It's hard not to feel a surge of frustration when you think of the $1.8 million Australian taxpayers spent in a recent year on offices, travel, and expenses for former Prime Ministers — many of whom were shown the door by voters precisely because of the messes they helped create. This isn't isolated to one country. It's a pattern across the West: leaders who wield enormous power, make high-stakes decisions that affect millions, and then walk away into comfortable retirements funded by the very public they governed.

Politics was never supposed to function as a lifelong career path with golden parachutes. It was meant to be temporary public service, performed by citizens who return to private life after their term. Instead, we've allowed an ecosystem of professional politicians and ex-leaders who enjoy generous lifelong perks — subsidised offices in prime real estate, travel allowances, staff support, and pensions that most working Australians or Kiwis could only dream of. The result is a class that feels insulated from the real-world consequences of its choices.

Across Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and beyond, politicians who oversaw preventable policy failures — whether on pandemic management, housing affordability, energy security, or social cohesion — rarely pay a meaningful price. At worst, they lose an election and transition into well-paid roles, advisory positions, or taxpayer-supported retirement packages.

Compare that to any other high-responsibility field. In the corporate world, executives who drive a company into the ground through reckless decisions face shareholder lawsuits, bonus clawbacks, or reputational damage that follows them for years. In politics, the incentives run in the opposite direction: bold (or ideological) risks are rewarded with power and praise in the moment, while the long-term costs are socialised onto taxpayers and future generations.

Joining the Dots: A System That Rewards Failure

This insulation is part of a deeper problem. We now have:

Generous post-office entitlements that turn former leaders into a semi-permanent political class.

Weak mechanisms for accountability when policies cause widespread harm. COVID-era decisions that divided societies, damaged mental health, and strained economies are often waved away as "necessary at the time" rather than examined for overreach or poor judgment.

A two-tier approach to rules and justice, where elite failure is treated with understanding, while ordinary citizens face the full weight of rising crime, cost-of-living pressures, or regulatory burdens.

We cannot maintain a healthy democracy if the law and public resources are applied selectively, or if belonging to the right political or cultural class shields people from the consequences of their actions. Crime leniency that appears tied to favoured identity categories, or judicial decisions driven more by ideology than consistent principle, only deepen public cynicism.

The entire financial and accountability architecture of politics needs a serious overhaul. Ideas worth considering include stricter limits on post-office perks, clearer rules for clawing back benefits in cases of gross negligence, term limits to prevent careerism, and a cultural shift that treats politics as service rather than a pathway to privilege.

Leaders are not extraordinary human beings above the rules. They are ordinary people given extraordinary temporary power. When that power is misused — whether through incompetence, ideological zeal, or simple recklessness — there should be real stakes, just as there would be in any other serious endeavour.

The public is right to feel sickened by the spectacle of former leaders enjoying comfortable lives on the public dime while the consequences of their decisions linger for everyone else.

It's time to draw a firm line. Public service should not be a route to lifelong insulation. Those who oversee major, foreseeable policy disasters should face meaningful consequences — financial, legal, or reputational — rather than a soft landing in beachside suburbs or international forums.

Until we reform the incentives, we will keep producing more political typos: flashy figures whose legacies leave squiggly red lines of regret across the societies they once governed.