I've been dutifully going to the mailbox every few hours since Tony Abbott declared that we should all belong to "Team Australia". The “fridge magnet and bumper sticker” are items everyone will be keen to have.

Aided and abetted by the trusty "Daily Telegraph" who produced a double page spread on the worrying trend of suburbs like Lakemba in Sydney to be full of black flags and bomb making factories, Tony is hoping to woo the voters back with a bit of old fashioned nationalism. That the journalist only spent an hour or so in Lakemba before penning this piece of scare-mongering is a tribute to the lack of credibility this article has.

Aptly described as the last refuge of the scoundrel, calls for nationalism only serve to highlight the failure of the current government in Canberra to achieve anything much at all except alienate considerable sections of the community with an ideological blend of bile and stupidity.

Last week saw Melbourne judged as the world's most liveable city, in no small way because of its multi-cultural flavour and what that lends to the culture, food and lifestyle on offer there. Abbott's team would have us living in a monoculture reminiscent of the 1950s.

Yes, there are terrible things happening around the world at the moment and the recent beheading of the US journalist was shocking. However this is more because the News Corporation papers chose to display to the world (for profit) the son of a mother and father in that terrible last moment of his life, than any particular revulsion to the act itself. Even France was still beheading people in the 1970s.

But, Abbott suggested that beheadings might even happen here in Australia. If all you have left Tony is to try and scare people, then things are pretty desperate for your government.

As one individual on the internet said, if Tony Abbott is the answer, I want a new question.

Philip Armour

Yass