Imagine that one of your post-pubescent children comes to you and announces: "Esteemed mummy, I discover I am attracted to members of my own sex. Henceforth I intend to live an openly gay life".

Minutes later (for this is an eventful day in your action-packed home in 21st century Australia) another of your post-pubescent children comes to you and chirrups: "Beloved daddy, I can no longer deny my political orientation. l yearn to join the Young Liberals".

"Yes," the dear child continues, "I want to devote my political life to working for the Liberal Party, that wondrous body that has spawned such statesmen as John Howard, Philip Ruddock and Zed Seselja."

Now, your columnist's probing hypothetical question is, which of these two announcements by your two loved ones causes you the greatest heartache?

If you are the kind of melodramatic Home and Away soap opera parent likely to respond in a Home and Away way, to which of these youngsters will you shrill, "pack your things and get out, now, you disgusting pervert".

"How could you be so ungrateful? After all we've done for you. This news will break your father's/mother's heart. It will kill grandma. Begone! Out, damned spot!"

This kind of dilemma is on thinking minds because of the news (for example, see online the story 'Dark recesses of the 19th century': Liberals slam party push for gay conversion therapy) that forces within the Victorian Liberal Party want it to be party policy to rescue gays from their perverse gaiety.

These Liberals (led, apparently, by Young Liberals) want to be able to prescribe therapies that will convert homosexualists to heterosexuality, the one true sexuality.

My initial response to this Liberal brainwave was to think (hence the hypothetical I've just posed for you) that perhaps it is far worse, far more shameful, to be a Liberal than to be a homosexual.

Certainly voting Liberal is a perversion I've never engaged in. Perhaps there is a better moral argument for converting Liberals and Liberal voters (converting them to almost anything else) than there is for converting anyone away from their sexuality.

Young Liberals in particular surely need the concerned, loving interventions of governments and society. For, awful as it is to ever be a Liberal it is tragic to be one, to be a wizened, ultra-conservative, flint-hearted, stop-the-boats, Ruddockesque thing when one is young.

Healthy young peoples' hearts and minds should throb with revolutionary idealism, with a pulsating love of mankind, with a dream of making the world a better place. To be a Young Liberal is to be tragically, prematurely old.

A caring society should use every therapy there is, hypnotherapy, aromatherapy, lectures from inspirational socialists, crystal healing, powerful electric shocks, therapy, rebirthing, moxibustion, pilates, everything, to urgently rescue these erring young people from themselves.

But surely, even if this particular Liberal idea is too flawed to succeed just yet (give it time, for the Liberal Party's 19th-century genes are on the march) there are other areas of life where conversion therapy should be used to work its magic.

Conversion therapy might rescue Australian monarchists from their unAustralian perversion, converting them from their fawning worship of the undeserving English upper classes to a proud respect for their own land, their own people.

Habitual Christians might, with therapy, be liberated from the shackles of their silly superstitions.

Then, when I and my group come to power at the next Assembly elections we will make conversion therapy mandatory for Canberra's unhappy grumbletonians. This will rescue them from their tragic inability to enjoy the 21st century and the ways it is transforming our city for the better.

Canberra grumbletonianism (the best in the world!) reached new heights (depths?) in recent days with inner north residents complaining that the work of the installation of the light rail facilities is temporarily making some noise. Horror!

The kindly Canberra Times indulged these FWWs (First World Whingers) by reporting their complaints in great detail (see the story, Inner north residents set to suffer through noisy nights from light rail work) and with a photograph of a representative aggrieved Braddon grumbletonian.

But of course the building of anything worthwhile must disturb some peace. What clattering and clanging there was as the Sydney Harbour Bridge took shape! How the stonemasons' tools clinked and banged as the Great Pyramid arose on its sandy plain!

All of us can look forward to a billion years, to an eternity of peace and quiet and uninterrupted sleep once we are dead. But meanwhile if city-building involves some occasional commotions then that seems a small price to pay for all of the excitement and stimulus that city life gives.

To paraphrase Dr Johnson, anyone who is tired of today's pulsating, future-embracing Canberra (light rail is coming!), must be tired of life.