A great "maiden speech" that would ring just as true in the Australian Parliament right now

Mhairi Black, at just 20 years of age, is the youngest person to enter the UK Parliament.

Her maiden speech is going viral and for good reason. She nails the Conservatives to the wall. And she calls out her own Labor Party. And it would be completely in place in our own Parliament...

For me, the hallmark of the speech was about the difference between weathervanes and signposts.

It's where Kevin Rudd fell down, most certainly where Julia Gillard fell, along with so many of her poll-obsessed colleagues, many of whom are still there, still behaving the same.

Tony Abbott is a signpost though, of that there is no doubt. I just hope that Australian voters are starting to realise that the Australia he is pointing to—pursuing—is a dire place, an insular, hateful, vindictive and self-obsessed society, surviving in an environment we will be mortified to admit we handed to our children.