Australia's politicians, Labor, Liberal or National, are simply not up to the job that voters have given them. They would prefer to bicker, to quarrel for effect, to frustrate each other's plans and to score points than to co-operate in joint action to advance the economy or the nation's interests. Politics for the sake of politics has overtaken serious debate about policy and action.

The economy is in trouble, he believes. There is more agreement on what should be done than appears. But the major obstacle to effective action is with the nation's decision-making processes and "in our inability to find political agreement on how to proceed".

Labor won't co-operate because it does not want Tony Abbott to succeed. That's only fair, it thinks, because Abbott, in the same position had an even more bastardly and destructive approach. The antipathies are intense and personal, and no one takes prisoners or bothers to play fair.

Democratic politics is fashioned around a contest. A contest between policies and ideas. Between leaders and personalities. We believe in argument and debate, and we believe that debate sharpens and improves ideas. We do not search for consensus, but argue it out, then count the numbers.

Debate involves emotions as passions – and settled ideas about what is right – as much as it involves evidence and logic. The experience of presentation and debate is vital to effective government, even when the outcome is almost certain, because good government depends on the assent of the governed, and that assent involves some choice between competing ideas. Good politics too involves accepting the verdict, even if one means to change the decision in due course.

Why does it seem as if those we now send to Parliament are such minnows compared with giants of the past? Lilliputians, addicted to slogans, devoid of courtesy, unworthy of respect. Able to slag the ideas of their opponents, but seemingly unable to articulate a coherent philosophy of their own? People who seem to treat voters as mugs, not least by confected conflicts, contemptible character assassination, distractions and ridiculous stunts.

Australians have always been cynical about politicians, but now, it seems, we tend to despise them. It is not clear that the calibre of the women and men in Parliament has changed for the worse. The modern politician is better educated. Too many have backgrounds as suits on the political fringes and have never performed ordinary work. But even these have long backgrounds in the business of politics and government. They ought to be better and more professional than their forebears, even if less representative of the electorate, Nearly all are sincere. Most work hard, and the quality of electoral office work, from members on both sides, is generally very high.

Some politicians of old might have been more colourful; certainly some were more memorable speakers. But one can go overboard in generalising about the virtues of a few then, or about the lack of outstanding personalities now. At most one could say that these days few politicians, even able ones, can inspire or assemble a following by the power of their personality, ideas or ideals. But the passions of many of the older outstanding figures were shaped by great events, such as want, war and depression, outside the modern ken. Anyway towering figures were always in short supply.

In Australia and the United States, a new bitterness and bastardry has been evident for two decades. Abbott, here, did not invent total opposition, but he could encapsulate it. The irony of the hapless Joe Hockey complaining of opposition bagging of the economy is delicious. It is time that Labor became more purposive and constructive, but I doubt that Abbott's attempts to goad it into policy statements, or complaints about negativity cut much ice even in an electorate long turned off by the bitchiness and pettiness of the conflict.

Among Republicans in the US, politics no longer turns on doing one's best to persuade, but accepting the verdict if one loses. Persuasion is for pussies. It's not about the better argument but about the vindication of already settled convictions. Winning is about enforcing and entrenching one's will. Even if one loses, one must not be a good sport or compromise, co-operate, condone or show any sort of complicity in what then happens. If one does, one will be accused, by the zealots back home, of being just like a typical Washington politician, playing a "game".

For such people, it's not a mere game. Opponents, it seems, are evil incarnate, and so, by definition, are each of their policies, programs and ideas. None acquire legitimacy by virtue of a parliamentary majority.

Some of the argument is about the size of government. It is also about moral issues, such as abortion, which potentiate a newish belief that the modern politics has lost moral legitimacy in a way that permissions playing the saboteur or bastard. The chasm appears the greater because the home grounds of the two parties are often so separate that many Republican voters feel they do not know any Democrats and vice versa.

A wonderful irony is that if it came to civil war, this time the Republicans of Abraham Lincoln would be fighting, essentially, for the South (and especially, for the white protestants of European heritage). The Democrats would be for the Union, including African Americans and Hispanics. But 150 years ago the split was about much more than slavery. A Martian, an Afghan or Iraqi, or even a German or an Englishman would have great trouble explaining the nature of the rupture today. Unless it is the Rapture.

Last week, Australian politicians and commentators were talking about rising house prices, including the view of the new secretary of Treasury, John Fraser, that there is a price bubble in Sydney. If I understand him correctly, Abbott doesn't care, because the value of his house is increasing. Hockey, the spoiled rich boy who has never had dirt (other than rugby mud) under his fingernails, again demonstrated his complete want of empathy or political nous by advising those frozen out of the housing market to work harder and get better-paying jobs.

His ineptness sucked air from efforts by Abbott to employ public funds to confect a public relations terrorism and citizenship crisis for partisan purpose. He wants voters to know that Labor is weak on national security and that Bill Shorten is the preferred candidate of the Islamic State. Cops, spooks and the infrastructure of the modern national security apparatus dutifully provide flags and their presence to help the charade.

Meanwhile, if one reads Glenn Stevens, the other pillar of Abbottism – a better managed economy than Labor could provide – is going down the tubes.

Stevens plainly thinks we are going to hell in a handbasket. It's clear that he does not believe that a consciously "boring" budget, one which explicitly and shamelessly abandoned many of the supposedly urgent and imperative tasks of last year, has steadied the ship. But it's not, as such, that he wants anything tougher, or, of itself, more program cuts, tightening of expenditure or reduction of taxes, the usual things that people of his background tend to want.

It seems that this budget is too contractionary for the times, that the economy is further deteriorating under Abbott and Hockey's stewardship, and that much more stimulus to economic activity is needed. Much more, indeed, than can be managed by monetary policy, by further cuts to interest rates or by trying to further force down the Australian dollar.

Public, private and business investment is down. So is business and consumer confidence. House prices are increasing, and, most likely will increase at an ever greater rate if the bank further cuts rates. The gap between prices and what first-home buyers can afford is causing social as well as economic problems. A rising deficit, and the absence of any plan or strategy to bring it down, is not apparently to be feared.

He wants governments to get alongside the bank's monetary policy by fiscal policy -- most effectively, by major investment in physical and social infrastructure. The Government needs policies and spending programs which coalesce around "a narrative for growth."

Perhaps he meant cash in the hand, roof insulation schemes, and a crash program of building school libraries? Such things can sustain growth and generate confidence. But he was "doubtful of our capacity to deploy this sort of spending as a short-term countercyclical device. The evidence of history is that it takes too long to start and then too long to stop.

"But it would be confidence-enhancing if there was an agreed story about a long-term pipeline of infrastructure projects, surrounded by appropriate governance on project selection, risk-sharing between public and private sectors at varying stages of production and ownership, and appropriate pricing for use of the finished product. The suppliers would feel it was worth their while to improve their offering if projects were not just one-offs. The financial sector would be attracted to the opportunities for financing and asset ownership.

"The real economy would benefit from the steady pipeline of construction work – as opposed to a boom and bust. It would also benefit from confidence about improved efficiency of logistics over time resulting from the better infrastructure. Amenity would be improved for millions of ordinary citizens in their daily lives. We could unleash large potential benefits that at present are not available because of congestion in our transportation networks.

The impediments to this outcome are not financial. The funding would be available, with long term interest rates the lowest we have ever seen or are likely to. (And it is perfectly sensible for some public debt to be used to fund infrastructure that will earn a return. That is not the same as borrowing to pay pensions or public servants.)

"The impediments are in our decision-making processes and, it seems, in our inability to find political agreement on how to proceed."

Significantly, he added, "Physical infrastructure is, of course, only part of what we need. The confidence-enhancing narrative needs to extend to skills, education, technology, the ability and freedom to respond to incentives, the ability to adapt and the willingness to take on risk. It is in these areas too … that we need to create a positive dynamic of confidence, innovation and investment."

It's a program Labor might want to embrace, whether or not Abbott took a lead. Abbott, of course, is famously pragmatic, and has already declared his desire to be Australia's infrastructure prime minister, even as his government has significantly reduced infrastructure spending, as well as planned future spending in health and education. But would Labor be prepared to play a constructive role, or would they think themselves better positioned laughing from the sidelines as Abbott tried to unsay many of the things he had said over the years about such programs.

Would Abbott, for that matter, judge things from the point of view of what the economy needed, or from simple calculation of his immediate political advantage? Glenn Stevens might well be right in not having his hopes up.