𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬 𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐔𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐁𝐥𝐮𝐧𝐭 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬

I feel most people would agree that judging and critiquing the suitability of something—whether it’s a business proposal, a new job, a company, a place to live, or even a potential friend—is not only sensible, but essential.

So why do we react so differently when the same thing happens in politics? Why do we so often choose words that inflame rather than clarify?

It’s a question I’ve found myself asking more and more.

The chorus of “You’ve got to stop attacking…” rings loudly across social media. Yet, in many cases, what is being described as an attack is nothing more than judgment, criticism or critique.

There is a genuine distinction between these words.

• Attack implies hostility, malice, or an attempt to damage someone.
• Criticise means pointing out faults or perceived faults. It can be fair or unfair.
• Critique is a reasoned evaluation of strengths and weaknesses.
• Judge means to assess or form an opinion based on the available evidence. We all make judgments every day.

On social media, however, these four words are increasingly treated as though they mean the same thing. They don’t.

Labelling every disagreement an “attack” immediately frames the other person as aggressive and the recipient as a victim, even when someone is simply analysing an argument, questioning a policy, or assessing a political strategy.

It raises an interesting question.

Has social media conditioned us to interpret disagreement as hostility?

I suspect it has.

Most of us who spend any time on X have, at one time or another, been accused of “attacking” someone when all we’ve really done is point out weaknesses in an argument or question the evidence supporting it.

In politics, parties are supposed to judge each other’s policies, critique strategies and criticise decisions. That’s the essence of democratic debate. If every disagreement is labelled an attack, honest discussion becomes increasingly difficult because people become defensive before they’ve even considered the substance of the argument.

Words carry emotional weight.

Compare these two statements:

• “He attacked the policy.”
• “He critiqued the policy.”

Most people picture two very different interactions, even though the underlying event may be identical.

I think we’ve become increasingly careless with language. Words such as attack, slam, destroy and blast are often used where question, challenge, critique or disagree would be far more accurate.

Perhaps it began as a headline-grabbing tactic in the media. Whatever its origin, it has seeped into everyday social media language, where it too often shuts down discussion before it has even begun.

Just an observation.

𝐈 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤, 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐈 𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧.

Descartes wrote, “I think, therefore I am.”

I prefer my own version: “𝐈 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤, 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐈 𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧.”

Someone made a very relevant comment this morning:

“But I don’t think a lot of Australians are interested in the principle of democracy at this stage. They are too angry, disillusioned, confused or not really engaged.”

And therein lies the problem. Anger, disengagement and confusion create fertile ground for simplistic slogans and emotional politics.

A few months ago, I wrote about the difficulty of being a voice of reason in an overtly tribal society, where issue after issue in public debate has hardened into moral absolutes, leaving little room for caution, complexity or constitutional restraint.

I also wrote about how social media has accelerated the collapse of nuance. Complex legal or constitutional arguments rarely survive the demand for instant outrage. Calm voices are flattened into caricatures, accused of “both-sideism” or cowardice simply for refusing to inflame. Ignorance and misunderstanding flourish, mistruths spread like wildfire, and facts are buried in the melee. Behind much of that lies the fuelling of anger.

And I will restate it.

Being the voice of reason isn’t about cold calculation. It isn’t driven by anger, ideology or playing to the loudest crowd. In Australian politics, reason means exercising judgment under pressure—choosing what is right over what is easy, and holding to principle even when it comes at a political cost.

Reason is not the absence of conviction. It is conviction disciplined by evidence, proportion and principle.

Hard times test a country. When met with restraint and fairness, they don’t weaken us—they sharpen our sense of responsibility to one another. That is how trust is built and social cohesion is maintained.

A politics without reason slides into division and outrage. A politics guided by reason resists that pull, values proportion over theatrics, and remembers that unity in Australia is earned through fairness, restraint and respect—not slogans. Perhaps we have lost sight of that, but we should strive to regain it for all our sakes.

If we are to dig ourselves out of this hole, we have to rediscover the value of reason and the principles that underpin democracy. That doesn’t mean avoiding difficult conversations or pretending genuine differences don’t exist. It means challenging ideas honestly, resisting the temptation to inflame, and refusing to let anger become the driving force of our politics.

Each of us has a responsibility to be that voice—even when it means standing apart from the tribe.

𝐏𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐑𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐇𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐲, 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐒𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐚 𝐕𝐨𝐭𝐞

The minute anyone in the Liberal Party dares raise concerns about One Nation, it is met with cries of, “One Nation are not the enemy.” I noticed Alex Antic making that point again on television last night. Frankly, it’s becoming tiresome.

When are people going to recognise that critiquing a political opponent does not automatically mean you regard them as an enemy? Politics isn’t a friendship contest; it’s a contest for votes and representation.

The Coalition and One Nation compete for many of the same voters and, in some electorates, the same seats. That makes them competitors. Any competent political strategist knows you must understand your competitors, identify where you differ, and explain those differences to the voters you hope to persuade. That’s not hostility; it’s basic political strategy and common sense.

There also seems to be an elephant in the room. Any perceived criticism of Pauline Hanson or One Nation is too often met with a tsunami of outrage from some supporters, as though the party should somehow be beyond scrutiny. That is neither healthy nor democratic. Ironically, many of those same voices have no hesitation in fiercely criticising Labor, the Greens, the Liberals and the Nationals.

Social media also reveals something about the quality of our political discourse. When measured critique is immediately dismissed as an “attack”, or anyone raising legitimate concerns is branded disloyal, it suggests that tribal loyalty has taken precedence over critical thinking. A mature democracy depends on citizens being willing to examine arguments on their merits, even when those arguments involve a party or leader they support.

Political maturity isn’t demonstrated by defending a party at all costs. It’s demonstrated by being prepared to acknowledge both its strengths and its weaknesses.

No political leader or political party should be immune from critique. Robust scrutiny is essential if voters are to make informed decisions. If expressing a genuine, evidence-based criticism means losing supporters, then perhaps those supporters were never interested in honest debate in the first place. A healthy political movement should be confident enough to tolerate disagreement without treating every criticism as disloyalty.

None of that prevents parties from recommending preferences to one another. Australia’s preferential voting system often makes that both practical and sensible.

But let’s be honest: every political party enters an election intending to maximise its own representation. The major parties seek to form government, while minor parties aim to increase their parliamentary influence. No party campaigns with the objective of finishing second.

Political competition and political cooperation are not mutually exclusive. Parties can compete vigorously for votes while still recommending preferences where it serves their broader strategic interests. Recognising that reality shouldn’t be controversial; it’s simply how Australia’s political system works.

If our democracy is to remain healthy, we need to stop confusing scrutiny with hostility. Critique is not betrayal. It is an essential part of political maturity, democratic accountability and informed citizenship.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐥

For my sins, I find observing human behaviour fascinating. It’s probably one of the reasons I’ve stayed on a platform like X for so long. Years of watching online interactions have given me a front-row seat to how debate has changed. While it’s impossible to prove that what we see online directly shapes behaviour offline, I suspect some of it inevitably does.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve deliberately changed the way I write on X. I’ve tried to make my posts less confrontational and more evidence-based, bringing across the style I use here on my blog. Subscribing to X has made that easier because longer posts allow for more context and subtlety. It began as an experiment to see what the algorithm rewarded, but it has since become something more deliberate. Given the amount of misinformation and, in some cases, the complete absence of information, I think we all have an obligation to at least try to be accurate. That matters even more as political misinformation takes on a life of its own and the consequences can be alarming.

Lately, however, I’ve noticed another interesting trend.

Years ago, thoughtful or well-structured posts were often dismissed as “cut and paste”. Today, they’re increasingly dismissed as “AI-generated”.

I recently watched someone argue with both Grok and ChatGPT over one of my replies. He would feed my response into one AI, then take that answer to the other, hoping one would validate his position. When neither did, and Grok suggested he actually engage with the points being made, he accused Grok of, to quote, “polishing a turd”. It was both comical and utterly bizarre.

What interests me is that accusing someone of using AI has become a convenient way of dismissing what they’ve written without actually engaging with it. A thoughtful, well-reasoned argument is labelled “AI” simply because it stands out amid the stream of reactive, emotional and often inflammatory exchanges that dominate platforms like X.

I experienced that again yesterday. Someone repeatedly demanded evidence and, each time it was provided, simply dismissed it. When there was no substantive argument left, the conversation shifted to accusing me of using AI. The evidence was ignored; the focus became the supposed source of the words instead.

Ironically, people who have spent years writing professionally or academically can sound remarkably similar to AI because AI has been trained on well-written human text in the first place. Add to that the fact that AI detectors are notoriously unreliable, and confident accusations amount to little more than guesswork. Those of us who use AI for research know its limitations. It’s a useful research tool, but its output still needs to be checked, verified and challenged.

Of course, not every allegation is made in bad faith. People genuinely do use AI to write posts, and sometimes the signs are obvious. But I’ve increasingly seen the accusation deployed as a debating tactic rather than a genuine observation.

Once an argument becomes difficult to rebut, it’s easier to declare the author “fake” or “AI-generated” than to concede a point. The label becomes a signal to like-minded followers that the argument doesn’t deserve consideration, allowing the accuser to sidestep the substance without acknowledging they may have been wrong.

In the end, I don’t think these accusations reveal much about the person being accused. They reveal far more about the person making the accusation. More often than not, it’s simply a reaction to having a mirror held up to their own behaviour.

Those of us who have something, hopefully, worthwhile to say (whether readers ultimately find it worthwhile is, of course, for them to decide), and who are prepared to support it with evidence and reason shouldn’t be intimidated by this tactic. For many of us, our written words are the only means we have of expressing what we feel, what we believe and why we believe it. If we allow ourselves to be silenced by lazy accusations, we simply reward those who seek to discredit arguments they can’t or won’t engage with.

Divide and Conquer: From Tax Politics to Cultural Politics – A New Level of Political Cynicism (2026)

Back in 2019, I wrote that Australia had reached a crossroads. At the time, the concern was Labor’s tax agenda, which I believed deliberately pitted younger Australians against their parents and grandparents by portraying aspiration and financial security as something to resent rather than admire.

Today, in 2026, that strategy has evolved. It is no longer just about tax. Division has become the defining political strategy.

Australians are now routinely divided by generation, gender, wealth, race, climate, identity and postcode. Rather than bringing people together around shared values and common purpose, politics increasingly encourages Australians to view one another as competing interest groups.

The tragedy is that many people still fail to recognise the trap.

Governments benefit when communities are divided. A population arguing amongst itself is far less likely to scrutinise those exercising power. While Australians fight each other over cultural and political fault lines, attention is diverted from government performance, economic management and declining living standards.

One of the reasons I remain hopeful is because we’ve been here before.

In 2019, Australians were presented with a politics that, in my view, sought to divide generations through tax policy. The electorate rejected it. They looked beyond the rhetoric and refused to reward what many saw as an attempt to pit younger Australians against their parents and grandparents. Whatever else can be said about that election, Australians demonstrated the political wisdom to reject a campaign that relied heavily on division.

Which raises an important question: what changed?

How have we gone from an electorate that rejected division in 2019 to one where division now seems woven into almost every political debate?

The years that followed changed Australia profoundly. The pandemic reshaped how we interacted with one another. Social media increasingly rewarded outrage over thoughtful discussion. Identity politics became more entrenched. Cost-of-living pressures fuelled frustration and made people more susceptible to messages that encouraged them to blame fellow Australians rather than question those making the decisions.

At the same time, the centre-right became increasingly fractured. Instead of uniting around the broad principles they shared, too much energy was spent fighting one another. The rise of One Nation reflects genuine frustration felt by many voters, but it has also fractured the non-Labor vote. Whether intentional or not, the practical effect has been to weaken the broader conservative movement while making Labor’s path to government easier.

One concerning trend in recent political discourse is the idea that certain major parties should simply be “killed off” or eliminated altogether. That sentiment is not healthy for a democracy.

A functioning democracy depends on contestable ideas and a credible opposition. Voters don’t benefit when political competition is replaced with a desire to remove opponents from the system entirely. They benefit when parties are challenged, held to account, and ultimately judged at the ballot box.

When politics shifts from persuasion to elimination, division has already taken hold.

That is why I believe divide and conquer has reached an entirely new level.

Labor benefits when Australians are divided socially, economically and culturally. At the same time, divisions within the centre-right have weakened the electoral alternative. Instead of recognising the bigger picture, too many voters have become consumed by battles within their own side. The public often mistakes this for healthy political competition when, in reality, it simply entrenches those already in power.

The Australia I grew up believing in wasn’t perfect, but it valued fairness, aspiration, family and the idea that hard work should be rewarded. It recognised that generations should support one another, not resent one another. Political disagreement existed, but it wasn’t built on encouraging Australians to see each other as enemies.

That is why I believe the real crossroads remain before us.

The choice is no longer simply between competing tax policies. It is whether we continue rewarding political movements that profit from division, or whether we demand leaders who unite Australians around shared values, practical solutions and a common purpose.

History shows that divided societies rarely flourish. Strong societies are built on trust, mutual respect and a willingness to disagree without tearing each other apart.

In 2019, Australians recognised the trap and rejected it. Seven years later, the trap has become far more sophisticated. It is no longer confined to one election campaign or one policy. It has seeped into our political culture.

If we continue allowing ourselves to be divided by generation, by gender, by race, by wealth or by political tribe we will keep strengthening those who benefit most from our division.

Wasting our time fighting each other achieves nothing. Recognising the trap and demanding politics that unites rather than divides is one of the most important challenges facing Australia today.