Well, tomorrow it’s the Federal Election when (with a bit of luck) we’ll finally get rid of Howard and the Coalition after ten long years. The polls are all suggesting a Labor landslide so my hopes are up, although I’m not going to tempt fate by calling it yet. Tomorrow’s going to be an interesting day for us all…
Of course I don’t expect that things will be any better under Labor – I’m not an idiot. But at least it’ll mean a new team in control of things. There was actually a very good essay on the subject of long serving governments in one of the papers yesterday. I can’t seem to find a copy of it but the basic point was that once a given party’s been in power for more than about eight years it tends to go nuts and think that it has some kind of God-given mandate to do whatever it likes – usually under the guise of “the will of the people” – and will do absolutely anything to hold onto power. So you need to make sure the government changes before that happens. Frankly that’s exactly what seems to have happened with the coalition over the last few years (Workchoices anyone?), so we desperately need to throw them out and start over.
Anyway one good thing about being this close to the election is that there’s no more political advertising on the TV or radio. Federal law or common sense or old charter or something prohibits it for two days before the actual election. Supposedly this is to allow the voters uninterrupted time to mull things over, but I suspect it’s to prevent politicians out on the hustings from being murdered by members of the public driven crazy by the incessant name-calling, shouting and propaganda flooding out of their screens. Not to mention the written and authorised by joe bloggs for the australian loonies party canberra gabbled out at breakneck speed at the end of each add. It’s been particularly bad this year – I’ve noticed that whenever the subject of the election has come up in conversation people aren’t discussing the issues, they just complain about the adds.
In any case the day is almost here and in terms of my own electorate there’s a good range of candidates standing. We’ve got Greens and Socialists, Christians and Independants, and even a contingent from the CEC, who I hoped might be the Centre for Elephant Conservation (they’d get my vote!), but turned out to be a bunch of conspiracy cranks led by Lyndon LaRouche who claim that anyone who criticises them is a tool of the Queen’s Privy Council (or at least that’s what Wikipedia implies, and why would they lie?). There’s also the usual fifty odd candidates for the Senate – I’ve got things to do tomorrow so I don’t think I’ll spend all morning numbering them individually below the line.
One more sleep and it’s all over (bar the counting, analysis and Chaser roundup). I have the strangest urge to hum One More Day 😀
