THE real ugliness of Australian politics is that it exposes the worst, or at least the laziness, in most of us.

Too self-absorbed to consider much beyond our perceived best interest we look at politics as a box to tick.

Tell us something we like the sound of and we will exercise with glib disregard, a right that others fight and die for every day.

It's an attitude that breeds politicians who exploit the opportunity with a ruthless ease that has brought us to a point at which we should be ashamed.

To a large extent the media provides little more than game day coverage of the power plays with little emphasis on outcomes and even less debate on where we should be heading.

A senior Liberal said to me this past week in genuine despair that Tony Abbott stood for nothing.

A senior local Labor figure said as much of the present Gillard-led government.

Abbott, and Howard before him, recognises and exploits what is either the easily-aroused fear of foreigners who don't speak English, or the just plain racism inherent in a sizable rump of voters.

Gillard's turn around on refugees has come to the point where children without parents are clinically referred to as "unaccompanied minors" for whom the law must be changed to allow their shift elsewhere.

And it has emboldened her party's right wing to the point Joel Fitzgibbon is now intoning that "compassion can be misguided".

How about Australia just accepting its international obligations and processing onshore the small numbers of people who make it here?

Most are from Iraq, which we helped turn into a lawless wasteland, or Afghanistan, where we are also part of an occupying army. Many of the rest are from Iran, a country we will blithely barge into the moment Uncle Sam says jump.

I know we dip our hands into our pockets at each natural disaster but, no, we aren't the world's most generous nation by a long shot.

Nor do we have a refugee problem.

The load we lift is lightweight to that being borne in Europe and Asia as the relentless shift from poverty, persecution, drought, flood, famine and, yes, the search for a better life, gathers apace.

And fat chance that many of our indigenous population will ever rise from the national disgrace of their present existence when many Australians appear willing to bet their own children's future, ignoring the realities of climate change, for the illusionary benefits of business as usual.

Ultimately we get the politicians we deserve.

If we stand for nothing, if our values are just about self, and if money matters more than morality that will be reflected by those that laughingly claim to serve us.