Will she, given his insults have reflected so poorly on him personally, now give Senator Leyonhjelm her "tainted vote" for his new bill to allow the Northern and Australian Capital Territories to create assisted suicide/euthanasia laws? 

Women are over represented amongst the victims of euthanasia. Surely this man's apparent lack of respect for women, his lack of compassion and empathy in refusing a swift apology, will give her pause for thought? 

In his television appearance announcing his bill, he demonstrated a cavalier shallowness about allowing some citizens to kill other citizens. Without identifying any, he claimed “opinion polls” favoured it and completely missed the obvious – a wrong such as killing a fellow human does not become right simply because a majority support it.

I also wonder and am uncomfortable about a trade-off between the Prime Minister and Senator Leyonhjelm. His bill is about human lives. It could be mine.

The recent quarterly Fairfax/Ipsos poll results show that voters have swung to Labor in every mainland state, and that the Coalition would lose as many as 18 seats if the latest poll was reflected at a general election.

This poll maybe also shows that the largest voting demographic in the country – voters aged 50 and over – do not have, at the moment, a good understanding of the financial issues they face from the Opposition’s proposed changes to the current dividend imputation system. 

If they did, they would send the opposition a strong message of disapproval. 

Both Labor and voters fail to recognise that this proposal if implemented would financially impact on approximately 1.9 million Australians who are retired and self-fund their retirement. 

The great majority of these are not “wealthy” individuals. Many thousands are retirees who have already suffered loss of part Centrelink pensions due to changes introduced by the government. So why are voters seemingly ignoring this proposal?

Perhaps it is because this voting demographic has a misplaced loyalty, where that loyalty is not acknowledged or respected; is betrayed or taken advantage of? Or is it too harsh to suggest that seniors are just gullible and naïve, credulous? 

The history of politics in this country has demonstrated there is no electoral penalty to be paid for stupidity, unfairness, pork barreling, or even unremitting, blatant lying. 

Older voters have an unfortunate tendency to be easily manipulated into believing something is true when it isn’t. But the worm will turn. Nine national organisations who have formed an alliance, as well as many public companies, representing millions of senior Australians, shareholders, self-funded retirees and those planning retirement, including more than one million members of self-managed super funds. A large sector of the population will soon be vocal in their opposition.

Not only is this proposal unfair, it will eventually prove to be an electorally unpopular one. 

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