On my way to the local tip, my car lurched as I backed out over the naturally occurring drain that had formed along our street. I drove alongside the newly built dual-lane bike path and turned past the local scout hall. A council-funded mural had materialised on the unpainted Besser blocks. Tip fees went up by 50 per cent seemingly without warning. On the way home as I bounced down the hill on the most pot-holed road I have ever seen in a residential area, it struck me. Politics needs to get back to basics. Progressive governments have neglected their real duties while they have been too busy telling us how to live and think.

And potholes suck. It is the one thing we can all agree on. Fixing potholes makes good policy.

It wasn’t my idea. My girlfriend couldn’t care less about politics, but she did say that if any politician turned up and said, ‘Vote for me and I will fix the potholes!’ she would vote for them, no matter their ideology. What really matters to Australian voters? Who knows? Nobody can think when their car is being thrown into oncoming traffic by never-ending potholes. Fixing potholes is simple but effective public policy.

Australia is full of motorists, even those who don’t give a brass razoo about politics. If we consider first preference votes in Australia as an indicator of those who really know and care about politics, then only 33 per cent voted for Albanese and only 36 per cent voted for the Coalition. That leaves 31 per cent who voted for a party or independent who have no impact. Unless, of course, they have been elevated to their 15 minutes of political fame like Senator David Pocock by a fluke of the proportional system. Okay, let’s be realistic and take out the 12 per cent who vote Green because they either live in Newtown or Canberra and that’s what Newtowners or Canberrans do.

So, we have 19 per cent of voters who give their first preferences to other issues, other parties, and other personalities. Personalities? Bob Katter wins because he knows the names of everyone in his electorate of Kennedy. He used to walk into my mum’s fish and chip shop in Cardwell and say, ‘G’day Carol, how’s business?’ Speaking of fish and chip shops, Pauline Hanson brings in 5 per cent of first preferences nationally, and if we add back the Liberal Democrats and the United Australia Party, then we can say that ‘conservatives’ will, for the most part, vote together. This means we now have ‘conservative’ primaries at 43 per cent of the primary vote versus Labor and the Greens at 45 per cent. This gives us total primary votes of 88 per cent that we can guarantee go to the left or the right, give or take a few.

But my point is that conservatives now have 12 per cent of the primary votes that are up for grabs.

Which brings me back to potholes. Australians aren’t mugs. Albanese’s failed self-congratulatory policy provides an opportunity to tip the policy focus back to what really matters. It is not so much that we do things inherently wrong in Australia, but we tend to go off on tangents. All levels of government end up so far removed from the reality of citizens’ lived experience that politics operates in some kind of phantasmagoric realm outside of one’s immediate reality.

My street in regional Australia is testimony to all that is wrong in Australian politics. We have drag queen readings in our council-funded libraries to promote diversity, we paint murals on buildings to promote the arts, and we have state-funded dual bike lanes to promote active transport.

But what we really need is better access to telecommunications, bare buildings to be painted so they are protected from the elements, kerb and guttering, and proper ranger services so kids using bike lanes are not attacked by stray dogs. Not only do the various levels of political representatives refuse to listen, but they intentionally refuse to listen to anything that doesn’t fit in with their bureaucratically funded but otherwise personal political agendas. And these all tend to be left-leaning.

If you are a vegan Viking wearing a dress while driving down my street in your EV, I guarantee you the last thing you are thinking about is what the government can do to support your diversity. Instead, you will be asking, ‘Why the hell am I paying for this experience? I have no choice in this matter.’

I guarantee you that nobody is concerned about nor denies your right to do whatever you like if it doesn’t hurt you or anyone else. But that is not the story that elite activists told us during the divisive Voice campaign, because somehow, they think they know better.

We really need to heal the political division that has torn Australian society apart. Voters are starved for choice of policies we can all agree upon. If we focus on things we can all agree on, any government that fixes the potholes can bring us back together.