Politics has become too mean for an old-fashioned soul

"OH MARY, you don't want to go into politics, do you?"

For a while there, I was fending off the question on a daily basis.

Not because I was a sneaky aspirant, lying in wait to topple my opponents and lying about it in the process.

No, I was just working as a journalist - and my Grandma, who watched ABC News 24 with a religious hope that she might spot me somewhere in the background, feared the worst.

Maybe it was because she got a Murdoch tabloid delivered, but she couldn't shake the idea that the media was well down the slippery slope to political machinations.

And while Grandma has a long history of forcefully handing out DLP how-to-votes, the spectre of modern politics horrified her 80-something sensibilities.

It wasn't the policies that offended her, though.

"They are just so mean to each other!"

Grandma's failing eyes meant she rarely did spot me on the telly - and her memory was heading in the same direction.

So while I think she believed my protestations that politics wasn't for me, by the next day, she had to make sure again.

It was interesting to see that the over-75s will decide the election in Flynn, the biggest age group of voters registered to vote this Saturday.

I've signed up too - and will vote on my usual issues of health, education and making the world a better place.

I'd like to think that the outcome might deliver a few more people that are a bit less mean to each other - but sorry Grandma, I'm not holding out hope.