The Hidden Danger of One-Dimensional Thinking in Politics and Law

In an age where opinions travel faster than facts, one trap we all fall into is one-dimensional thinking: the habit of reducing people, situations, or complex issues to a single label or idea. While mental shortcuts help us navigate everyday life, in politics and law, this simplification can have serious consequences.

What is one-dimensional thinking?

One-dimensional thinking happens when we see things in black and white, ignoring nuance, context, and complexity. It’s the mental equivalent of looking at a 3D object from a single angle: you see only part of the truth. For example, labeling a politician as “corrupt” or “heroic” without examining their actions, motivations, or the context of their decisions is a classic trap.

Why It’s Dangerous in Politics

Political issues are rarely simple. They involve economics, social behavior, culture, and long-term consequences. When we rely on one-dimensional thinking, we:

• Oversimplify issues: Policies labeled as “good” or “bad” can have hidden effects. For instance, a tax reform might seem like “taking money from people,” but it could fund vital healthcare or infrastructure programs.
• Fuels polarisation: Seeing parties or politicians as entirely right or wrong fosters “us vs. them” mentalities. Compromise and reasoned debate are replaced by tribalism and hostility.
• Ignores long-term consequences: Popular but oversimplified policies like “tough on crime” measures might produce immediate results but cannot address root causes, creating more problems.

One-Dimensional Thinking and Frustration

When voters reduce complex issues to simple labels, expectations become unrealistic. Politics moves slowly; compromise is required, and trade-offs are inevitable. When reality doesn’t match their mental shortcuts, frustration builds.

• Oversimplification creates unmet expectations: Voters might label rising housing costs as “government failure” without understanding market complexity, zoning laws, or economic cycles.
• Emotional shortcuts amplify grievances: Simplified blame (“They’ve taken your jobs!” or “They’re corrupt!”) taps into emotions like fear, resentment, and frustration.
• Nuance feels unsatisfying: Acknowledging complexity takes effort and often feels less emotionally rewarding than a clear-cut villain or simple solution.
• Reinforcement loops fuel division: Once voters adopt a simplified view, media, social networks, and conversations constantly reinforce it, amplifying frustration and alienation.

Combining frustration, emotional shortcuts, and reinforcement makes voters receptive to grievance-driven politicians, who offer simple solutions, clear villains, and emotional satisfaction, even if the reality is far more complex.

The Legal Dimension

Laws are crafted to account for context, precedent, and intent. One-dimensional thinking can distort justice:

• Misinterpretation of laws: Seeing someone as simply “breaking the law” ignores circumstances, intent, or legal protections.
• Unjust judgments: Simplifying cases into “criminal vs. innocent” can lead to disproportionate punishments.
• Policy errors: Legislators may pass laws based on slogans or ideology rather than evidence, creating unintended consequences.

Seeing Beyond the Surface

Breaking free from one-dimensional thinking requires curiosity and effort. It means asking questions like:

• What context am I missing?
• Are there multiple perspectives here?
• What are the long-term effects of this policy or law?

By embracing the complexity of reality, we become more empathetic citizens, wiser decision-makers, and fairer interpreters of the law.

In short: One-dimensional thinking might make life feel easier in the moment, but in politics and law, it’s a shortcut that comes at a high cost. Reality is layered, people are complex, and issues are multifaceted. Recognizing nuance isn’t just an intellectual exercise it’s essential for reducing frustration, resisting grievance politics, and fostering justice that truly works. And stopping the spread of misinformation which is rife on social media.

We can NOT afford to let division continue to destroy Australia

Back in 2019, in the lead-up to the election, I wrote about Bill Shorten’s strategy of deliberately pitting younger Australians against their parents and grandparents. At the time, voters saw through it and rejected Labor’s divisive approach. That clarity did not hold in 2022 or 2025. Today, what was once troubling has become entrenched. Division is no longer incidental to politics; it has become a deliberate strategy.

Those who seek to govern a nation carry a responsibility to unite its people, not fracture them into competing tribes. Yet politics is increasingly prosecuted through a divide-and-conquer lens young against old, renter against homeowner, worker against retiree, conservative against progressive. Compounding this, social media has turned division into a public sport, amplifying outrage and rewarding tribal loyalty over reason. The result is a country increasingly sorted and ranked by ethnicity, identity, and grievance, with citizens themselves drawn into inflaming the very divisions that weaken us all.

This moment feels like a real test of Australian society. A society that once prided itself on fairness, a fair go, personal responsibility, and the dignity of effort. A society built on the idea that you advance by standing on your own two feet, not by tearing others down. That social compact has been under pressure for years, but today’s politics has taken it further actively rewarding resentment and weaponising difference.

A growing number of grievance-driven political parties thrive on this environment. They do not seek to govern or unify; they seek to inflame. Their success depends on keeping Australians angry convinced that someone else is to blame for every frustration and every failure. These movements offer identity in place of policy, outrage in place of solutions, and permanent conflict in place of progress.

This should concern all of us.

When politics teaches people to see their neighbours as enemies because of their age, their success, their background, or their beliefs; it corrodes trust. When ideology matters more than cohesion, the nation weakens. When conservatives are caricatured as immoral and progressives as un-Australian, debate dies and tribalism takes its place.

We are told these divisions are natural, even necessary. They are not. They are cultivated often deliberately by those who profit politically from grievance and division.

There is a growing push to replace a shared national identity with competing group identities, to reframe aspiration as greed, success as exploitation, and disagreement as moral failure. This is not compassion. It is a politics of envy dressed up as justice.

Younger Australians are being told that their struggles are caused not by poor policy, housing shortages, or economic mismanagement—but by their parents’ generation, by those who worked, saved, and played by the rules. That narrative may be emotionally satisfying, but it is false. Families are not the enemy. Communities are not the enemy. A political class and grievance parties that benefit from keeping Australians angry at one another are.

We are, once again, at a crossroads.

The choice before us is not simply left or right, conservative or progressive. It is between a society that values unity, effort, and mutual obligation—or one that thrives on resentment, division, and permanent conflict.

History is clear on this point: nations that turn inward on themselves, that fracture along identity lines, do not become fairer or freer. They become weaker, angrier, and more easily controlled.

We should choose carefully and act responsibly. Debate and disagreement are the lifeblood of democracy, but division that corrodes trust and cohesion destroys nations. Unity must be built, defended, and valued. Once a society is conditioned to see itself as a collection of enemies, restoring it is no easy task.

This Australia Day, let us remember what makes our country truly great: a society that values fairness, effort, and community; a nation where families, neighbours, and fellow citizens are allies, not enemies; and a people willing to defend unity over envy, and common purpose over division. That is the Australia worth preserving. 

Let us also recognise the reality that those who cannot or will not integrate into this shared society pose a serious challenge to the cohesion and stability we must protect. We must continue to argue that this has to change and to prosecute political dogma that fails to deal with it. 

Liberal Party Leadership

Perseverance defines me, and I rarely quit but wisdom teaches that sometimes letting go serves the greater good; leadership lies in recognising when persistence helps and when it harms.

Electing Sussan Ley as Liberal leader was always a risk. And in the contest between her and Angus Taylor, I supported Taylor.

Under Sussan Ley, it has been one drama after another with the junior member of the coalition; The Nationals. And instead of prosecuting Labor and their woeful performance, all the energy has been inwardly focused. And fast-forward to January 2026, and the Coalition has split again. The second time in under a year, triggered by disputes over Labor’s Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026. In pulling the Nationals out of the coalition David Littleproud has also made it very personal by stating he can’t serve with Ley.

And Sussan Ley’s public defiance is harming the Liberals even more. She insists she’ll survive and is keeping the door open for reconciliation, but the vibe inside the Liberals is grim: MPs and powerbrokers are openly discussing a leadership change as early as next month (February 2026). Potential challengers being floated include conservative figures like Angus Taylor and Andrew Hastie. Both are more aligned with core right-leaning principles on economics, energy, and security. If they can unify behind one candidate, a spill seems likely.

I’d back Taylor because of his strong economic credentials.

• Education: Bachelor of Economics (First Class Honours + University Medal) and Bachelor of Laws (Honours) from the University of Sydney, followed by a Master of Philosophy in Economics from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar (thesis on competition policy). That’s elite-level training in straight economics, not just tangential exposure.
• Pre-politics career: Partner at McKinsey & Company (global consulting powerhouse, where he worked on strategy and economics-heavy projects), then co-founder and adviser in agribusiness ventures like Growth Farms and Farmshed (digital ag-tech backed by big players like Wesfarmers and NAB). He bridged theory and real-world application in markets, productivity, and rural economics.
• Parliamentary roles: Served as Shadow Treasurer (where he hammered productivity, wage stagnation, and fiscal discipline critiques of Labor), plus stints in energy/industry where he pushed deregulation and emissions reduction via market mechanisms rather than heavy-handed intervention.

In contrast, Andrew Hastie (the other main conservative contender right now) has a solid but different profile: military background (SASR officer), BA (Hons) in History/Politics/Philosophy from UNSW, and a Graduate Certificate in Business Economics from Harvard Extension School. It’s respectable economics exposure, but more supplementary to his defence/national security strengths, less deep or “impeccable” in pure economic policy compared to Taylor’s resume. Hastie’s credentials fit with defence and immigration.

The chatter in January 2026 (post-Coalition split) has Taylor and Hastie as the top challengers to Sussan Ley, with some Liberals floating a potential February spill when parliament resumes. Taylor’s economic credentials give him an edge in appealing to voters frustrated by cost-of-living pressures, stagnant productivity, and Labor’s perceived mismanagement. Issues that Liberals see as core territory. A new leader with that background could credibly pitch a rebuild around:

• Tax reform and deregulation to boost growth
• Productivity-focused policies (he’s long warned about Australia’s “disastrous” trends here)
• Fiscal responsibility without the grievance optics of minor parties

Of course, baggage exists (past controversies as Energy Minister, critiques of his shadow treasurer performance in not presenting enough detailed policy pre-2025 election). That wasn’t just down to Taylor. Plus, the party room would need to unify behind one conservative to avoid splitting votes and letting Ley hang on. But if the goal is a serious, governing-ready conservative force that delivers reforms rather than just opposition noise, Taylor’s economic credentials and parliamentary experience in the inner sanctum make him a logical choice to lead that reset.

The question is, would the party rally around him quickly. Or is there a risk of another drawn-out contest? We simply don’t have the luxury or the time to blood Hastie. But Taylor as leader and Hastie as deputy leader would be a powerful economic and defence combination.

However, success relies on recognition from Sussan that staying is causing irreparable harm. Strong leadership means having the courage to admit when a mistake has been made, take responsibility, and correct course. This is a test of her leadership integrity.