With the smell of elections in the air over Australia and elsewhere in the world this year, we individual voters need to ask ourselves this question: What exactly do we need from our would-be politicians and those already in Parliament and now seeking re-election?

After many years of working as a journalist and observer in various parliaments and legislative assemblies around the globe, I and my media colleagues all too often have come away with the impression that the peoples’ choices seldom come up to scratch compared to their personal pre-election rhetoric and often loud-mouthed promises.

After interviewing voters before and after elections, our overall judgments as media members have invariably shown that the average man and woman in the street no longer holds any undying belief that the parliamentary candidates they choose will actually meet the various one-line promises they had highlighted to simply gain more votes.

From my working experience over seven decades, it is very apparent to me today that our modern would-be parliamentarians are failing to communicate their core messages in full to those who support them. This, in turn, has resulted in a good many voters later losing faith in their political representatives when they fail to match their previous promises or, indeed, perform 180-degree turns, twisting their former hard and fast beliefs espoused so loudly before their election to office.

I sincerely believe that today’s serious new-look, or younger, voter would welcome those politicians who no longer spend most of their time negating or arguing against their opposing party members and their policies merely to win a debate. Instead, the ‘time-of-change’ voters of 2025 claim they are desperate to hear all candidates standing for election also outlining in absolute detail what they will do to make their voters’ lives better rather than ranting and raving against their opposite numbers or making one sentence promises in an effort to achieve a particular — and hopefully — positive goal.

Has the time not come for us to no longer constantly hear what is all so wrong about this or that government or opposition party? What we voters currently need is for our would-be politicians to provide more immediate and exact detail on their major policies and intentions instead of relying on merely replying to the often-bitter verbal attacks and criticism of their political opponents.

We folk outside the political spectrum also need to have the ability for personal contact with our future government representatives should it be necessary. In days gone by, all political candidates seeking election would knock on one’s door for an honest chat with you, the voter, who then had a face-to-face opportunity to ask the many questions we all now need to have answered in 2025, irrespective of party politics and the indecent habit of continually slanging the other side.

The time has also possibly arrived for Federal and State political candidates to hold public pre-election meetings where everyone is welcome to hear of their political ambitions from the “horse’s mouth” so to speak, and to ask the many questions which most voters have continually in the back of their minds.

In times now past, the venues for such meetings were the local scout or church hall where aspiring leaders were encouraged to explain their policies in good plain language and ‘face the music’ of close person-to-person public scrutiny.

By comparison, people standing for Federal or State government office these days are hardly ever seen en masse in the skin as they rely solely on printed fliers, media Press releases and Facebook entries which literally cut them off from the important possibility of public debate. Clever candidates wishing to be fully understood by their voters are well advised to get to know their people and to be known by them as fellow citizens aiming to help all and sundry.

Some years ago, one significant political stalwart issued a list of 20 major promises for his election to Parliament. Although he had subsequently held office in government, only two of his “visionary ideas” were ever partly officially attended to or were even understood by the general taxpaying public.

Had this particular candidate held, for example, pre-election public meetings in his particular area, his intentions and personality would have been far better understood. Instead, he (like some others of his ilk) later lost his parliamentary seat after bitter attacks against his persona by groups in his constituency not understanding the full details and targets of what he had in mind.

By comparison these days, the average voter wants to know what and how his favoured candidate is planning to improve his or her daily life. The cost-of-living and inflation is still a major stumbling block for many families in the Clarence Valley or elsewhere in Australia yet the first week’s sitting of Federal Parliament this year was devoted to such unelectable and non-personal subjects as hate speech, possible plans to provide tax deductable lunches, the mystery of who named certain backbenchers as ‘the Teals,’ etc.

As I recently reported in the Clarence Valley Independent, a recent international survey of 27 countries by the internationally acclaimed Pew Institute found that the average voter in all the countries studied have lost their respect for their parliamentary representatives.

Reasons advanced for this state of affairs is that many voters consider that some national leaders are blatantly dishonest, make too many ‘pie in the sky’ promises and fail to work for the national good of their countries.

The general reported perception is that too many M.P.s around the globe are far too interested in the number of votes they can garner for the next election. Let us only hope that our fast-changing 2025 will see our politicians become more transparent in their activities and more conscious of protecting our dwindling taxpayer funds.