I think the big thing missing in this criticism from many (most) people is they do not or can not differentiate between politicians and public servants.
Politicians come and politicians go but the public service is here forever. Politicians have all the attributes given to them of good bad and ugly but in the end they just set policy with the advice of the public servants. Most ministers have no first hand knowledge of their ministry function, most of them are either lawyers or union hacks.
"Yes, Minister" was not a comedy it was a tragedy closely based on fact.
In evolving operational situations like we have now they are operating completely with the advice of their departments because they personally know nothing about the subject. Where they are failing is to do their job and find the balance between all the different chicks in the nest screaming to be fed. This is where State, Federal and the combined National Cabinets come in.
Each minister has been fed information by supposedly professional (and vastly overpaid) experts. This is often wrong or has a certain agenda pushing the information in a particular direction. On top of this is the huge influence of the party line, political point scoring against the other team and of course their own self-serving re-election.
I would guess most politicians have above average intelligence but there is a huge difference between raw intelligence and worldly smart. Most have no leadership ability, no management ability or the ability to make decisions under pressure.
Nothing will change until Adolf, Benito and Joseph come back from the dead and take a grip of the operation. Personally I would like to stagger on with a bunch of incompetents doing the job and have the ability to kick them out every 4 years to give another group of incompetents a fair share of the ride on the merry-go-round.
Lang