When an AFR Weekend editor, Shelley Gare, published her 2006 mini-classic, The Triumph of the Airheads, she identified one of the most debilitating trends in modern politics: the dumbing down of public debate.

"[We live] in an age where vacuity is not just celebrated, it is poured down our throats," she wrote before neatly summarising the airhead technique: "That nothing should take too much effort and no action has consequences."