But as much as I congratulate Member for Riverina, Michael McCormack, on his success, I don’t envy him.

Mr McCormack is now faced with rebuilding a party left battered by the Barnaby Joyce scandal, as well as smoothing ruffled feathers across both Coalition parties.

He has to stop his own party splintering into factions after the resignation of Joyce, build a relationship with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and represent the voices of an electorate that is geographically huge and diverse in its needs.

What is important to the residents of Wagga may not resonate in Peak Hill, the most northern part of the Riverina electorate.

Of course, Mr McCormack is taking his party’s reins at a time when the Coalition is lagging in the polls and speculation about Mr Turnbull’s future is running high.

The Coalition holds just a one-seat majority in the House of Representatives and the citizenship woes for all political parties are continuing to drag on.

Mr Turnbull is under increasing pressure as the Coalition counts down to 30 successive Newspoll losses under his leadership, a line in the sand the PM himself drew when he gave it as a reason for moving against his predecessor Tony Abbott.

Any policy successes the government has chalked up are being overshadowed by squabbling and a seemingly endless series of own goals.

Toss in a 24-hour news cycle and social media, and you’ve got an atmosphere that’s challenging, to say the least.

And the challenge is to govern properly: Whether it’s the Coalition or Labor in power, the goal is to make people look past the headlines and Facebook posts and understand what it is that the government is trying to achieve. It’s not easy, and it’s not going to get easier when the headlines continue and social media is in meltdown.

We are in a strange position in Australia.

The best way to govern our nation would be to be able to have faith in the government and just give them a little latitude to make the good decisions and get on with it.

But the obsession with opinion polls, spin and getting elected means our MPs are likely to be putting an increased focus on simply winning the next opinion poll or the next election.

What’s particularly sad is that many of them would know this behaviour frustrates and angers voters.

In the lead-up to Monday’s party room vote, Mr McCormack said he was approached by a number of Wagga people.

The issues these people raised include health care, jobs and the cost of living.

I’m going to hazard a guess that “more politicians talking about themselves” wasn’t high on the wish lists of many voters.

We can analyse and re-analyse the past few weeks, but there is one conclusion that is likely to prove inescapable: Australia needs politicians who can stop navel-gazing, put down the latest opinion poll results and get on with governing the country.

The problem is that they have now lost the trust of large swathes of the community, who are no longer going to sit back and simply trust our parliamentarians.

The scrutiny on our elected representatives is only going to increase, which is likely to make them ever more obsessed with the news cycle and opinion polls.

Jody Lindbeck

jody.lindbeck@fairfaxmedia.com.au