Getting the leaders we don't deserve Adam Hills says he is "genuinely distressed" about the state of Australian politics. COMEDIAN Adam Hills is a nice guy in a nasty business. He thrusts few rusty daggers of sarcasm; instead, he perfumes the audience in wafts of kindness that win affection from women and snorts of appreciation from men. It's one reason Hills, a veteran, always seems so fresh in a scene jaded by depressives and misfits. Here's another: at 43, he still harbours ideals that many Australians have abandoned at half his age. Hills last week declared he was "genuinely distressed" about the state of Australian politics and he wasn't talking about compulsory voting. Hills seeks the elusive dream - an election campaign that is more "grown up." Hills was outside Australia House in London, which doubles as the election's biggest polling booth. He noted that Britain's press was gorging on the campaign to reinforce the view that most Australians are "hopeless hicks." Hills alluded to the "suppository of all wisdom" (Tony Abbott), "selfies" (Kevin Rudd) and the "country" of Islam (some One Nation candidate who has, thankfully, obtained a visa to Nowheresville). "We deserve better," Hills said, echoing a chorus that applies to every campaign this millennium. But about the only poll question that hasn't been asked, and should have been, is this -- ought we have expected more? Hicks or not, gullibility does not feature among Australia's cultural flaws. The world may mock our politicians as clowns, but give us some credit: we generally do, too. Anyway, if nothing else, our generous spirit obliges us to share, as does our sense of fair play. British politicians are expected to abide by starched codes. When male MPs there are revealed as not doing so, and this plays to a sort of cultural glitch, they resemble hormones in Savile Row suits. The folly lies in judging a nation (or state or city) by its politicians. To do so would be to dismiss the Taiwanese as brawlers and to assume everyone pulls guns when they get mad in Jordan. We could say New Yorkers send selfies of their private parts to people who aren't their spouses, repeatedly, and then lie about it. We can conclude their ancestors were loaded on corrupt deals, that Russians stumble and giggle like Boris Yeltsin and that Alaskans have the geopolitical grasp of that One Nation candidate - much like Sarah Palin. Is that Russia over the back fence? Or Islam? The second point is that comedians everywhere should be sending Christmas cards to New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner until the day he dies, presumably of a cyber-sexually transmitted disease that he will deny ever having contracted. Similar deference is owed to Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's "Bunga Bunga" president. Australia, in offering British comics endless material this campaign, are repaying favours that stretch back further than the poor British MP who died during an unusual sex act in 1994. No reasonable person dismissed the English population for his style of exit - not unless they're the sort of person who also thinks the English, outside of London, live in pretty villages with extremely high murder rates, just like in Midsomer Murders. This local campaign has starred no ideological divides or moral convictions. Richmond will win an AFL flag before the Budget gets in surplus. The contest is confected claptrap and we know it - refer to ratings numbers for the second and third debates. The campaign's juiciest reward has emerged from the US, in a Daily Show with Jon Stewart report about the Australian way of elections. Sensitive sorts might take offence at the depiction. The more robust would admire the skewering as a "nation of criminals" which has "stolen my heart." It was a reminder that the closer you live to such nonsense, the more normalised it becomes. Should we care what the British make of our campaign? After all, much was made of Gordon Brown's "gaffe" in 2010, when a television microphone still pinned to his shirt picked up his calling a constituent a "bigoted woman." Brown later met the woman and pleaded for forgiveness. Democracy at its finest? Hills should not fret about Australia-bashing; at least the campaign focus offers cover for our cricketers. And the logical conclusion is not that this or that race of people are nongs. Rather, some politicians are a separate breed. They are without shame. Their type have been pretending for so long that they cast us as the clowns for trying to believe in them.