What if, for the next federal election, instead of insisting that the whole sheep-like Australian lumpenproletariat must vote, we left voting to the sensitive, well-read, intellectually sprightly 280,047 who voted in ABC Radio National's recent Top 100 Australian Books?

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You may say I'm a dreamer - but I'm not the only one.

The Top 100's countdown, spread over a recent Radio National weekend, was intelligent and enthralling listening. It made one glad to be alive and Australian and able to read and to love reading.

Disagreeing with the 280,046 others' choices was part of the fun, in the same way in which one loves to disagree with football referees' loony decisions. I was very aghast that one of my choices, Henry Handel Richardson's monumental The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, only came in at 124. I was moderately aghast that Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang and Anna Funder's All That I Am came in only at 44 and 45 respectively.

But for the most part the choices of this elite electorate reflected great credit on them. Tim Winton's Cloudstreet was a fairly deserving winner and the discerning electors did brilliantly well to usher Hannah Kent's Burial Rites (translated into 30 languages!) in at number four.

That people who have read the harrowing Burial Rites (it follows a condemned Icelandic woman awaiting her beheading) so admire it is a good example of the now research-proven way in which the reading of literary fiction sensitises us to others, helping make us capable of true empathy for mankind. Whenever anyone in public life radiates callous cruelty one knows they are not a reader. We know for a fact that Donald Trump has never read a book. So I rest my case.

I do wish that a journalist at a Pauline Hanson presser would pop the hard-hearted and senator the questions "Senator, what are your favourite books and what book are you reading right........

© Canberra Times