It is always with a sense of despair that I wake up on an election day and realise I have the totally impossible task of casting a reasoned vote that goes towards deciding the government of our wonderful country. Not that the issue(s) only relate to Australia it seems that all ‘western' democracies have slid into the pit of it is either us or them for policies.
In our case most of the policies for both parties are actually not all that different they do tend to try obfuscate this by wrapping most policies in meaningless double talk. The only major differences seem to be this time around that one will get us back into surplus, generally by cutting everything they don't believe in, like hospitals etc, NBN, and the carbon tax but the problem is even if that was it I still wouldn't want either of Abbott or Rudd running our country I realise that we only get what we pay/vote for but the election system simply doesn't let us make one simple statement … what if I do not want any of the people to represent me? Sure I can vote informally but why can't we have a real choice? Why I say this is so that the so called ‘mandate' can be shown as the absolute lie that it is, very few governments have been elected with a ‘mandate' and given that we only have a choice of two possible governments such claims just prove how slimy and untruthful are our elected representatives.
What do we need? How about stopping the media 30 second government mindset we need to have policies and plans for the future not the next sound grab for ratings/opinion polls. The other would be for all of them to act in a responsible and courteous manner in parliament though that is definitely against ‘Westminster' tradition.
