Australian Federal Election – Waiting . . . waiting
Posted By Mimenta on August 26, 2010
So the Australian Federal Election re-wrote the history books, and so it should!
The big question is, will the politicians get the message?
The public sent a loud and clear message to the politicians, that we are fed up with their wheeling and dealing and jostling for power.
Like all political parties, every party is made up of a group of people with similar views – “similar” – not exactly the same. Some are dictatorial while other are more democratic and although they all put up the same “united face” to the voting public, these “factions” do not actually all agree on everything. The leader of the party is supposed to have the support of all (or most) of the faction members. This means the factions can wield some power behind the scenes and they did!
In Australian politics these factions became drunk on their own power in both of the major political parties and lost sight of the voters. They were so busy swapping leaders, that they forgot how unstable this made both major parties look , from the public’s point of view.
On one side, the Liberals, they were so busy backstabbing the other faction’s top men, that they pushed forward a leader who had a poor image for his previous red necked comments. He had voiced a strong religious stance, was anti abortionist, didn’t believe in Global Warming and did not understand technology. His party had previously been in government and demonstrated a strong bias towards big business at the expense of the working masses and lower income earners. They introduced a system of workplace bargaining, called “Workchoices”, where employers could bargain using experts, with their employees one by one. This ultimately meant that employees lost overtime, meal breaks and a host of other benefits – on a low wage, how can they afford industrial lawyers and expert negotiators?
On the other side, the Australian Labour Party, the factions sacked their leader literally over night. That is shocking enough but to make it worse, this sacked leader had been voted in a landslide election and enjoyed the highest popularity of any politician in 25 years. They went to bed with a Prime Minister and woke up with no-one in charge. To make it worse the replacement had assured the public she supported the Prime Minister the day before, was a woman and we have never had a woman leader before.
As voters we saw two parties, equally inept. One with a bad reputation and a leader we didn’t trust and the other with a leader who was so new that the paint on her office door had hardly dried. We voted accordingly – between a rock or a hard place and the results show it.
The final outcome is that the few politicians who walked away from all the faction backstabbing and became independent now have the most say. These are people who gained power by staying in touch with their voters, who did what we elect people to actually do – represent us.
The public have said loud and clear – we want old fashioned ethical representation – we put you there and don’t you forget it!
Now comes the fun and games, watching the political party pawns bargain with with the real leaders – those with the fortitude to stand for what their electorate believes.
Mr Abbot (Liberal Party) has been told by the independents to get proper costings for all his election promises and true to his past red necked behavour, has refused. If Tony Abbot doesn’t change his attitude, he will effectively hand the right to govern, to Julia Gillard and the Australian Labour Party.
Well time has a way of showing up idiots – all we have to do is wait.
