Among the many things we talked about was this week's state parliament sitting in Townsville.

Mr Katter encouraged everyone within "cooee" to attend to watch our parliament in action.

I had never attended the state parliament and at 900km, I'm not sure Mount Isa is within cooee or not (all distance is relative anyway), nevertheless I decided I would drive down to catch at least one of the three days it was in session.

On my way down I stopped at a roadside cafe to get refreshments.

The old fella who served me asked me my business, and like a fool, I told him.

To say he was unimpressed was putting it mildly and he launched a spray on all politicians as an "lying bunch of so-and-sos", except that he used a stronger and less newspaper-friendly term than so-and-sos.

Deciding discretion was the better part of valour, and not wishing to enter a debate when I still had some distance to drive I didn't say much in response other than a vague 'mm-hmm'. But I kept thinking about it in the remainder of the drive.

It's a common enough opinion and the occasional hypocritical and sometimes downright lying utterance by politicians doesn't help their cause.

But from my direct experience of them, I saw them differently.than the cafe man.

They are, by and large, a thoughtful and hard-working bunch genuinely moved by a desire to make their communities better, whatever their politics.

That was obvious enough when I got to Townsville Tuesday evening and listened to the speeches about the transport bill.

The bill to toughen up aspects of the drink-driving code has bipartisan support which helped, but there was a genuine desire on all sides to do something positive and constructive.

Not all parliament is like that.

Question time remains the theatre piece of point scoring and yelling and abuse. Sadly this is all some people see of parliament.

It ignores the hard work of committees and issues from constituents, which politicians, even the so-and-so ones, quietly do behind the scenes. Derek Barry