Australians of my generation were politically spoiled, though it didn’t feel like it at the time.

We grew up with the likes of Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, John Howard, and John Hewson. They could be arrogant, evasive, and unbearable. But they were serious people making serious arguments. They understood policy and defended positions under pressure. You might have considered them disastrously wrong, but never suspected they had wandered into Parliament because somebody mistook a local party function for a job interview.

There was a minimum intellectual standard.

The same was expected of political journalists. Government is complicated. Tax, trade, defence, and industrial relations can’t always be explained between mattress advertisements. It requires people who can read a brief, recognise what matters and translate it for the public.

Journalists didn’t need affection; they needed to know their subject. Laurie Oakes gave political journalism intellectual heft – in his case, quite literally. Journalists like him could dissect budgets, expose contradictions, and leave ministers wishing they’d developed a sudden diplomatic commitment in Paraguay.

That entire ecosystem has deteriorated.

The intelligence, command of detail, and capacity for argument among our politicians appear to have halved. Too many speak in slogans because that’s all they possess. Ask a second question and the machinery begins to smoke.

The parties preselect them.

Australia’s political organisations have become remarkably efficient at identifying qualities the country doesn’t need. Independence is dangerous. Intellectual confidence is troublesome. Far safer to promote the factionally obedient, the ideologically house-trained, and those who control the numbers in a suburban branch.

The result is a Parliament populated by people who have spent their adult lives preparing to enter it without developing a reason why they should.

The education system can’t escape responsibility. If this is the best our schools and universities produce – credentialled, confident, and incapable of explaining a thought – somebody should ask what those years and all that money were for.

Students learn the vocabulary of certainty before acquiring the knowledge to justify it. They emerge with opinions on everything, expertise in very little and a touching faith that the former compensates for the latter.

Then came the collapse of journalism.

Newsrooms shed experienced reporters, specialist knowledge and institutional memory. Activists with bylines took their place, more interested in arranging events into moral lessons than interrogating them.

The old political journalist wanted to catch ministers lying. The new model wants to catch the audience thinking incorrectly.

That failure gave independent media an opening. The internet broke the monopoly of complacent, ideological and distrusted institutions.

But removing the gatekeepers didn’t guarantee that those rushing through would know anything.

The microphone was once the last piece of equipment handed to someone who’d demonstrated they had something worth saying. Now it’s the first thing bought by people who haven’t considered the question.

Across the political spectrum, commentary comes in angry, expletive-ridden monologues from people with about as much class as a baboon in a ball gown. Every thumbnail announces that somebody has been destroyed, exposed, or humiliated, usually by a man alone in a spare bedroom.

I confess, this new commentariat often makes me chuckle. Many were educated at considerable expense and to remarkably little effect. Their schools, it seems, accepted the fees and declined the challenge.

Rarely has so much self-importance gathered around so little substance. This odd little caste of online oracles mistakes a microphone for a mandate and possesses the rare gift of making an audience nostalgic for an empty room.

Yes, some are courageous. Many are passionate. Several have identified genuine failures that established journalism ignored. That is precisely why independent media matters. I don’t want fewer dissenting voices. I want better ones.

They should research carefully, speak precisely, and understand that profanity isn’t punctuation. Anger can alert people to a problem, but it can’t substitute for knowing what caused it or what should be done. A country can’t meme its way to competent government.

Sadly, Australia’s small market makes it difficult. Only a fraction of our population follows politics seriously, so few capable people can earn a living from independent commentary. Doing it properly is full-time work, requiring research, preparation, judgement, and expertise. In America or Britain, a specialist can find an audience that makes the work pay. Here, the intelligent lawyer continues practising law, the economist remains in finance, and the microphone is left to whoever wants it most.

Unfortunately, the platforms reward the result. Research is expensive; abuse is free. Algorithms favour the certainty of people who’ve never experienced the inconvenience of doubt.

And so, the cycle closes. Parties produce worse candidates. Journalists are less able to test them. Independent commentators attack them without understanding policy. Everyone grows louder and the country grows no wiser.

Then Australians wonder why nothing improves.

Once, formidable journalists forced mediocre politicians to lift their game. Today, too many politicians are pursued by classless fools whose collective IQ sits just north of room temperature.

We should demand more from anyone who places a microphone in front of their face. Passion isn’t enough. Courage isn’t enough. Even being right isn’t enough if you can’t explain why.

The people shouting loudest that Australia must be saved may be the clearest evidence yet that we’re in trouble.

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