What does it say about a country when nearly 90 per cent of the people's hopes of their leaders are hugely disappointed on an important matter, yet the leaders' approval ratings do not budge?

It tells us that the country has such low expectations of its leaders that when they fail spectacularly, the people are not surprised in the least.

This is a picture of a country in a state of despondency about its leadership. And not just with one side of politics but with both.

Because that's what's just happened. Australians overwhelmingly wanted the political parties to reach a compromise on asylum seeker policy.

Nine out of 10 wanted the parties to stop squabbling and find agreement, according to today's Herald Nielsen poll.

So when the Parliament last week spent two days in intense debate on the matter and produced nothing but recriminations, the hopes of the country were dashed.

Yet the latest approval ratings for Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott are essentially unchanged from a month ago. Why? "People think they know what to expect from both leaders, and it's not much," says the Herald's pollster, John Stirton. "Everyone was performing true to form. Look at where the ratings are for these leaders - they are very low."

Both have negative ratings, meaning that more people disapprove of them than approve.

Yet blame for the failure on asylum seekers is not apportioned equally. Asked which party was most to blame for the current impasse on policy, 58 per cent of voters said Labor. Forty-two per cent blamed the Liberals and a similar proportion, 39 per cent, the Greens. The numbers total more than 100 because respondents had a choice of blaming more than one party.

Meaning? The parliamentary deadlock hurts the government politically more than it hurts the others. This might help explain why it was the government that offered the most flexibility in seeking a compromise.

Curiously, this proportion blaming the Gillard government - six in 10 - comes up again and again across the poll results. Six out of 10 oppose the carbon tax; six out of 10 disapprove of Gillard; and six out of 10 votes would go to the Coalition on a two-party preferred basis in an election held now.

"Obviously there's some relationship," says Stirton: "everything the government does gets 60:40 against." And this is one reason why the government should not expect the implementation of the carbon tax to be its redemption any time soon.

Low Expectations Are Easily Met

It all comes down to simple greed & selfishness in the end .... I want more than what you've got, because that makes me superior to you, so I'll manufacture a dogma that justifies me having more than you've got.

I'll then set-about creating the rules, framework & circumstances that will ensure that I will have more than you or, more often than not, that you'll always have less than me. If that doesn't produce the desired outcome, I'll create external circumstances that will allow me to dispossess you of anything that you might have that I might want.

To ensure that you don't go & get all uppity & decide to do to me what I've been doing to you, I dress-up what I've been doing as something that's positive & beneficial to you .... a bit like the old 'good medicine tastes bad' routine .... & that it's something that you should be grateful to me for.

Very occasionally I'll throw you a tit-bit to keep your hopes up that things might get better someday but, more importantly, to reinforce your perception that I am the one who has the right to determine the natural order of your universe & to therefore discourage the possibility that you might want to rise-up & do it for yourself .... without my involvement!

To reinforce my privilege to determine such things, I create philosophies & mysteries that bind you in a belief system which holds me out as superior & you as inferior: that endows me with the right to think for you & you with the right to be ever subservient & grateful for that. At the same time, I constantly tell you how lucky you are & how you should be grateful for everything that I have sacrificed & generously bestowed on you,

I am god & you're not: I simply can't understand why you're not happy for the both of us!!