The first time I voted was in 1972. The last Australian troops had just returned from Vietnam, Don McLean was driving his Chevy to the levy and we had a caricature for a Prime Minister.

The slogan ‘It’s Time’ accurately captured the spirit of the times and my friends all thought the election of Gough Whitlam was the biggest hoot of our lives. Democracy rules! We’d shown those old fuddy-duddies that the times really were a’changing.

Less than three years later it all fell to bits. Labor had made enough gaffes and stuff-ups to allow a hostile media to have Gough’s government on toast.

Up popped the GG who, although supposedly the Queen’s representative, actually took his advice from some fairly heavy dudes in Australia’s conservative establishment. Next thing we knew, Gough was sacked and Shame-Fraser-Shame was appointed Prime Minister.

So, as a result of that quite unnecessarily shonky start, Malcolm Fraser galvanised the Left into unrelenting and enthusiastic opposition. Posters, plays, songs, cartoons, writings and performance pieces gave the late seventies and early eighties years of dynamic, heartfelt politics.

By 1983 the Liberals were not travelling so well and the Labor Party saw the chance for an ambush. At the last minute its safe, boring old drover’s dog of a leader was politically put down.

The new leader of the Labor Party was a dog of a different kind. He had lifted his leg with just about everyone who mattered in all walks of life. Even my mother liked Bob Hawke.

The Accord was Bob Hawke’s great legacy. Workers promised not to go on strike and employers promised not to increase wages unless the workers worked harder.

The campaign for shorter working hours was reversed and non-union labour was encouraged to show its distain for compulsory unionism by working the longest hours of all. Paul Keating eventually wrested the baton off Bob and didn’t drop it for a couple of years by which time he’d sold off a whole lot of publically owned stuff to people with money.

We then got John Howard who tried, initially with some success, to bore us all into submission. He sold more public assets, got us into another messy, unwinnable war and seemed to be travelling OK until some bright spark thought up Work Choices.

The patently obvious choice on offer for workers was, ‘Your job – like it or lump it’, so not surprisingly they told the Liberals to lump it. Thus we came to Kevin ’07.

Kevin Rudd promised us action on climate change and set targets for Australia to reduce its emissions. Now, after a few silly salvoes from a shock-jock Opposition leader, the whole deal’s off.

What’s worse, far from acknowledging the need to curb our coal exports, Kevin’s going to war with the resource giants to get us a bigger cut of the action. How is further tying our economic security to the tonnes of carbon we export going to help lower our carbon footprint?

It’s time again for change. It’s not just between Liberal and Labor anymore because they’re both promoting policies that fail to show any faith in the ecologically sustainable future that is our only hope.