It's hard listening to all the tributes for Jim Bolger and not feeling like we're being short-changed by our current crop of leaders.

A few short generations ago, this country was a different place.

Before the internet. Before the phones. Before the anxiety.

Before career politicians—those who go straight from school to university, into the student union, and then directly into politics.

Jim Bolger was in Parliament a long time. But he had a productive life before that. He left school at 15 and went straight into work. Hard work. Manual work. On the farm in Taranaki, and later in Te Kuiti.

Now it's straight from school, into a student union at university, and then into Parliament.

Have you watched Parliament TV lately? There are MPs who literally don't know how to ask a question.

It's like watching a video buffer.

No idea about standing orders. No idea about the rules that govern the place. And no apparent desire to learn, either.

Just walk in. Full of entitlement. Sit down. And start yelling.

One of the most important tools in the modern MP’s toolbox seems to be an unwavering ability to take offence.
At anything and everything.

Intolerance for another's point of view—the antithesis of Jim Bolger—is now commonplace.

Where once there was decency, there's mistrust.

Wisdom has been usurped by incompetence.

And decorum has been thrown out the window and replaced with petulance.

People aren't recognised for their standing in the community and voted into Parliament.

They're there because politics is now an industry—and more importantly—because nobody else would hire them or pay the going rate we do.