I was starry eyed, and laugh at myself now at the earnestness in which I placed my faith in this new centralist leader, a modern leader for our times.

What have I seen in the intervening months? I have watched a man who appears little more than a powder puff, a blancmange, a soufflé that rises and falls.

This is the man who was to lead us out of the conservatism of 1990s political thought. He appeared to promise a ‘man for the times’.

Instead this leader has reneged on so many hopes of so many people. The words ‘environment, renewable energies, education, health’ have barely passed his lips.

Where is the man who supported gay marriage? He is whiffling and waffling his way to nothingness, urged on by a small minority of the religious right who believe they have some God-given right to assume they know what God thinks. In the meantime many in the community who have children in gay relationships, or who are in gay relationships themselves, are crying out for a parliament that will pick up the baton. Forget an expensive plebiscite, we elected our parliamentary representatives and they are there to vote on issues such as this and they’re paid a lot of money to do just that.

Where is the man who supported discontinuing negative gearing as a fairer way to tax the wealthy, and then disappeared in a puff of fear?

This is a Prime Minister who clearly loves his wife and family yet allows hundreds of legal refugees, including many children, to languish in hostile environments on distant islands under the Australian flag; another unresolved issue which needs his urgent attention, and before Christmas.

This is the man who allows his treasurer, Scott Morrison, to label the less well off with words like ‘taxed-nots’, comparing then scathingly to the ‘taxed’. In a previous incarnation they were lifters and leaners;  same inferences, slightly different rhetoric.

On Q & A recently the president of the World Medical Association Sir Michael Marmot stated that: “The vast majority of people want to work, and the political trope of a massive cohort of long-term, unmotivated welfare dependants draining public coffers is a myth.”

Cassandra Goldie, head of the Australian Council of Social Services, was equally condemning of the attitude reflected by Scott Morrison, saying: “At any given time in terms of that working-age population, for people whose main source of income is social security, it is about 5 per cent. That includes people who have a significant disability or are currently full-time caring – all those circumstances where there should be income support to help you through that.”

Where is this man who made a fortune from being an astute and intelligent business man, capable of rising above his childhood difficulties to become the Prime Minister of Australia? He talks the talk, walks the walk, he sounds inspirational, and yet...and yet.

We are waiting to see leadership and resolve rise out of the mire that is politics at present, and offer us a positive future vision for Australia.

Come on Malcolm, you can do it!

ANNIE YOUNG