We should be basking in a summer of solace – more diseases are cured than ever, fewer people live in poverty than ever and there is more understanding of sexual, racial and neuro differences. Than ever.

Instead, we’re chilling in a winter of discontent. Politics should be the solution but instead it’s the problem, feeding our concerns and offering no clear way out of the despair that is rumbling democratic societies and very quickly coming our way.

The Olympics, starting next week, might offer some respite but first Paris has to pull off a high-risk opening ceremony in the River Seine.

And even if it does, it will just be a reminder of the hurdles we in Queensland have to jump in just eight years if we’re to reach Olympic standards or just be an also-ran.

But back to politics.
You need a magnifying glass to find good news for Steven Miles in the most recent polls. Note, in particular, that Labor’s statewide primary vote has now shrunk to 26% – not much more than little-known Green candidates were able to pick up in the recent Brisbane City Council elections.

And that’s after throwing the kitchen sink at easing cost-of-living problems. Nothing the state does offers relief from the concerns about youth crime, amplified by the ubiquitous footage supplied to the prime time news from $200 Bunnings cameras now blanketing the suburbs.

Nor does anything the state does make a substantial impact on the housing shortages and the visibility of families camped in public parks because there is nowhere else to live.

While David Crisafulli is rightly accused of running for government with a very slim agenda, he at least is not bound by a record of decline.

And don’t throw away the magnifying glass. Because you need it to find good news for Anthony Albanese in the national opinion polls. He is now level-pegging with Peter Dutton, the Liberal leader that Labor has long deluded itself is unelectable as a national leader.

Albo, it is speculated, is laying the ground for an early election principally to thwart the continued rise of Peter Dutton.

Neither have too much, however, to celebrate in the polls. Their personal approval as leaders of their parties is each sitting at the 28% mark, showing that a lot of the electorate is not taken at all with the choices in front of them.

Yes, it is a winter of discontent. And made colder by the frosts of America’s presidential race. Joe Biden’s concession he cannot win at least spares Americans – and us as a likeminded democracy – the spectacle of a mumbling, bumbling leader not able to see that his best days are well past.

But the circus around his leadership, combined with the failed assassination attempt, has given Donald Trump the edge.

While our political leaders will grant Trump the courtesy and respect he denies others, we should not be deluded about what his election will mean to Australia.

An emboldened Trump with competent support for his second term will push up protective walls, reducing our competitiveness and creating inflation. He most likely will reduce the US defence support for its allies and he will continue the rhetorical style that we wouldn’t tolerate from our children but are coming to expect from our leaders.

We can be thankful amid all this for the role the media plays in calling out the rot in the system. The corruption of the CFMEU has been widely understood but not acted on by successive governments, their agencies, fellow unions or big employers.

It took the work of a group of journalists to sow the seeds that might contain the worksite excesses of the building industry.

Who, though, is going to learn a lesson from the shutdown of the planet’s linked airline, banking and other IT systems through a mistake by a company otherwise unheard of.

Yes, we can be relieved it was a mistake, not a malicious act. But what will happen when it is?
This has to become a prime responsibility of governments and not left in the hands of private and opaque businesses.  But first we have to be convinced of their will and ability to confront the risk, to harness the forces that so effectively solve problems.

As I’ve written here before, this is a great time to be alive – but we still are deflated by the visibility of the many failings around us. The measure of good government is its ability to deliver the benefits of these good times to those who don’t yet share them, to turn their winter of discontent into a true summer of solace.