Who has the key to sound, humane leadership?

When did this happen? It's hard to say; perhaps it was mislaid around the time John Howard and Peter Costello decided to secure their own political futures by doling out large handouts to taxpayer – bribes financed at the expense of future health, education, infrastructure and research.

Or perhaps with the meanness, narrowness and lack of leadership inherent in the remark "'we shall decide who comes here and when". No country could hope to prosper with such inward-looking leadership. And that set the benchmark for political discourse and decision-making for the next 20 years. It put the nation on hold. Like Bob Menzies before him, Howard was lucky with a booming economy. Malcolm Turnbull has not had that economic good fortune, and the political landscape is more barren now too.

In from a working-class backyard has blown Pauline Hanson, representing the anger and disillusionment of a lot of unversed Australians. Resilient and tough she may be, but her simple solutions to complex social problems mark her more as a populist demagogue than a democrat; she has no inhibitions in pushing and pursuing bigotry and racism. The times appear to suit her.

The mainstream media, with some exceptions, barely scrutinises or questions poor government decision-making. The issues that come and go are mere props for media personalities to enhance their egos and ratings.

Belief in the substance of ethics and morality is an inconvenience: the promotion and advancement of self is a catechism of the Right. Narcissism is an essential ingredient to the right of self-fulfilment, which happens to be the core belief of many fundamental Christians (together with the acquisition of wealth).

Established churches have suffered at the hands of corrupt leaders who are unable to adhere to the precepts of their own teachings; paedophilia and indifference to the plight of the suffering, whether Aboriginal, asylum seeker, drug user, abuse victim or disabled, has negated their public pronouncements and exhortations.

Leadership, whether political, business, or public sector, marches under the banner of 'whatever it takes'. The net effect of this is secrecy, cut corners and corruption. The collapse pf the Bureau of Statistics' computer system on census night and the subsequent handling of the crisis by the ABS is a metaphor for what is happening in other branches of the public service – from Tax to Immigration and Foreign Affairs.

A sense of national achievement is a fading notion and defined as winning the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, stopping the boats and winning Olympic medals. Preserving the Australian way of life and protecting northern borders from the great unwashed are key planks in the political platform of the conservative, reactionary Right.

Negative is the new positive, as Tony Abbott demonstrated. He is a key and effective practitioner in the art of mendacious spin. The creative art of wrecking, which he learnt from Howard and Kevin Rudd, has put great strains on Australian democracy.

We no longer understand what it is to build and nurture. To the Right, embodied by Andrew Bolt and Cory Bernardi, any kind of nurturing will undermine the fabric of society. To nurture is to demonstrate unmanly qualities, sissy stuff, and not for them.

Our response to the plight of courageous boat people is a barometer of the collective conscience of the nation and on present reading we are pretty sick.

There is no threat to Australia from asylum seekers arriving by boat. Pursuing that line has been a tool of the Right to corral the politically naive and vulnerable.

The poor state of the machinery of government, evidenced by the gutting of the CSIRO, has been promoted by political ideology. Research is not a creative instrument or priority of the Right, which has trouble grappling with concepts and creativity. They are of a mind that the arts have nothing to do with industry or creating wealth, and that it should be defunded to maximum extent possible.

Climate change is a metaphor for nothing left to lose. Successive governments have shown little desire to locate the key; they battle to enjoy the spoils of office and privileges of power, but not to govern.

With increasing intensity, the dispossessed fight over degraded water resources, deteriorating infrastructure, diminishing health and educational outcomes, rusting cranes, while the rest of us lament over the lack of national leadership and foresight.

Bruce Haigh is a political commentator and retired diplomat.