Saturday, October 09, 2004

Be alert and alarmed 

Dear Australian people,
First of all, I have to say I have no great love for Labor. The "troops out by Christmas" thing was stupid and arbitrary. Their economics are a bit wobbly. They suck up to unions. The phrase "ease the squeeze" was FAR, FAR, FAR, FAR, FAR too overused during the campaign. Simon Crean's face is just annoying.

But really. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? An INCREASED mandate to the Coalition? So you're basically saying: lie to us, manipulate us by playing on our fears (anyone remember Tampa? anyone? the election that wasn't?), give us slightly dodgy reasons for such unimportant matters as...uh, GOING TO WAR, use our surplus to fund barely-concealed election bribes. All that is A-OK, as long as you keep the economy happily steaming along. Carry on.

And you know those ads you listened to? High interest rates and L-plate Latham? I don't see no vision for Australia there. I see more fear-mongering.

Even worse, a Coalition + Family First majority in the Senate? A brief digression here. Let me explain this little thing called the Separation of Powers. The legislative and executive powers are not really meant to mix cos then the government can pass any wack old law they want to eg. The "all black people should wear green pants on Tuesdays" Act 2004. The Senate is meant to keep a check on this because the government may not have a majority there, unlike in the house of reps. BUT if it is handed a majority in the senate, this means that yes, the government can make you wear pink underwear on odd-numbered days if it really wants to. And now, it can. Huzzah!

Oh, and Democrats, this is partially YOUR FAULT. Your campaign really sucked. You did not really make any great effort to fight against the has-been image formed after the leadership debacle. Socks. Pull em up.

That goes for you, too, Australia.

Yours ever so slightly disturbed,
Tina

[/rant]

So. My very first federal election. I ended up voting for #1 ALP and #2 Greens in the House. For the senate I voted BELOW the line, numbering 1-78. Holy cow. It was because I didn't want to vote just for the Democrats and I really wanted Aden Ridgeway to stay cos he's the only indigenous bloke in parliament and somehow that's important even though uh I'm not really indigenous, I guess it's kinda yellow-layered-on-white-guilt. Unfortunately, he missed the cut. Sad, n'est-ce pas.

# posted at 11:36 pm

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