Recently though, my political faith has been shaken to the core. It is not until you have to start considering your other options that you truly realise how repugnant they are.
In the NSW state election, ALP had removed themselves from contention by staying one term too long, sending a wrecking ball through the cost of living in the state. It was so bad that Barry O'Farrell didn't even need to campaign very hard. The swing against the ALP was so big they were lucky to be in opposition, and the "Premier in waiting" O'Farrell made about one core promise - to to something about the cost of electricity. That promise was "It will still go up, but not as much as it was going to". He then reneged on reducing the solar scheme payments meaning that it probably is going to go up as much as it was going to.
So yes, O'Farrell won government on the platform of "Your bill will go up under us too".
Obviously, it became almost impossible to live there. When we finally crossed the boarder our bill was so extensively over our ability to pay it that we are still paying it off today. We shaved 10c per KWH off our bill by crossing the boarder, and the QLD Climate Smart package and no Mains Hot Water Systems helped reduce our bills even further.
But now we are faced with a state election here in QLD, and can I say that once again, I am not impressed with the manner in which the ALP government has left the state.
Schools are a joke. She is promising 5000 iPads to selected year seven students, but they haven't even delivered the high school laptops yet. They have had them in NSW for three years already! According to my eldest, who is in year 10, only students with high academic results are allowed access to the school laptops at her high school. The federal government could only give the state the money. The state has allowed their department to mismanage this one in the worst way.
Of course, many of us are left wondering that if there is no laptops, then where did the money go to when the primary schools are asking us to supply things like tissues, copy paper, stapled and white board markers, as well as communal pencils and glue, our childs exercise and text books AND a school contribution!
Where did all the funding go???
Perhaps the Dept of Education in QLD has its own Joel Barlow.
Who's that? Oh, that is the guy who defrauded the QLD Department of Health out of $16m in public funds. I didn't realise QLD Health had $16m in funds to begin with, but clearly they don't now and that is just to the detriment of the health system.
I'd just as soon as avoid the horror stories of Qld Health for now.
Unfortunately, the LNP are not offering much of an alternative. He has promised $40m to do something he has clearly not actually looked into doing, so that figure is iffy at best. If it blows out, I will not be surprised.
But the most incredibly pathetic news came today with "Plan C", where if Campbell Newman fails to win Ashgrove, then some poor other MP has to resign, force a By-Election and they expect Newman will just cruise to victory there. But Newman "cares" about Ashgrove.
Hate to be the bearer of bad news here guys, but you will probably lose the by-election with the voters of that electorate pissed off that you dragged them out to the polls again when you had already won the seat.
So they are my options. Awesome.
On a federal level however, my faith has taken the biggest hit.
Never before have so many been so petty, arrogant, vindictive and disgusting in such a short space of time.
And all of a sudden everyone is an expert. Such as this awesome OpEd by James Button 'We need to talk about Kevin' where he goes on about how horrible it was to work for him and how horrible a person he is, but I am still stuck on the first paragraph where he writes
"I only met him four times in that period so I don't know him well"
These people claim that Mr Rudd is arrogant and then tweet comments like this one from Steve Gibbons -
"Every non Bgo electorate email, tweet post & phone call urging me to vote for Rudd, just makes me more determined NOT to vote for him."
Even if at midday Monday the ALP once again claims Kevin Rudd as the leader, I am not sure my extreme level of disillusionment with it will manage to keep me on side. I mean you watch people like Gibbons, Crean, Swan, Roxon and Ellis destroying each other and the party, preferring to hand the Prime Ministership to Tony Abbott over Kevin Rudd - and I realise why Question Time so closely resembles a primary school yard at lunch time. Their behaviour is not only completely hypocritical under the circumstances, but utterly disgusting paraded around in the public domain. To quote Kate Ellis - you cannot reward behaviour like that.
They keep saying he has a short temper, no control, is rude and arrogant and chaotic. Yet they are the ones in the press ranting and raving and putting him down at every possible chance. How are we supposed to believe that when what we are seeing in public is exactly the opposite? They are the ones looking like angry, short tempered, out of control psychopaths.
I just can't stand watching them taking every possible opportunity to jump on the media and have another vitriolic whinge any more.
I am not sure that given how much some of them have even taken to attacking the public for supporting Rudd, that I can ever look at that party the same way and give those arrogant, self serving prats, another vote.
My alternative of course is Tony Abbott. It makes me want to vomit. This mans main campaign platform is racial vilification and scaremongering. He had be taken off the decision on RU486 - which was in his portfolio - because he is a secularist's worst nightmare. This is a man who would rather attack a dying man doing good work for other sufferers because he is too damn arrogant and proud to be in the wrong. A man so concerned about image that he participated in the CEO Sleepout in a business suit! A man who blocks stem cell research. A man who believes victims of domestic violence need to prove it before they can be allowed to divorce. A man whose only skill really is campaigning - and he isn't even really any good at that.
Obviously he is not an appropriate choice.
Sadly, though, it is at this point that when I refuse to vote for one or the other that I realise, my vote counts for very little, and I can change nothing.
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