in the back – plus that bumper sticker reading ‘If the Voice is rollin’, don’t ask who’s controllin’’ – was decidedly suspect. Jacinta Nampijinpa Price saw him coming from three suburbs away and warned all her relatives to steer clear of Albo’s panel van of pain.

The Albanese government talks like it’s still running for office – not holding it. Chris Bowen, our inaugural climate pontiff – Pope Bocca Grande I – moves through the corridors with all the subtlety of a cruise ship horn, insisting the climate’s cured if you’d only read the footnotes. This, remember, is the man who told voters in 2019: ‘If you don’t like our policies, don’t vote for us.’ We didn’t. Yet here he is – sanctimonious and still startled by questions about blackouts and bills – wearing the office like a second skin and eyeing the bigger chair with a gaze that says: not if, but when. It’s not the perks that tempt him – it’s legacy. Though he still can’t decide whether his portrait should be painted by Ken Done, Del Kathryn Barton or Reg Mombassa.

We’re not being governed as citizens –we’re being managed like employees. Convinced, consulted, softly scolded. The old idea that office is a trust – held briefly, with humility – is now treated like a charming historical footnote. The sort of thing you’d hear on Annabel Crabb’s Backbenchers We Rightly Forgot.

So here’s a modest proposal: treat public office as service, not status. Step up when needed, then go home – like Deakin or Chifley. Not a lifestyle. Not a vibe. Just lights on, roads mended, laws written in English.

No more invented ministries for factional insurance. No more staffers treating policy as personal branding. No more applause for showing up.

And the title? It’s not yours. It’s on loan. We’ll let you know when you’ve earned it.

Sussan Ley has an opening. If she trades performance for purpose – and makes cost of living her only ‘job’ – she might just do what this government can’t.

She might even be believed.