We shouldn’t be flippant; great issues are at stake. There are serious political salaries to be protected, monumental superannuation accounts to be guarded, important lobbyists and their clients to be honoured, political donors and their interests to be shielded so no lie is too outrageous and no exaggeration too great to make sure that nothing much happens, that the voters are kept fearful of any change to the status quo.

And so any suggested change to reduce carbon dioxide emissions will immediately become a huge new tax that will increase electricity prices by 8 million per cent; winding back negative gearing will take a sledgehammer to family homes - “mum and dad” investors will commit suicide in their thousands.

Mr Turnbull, we looked for a voice of reason and decency when you came to office. We had suffered the testing nonsense of a hairy chested shirtfronter for two years; you came with great expectations but though your words sound more soothing your actions and attitudes take us down the same tunnel vision, self-interested track.

At this time most pay tax in one way or another, it is the way we pool resources to provide ourselves with the infrastructure and services that we collectively want and value.

Most of us want our community contributions devoted to the best possible public education system so that our citizens can retrain as necessary and our children can truly become the brilliant and adaptive leaders in the new worlds we face.

We want our community contributions used to maintain the best public health system possible with proper preventative services so that we can keep all our citizens as healthy as possible throughout valuable and fulfilling lives.

We want an emphasis on scientists and research to discover and show us how to deal with the globe we inhabit; a globe that we’ve spent thousands of years taking for granted and exploiting in often disastrous ignorance.

These are just three main areas we want our community contributions focused on and yet they seem to be the three main areas under consistent attack, constantly threatened with cutbacks.

But we want them maintained as public services and we expect you to collect the community contributions necessary to properly fund and maintain world class services for the whole community; we want you to tell us how you are going to do this in decent and honest words.

We don’t want inflated rhetoric designed to obscure the truth, we don’t want the fear and panic tactics designed to frighten voters into sticking with the status quo and most of us don’t want our community contributions used to effectively subsidise the already well-off to become richer through negative gearing and superannuation concessions at the expense of these services and the futures of our kids.

So no more “successful transitioning” rubbish, no more “we’re all about jobs and growth” nonsense, no more “catastrophic price hikes”, no more “sledgehammers”.

Mr Turnbull, in fact all politicians, we respectfully request that you cock a snook at Aeschylus and talk to us in plain and decent language that conveys the truth about the options you put before us.