In a weekend profile piece on new NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian in the metropolitan media, Opposition Leader Luke Foley had this to say about former premier Mike Baird: “He and I got on fine off-stage, and we had a nice chat when he hung up the boots.”

Though the point of the quote was to provide a comparison with Mr Foley’s much less friendly relationship with Ms Berejiklian, there must have been more than one reader who got stuck on those initial words and had the same thought: if the two people holding the highest political offices in the state got on quite well, why didn’t they show it more often?

And what could have been achieved if they had?

After a period of particularly nasty politics in Australia – from the bruising, bloody battles between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott to Malcolm Turnbull’s heated speech earlier this year in which he called Bill Shorten a “simpering sycophant” and a “parasite” – Australians are showing all the signs of tiring of nastiness, name-calling and personal putdowns from their elected representatives.

Letters to newspapers say it, political columnists say it and opinion polls show it.

So why don’t our politicians, who spend their lives trying to pick up the shifts in public sentiment, respond to it?

Perhaps, in the end, they don’t believe that Australians truly want the members of their two main parties to get on quite well with each other.

To believe that one side of politics is right and its leader is competent and trustworthy, is it necessary to believe that the other side is wrong and its leader is incompetent and crooked?

Or perhaps Mr Foley’s use of “off-stage” is the clue. Maybe our politicians assume that we, the political audience, know that much of the animosity and ill-will is a performance and should be treated as such.

But if that’s the case, are Australians tiring of the performance and the manufactured hate?

In a story about political friendships back in 2015, Labor’s Jason Clare talked about getting on well with the Coalition’s Scott Morrison.

“You can disagree vehemently about what needs to be done to make Australia a better country and still be mates," he said.

Maybe Australians are mature enough to see a bit more of that – off-stage and on.