Dead brain cells? Where is critical thinking?

May 25, 2026

In my letter of May 18 (Community independents as the next opposition), I challenged Kos Samaris’ idea “that PHON is the Opposition of the future.” To my horror, now the AFR suggests that if an election were held today (23 May), the Nationals and Greens would be wiped out, a Liberal rump would remain, and PHON, winning 59 seats, would indeed become the Opposition.

In my opinion of 18 May, I was obviously giving more credit to Australians than many deserve. I understand a protest vote, I’ve made a few of those. But we seriously have to question the capacity for critical thinking of those who think that PHON could possibly be the answer to even one of Australia’s problems, let alone many or even all of them. What has gone wrong that voters can ignore good independent candidates and a few others on the cross bench? Why has the government caved to foreign-owned corporations? Why does the government slavishly follow the US line? Why are our major news sources mostly few and foreign? Why are politicians and political candidates allowed to lie and distort the truth in ways we wouldn’t tolerate from 6-year-olds? We are killing our own country.