Opinion: Please grant me asylum from election

ONE aspect of this election campaign has me wanting to set fire to my hair and move the family to western Syria.

IT HAS been suggested the length of this campaign has the capacity to affect the mental health of the nation.

It might be prudent, therefore, to subject ourselves to a brief psychological examination to ensure our coping mechanisms are in sound working order.

Crucially, we should not feel alarmed if we find ourselves pondering alternative activities and unusual courses of actions to distract ourselves from the daily dose of politics.

ELECTION: Follow the campaign trail here

Setting fire to your hair and requesting a powerfully built friend to attempt to put the blaze out with a cricket bat is just one surrogate activity that may occur to you.

Moving the family to western Syria to relish that pure desert air may also present itself as an oddly alluring prospect as you gaze, yet again, at Malcolm Turnbull’s genial visage radiating out from your screen.

Wading on to the shoals off Christmas Island, seizing an incoming refugee boat, signing over your home and contents to the occupants and sailing toward Africa to request the Federal Republic of Somalia grant you asylum from Bill Shorten may seem a perfectly feasible way of resolving what, in your mind, may have become a cut and dried case of political persecution.

Do not be alarmed by these unsettling chimeras – they are merely mild hysteria bought on by mental fatigue and were foretold by Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce.

Barnaby has demonstrated an unusual degree of sensitivity in past weeks.

On radio this week he elegantly addressed unresolved issues of anger felt by Coalition voters who cannot reconcile themselves with the dumping of Tony Abbott for Malcolm Turnbull.

But it was his psychological insight on the first day of the campaign which bordered on the clairvoyant.

The 2016 Federal Election was going to include some challenging issues for our collective mental health, he warned.

“It’s going to infuriate, bore and send people crazy.’’

Originally published as Opinion: Please grant me asylum from election