Politics is not a game.

It should be the foremost leadership dynamic and cornerstone of any democracy.

Cabinet should be the most important boardroom of all, tightly secured by padded doors to ensure confidence, due process and ultimately good governance.

Parliament and parliamentarians should be held in high regard.

This is clearly not the case.

Why?

Because there remains an undertone of what may be termed “cunning” which is required to be successful.

And for some, that’s just the ability to barricade and insulate themselves against their own team.

I will never accept that’s the way it should be.

As one old stager said to me, if you can’t act lower than the lowest low, then why bother.

I didn’t, as my belief, whether it be realistic, idealistic or moralistic is that politics and politicians should be better.

For much of my life, I read the newspaper from the back.

The sports’ results and stories dominated my thirst for local news content, at first as a youngster searching in vain for my own name, and then later enjoying the exploits and achievements of talented teams and individuals.

And for many average punters, that’s the way life rolls, we read the paper in parts, perusing the pages for stories and photos which grab our attention. Politics is rarely considered an interesting narrative, more fiction that fact, and as was once offered to me, if we had our own AFL team, stories of parliament would be punted to page 13.

But then you get caught in a bubble.

You quickly forget that people don’t care too much for politics unless decisions directly impact them.

You forget that not everyone hears the paper thud in their front yard before the sun has even considered rising.

You forget that not everybody runs to grab the newspaper in a frenzied nervousness to devour the latest political updates.

And you forget that your mates aren’t right clicking through Netflix until 12.17am waiting for tomorrow’s edition to drop online.

Throw in instant feedback via social media platforms, and you have the potential for a melting-pot of poor decision making and self-centredness.

Ultimately, politics is leadership.

The challenge is popularity and maintaining your position – that creates a complicated den and it certainly doesn’t aid trust in the profession.

And now after just three days of the 49th Parliament, the business community wants to talk about short-term politics rather than the long-term future of the State.

It concerns me greatly.

Tasmania is at a sweet spot in recent history with population growth and State by State rankings heading up the charts across a range of economic indicators.

Confidence is buoyant.

We are the talk of the mainland and Asia.

However, when the business community converses, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby if confidence, which is often qualitative in nature, is talked about in negative terms, it impacts investment and development in our State.

Our leaders now have the responsibility to ensure that the chatter doesn’t become reality.

And in Tasmania’s case, it rests upon one person’s shoulders, and it’s not the Premier.

It isn’t a game.