Pushing the class division fables of the politics of envy in the 2019 federal election, Labor opposition leader Bill Shorten certainly suffered pride before the fall after attacking the “top end of town”. He obviously, hoped to engineer a sentiment of victimhood from those suffering hard times. Falsely excluding himself from this club, one wonders whatever must be done by a major party leader to ever join up in the eyes of our successful business men and women. With history repeating itself, new Greens leader David Shoebridge is railing against himself as he declares war on the dreaded one per cent living in the ivory towers of Woollahra with spare properties in the suburbs (“Greens leader’s hypocrisy”, DT, 3/10). Oblivious that his potential followers might discover his “evil” Alladin’s cave of hidden wealth, I guess Shoebridge knows that those embedded in the blind religious zeal of the Green mantra will just see him as a lesser evil. For them, it is simply something else to selectively turn a blind eye to. In the battlefield for ideas among all our politicians, the foundation for credibility and truthfulness is identifying and expunging our own hypocrisy from our advocacy. For all her faults, Pauline Hanson has never been labelled a duplicitous hypocrite. Alan Sexton, North Parramatta 5 October 2026