| On sweltering weather and vast wastage of money |
[5 January 2008|09:07 pm] |
Well, Melbourne sure has been sweltering this past week. New Year's Eve struck 41 - and was still over 34 at midnight! - followed by 40 on New Year's Day, almost 36 yesterday, and today crept just past the 37 mark. Apparently it's going to be 24 tomorrow though, so make sense of that. For those of you still living in the Dark Ages in the US, 37 is 100 Fahrenheit, and I believe 41 is around 106-odd. Thank goodness this is just a dry heat; it's damn warm but you don't feel like dying, thanks to the absence of the sticky and mightily uncomfortable humidity that typifies Queensland summers. So, Victoria gets points there.
It seems that even in this part of the world, news about the Iowa caucus is rather inescapable. As much as I wish Kucinich were a viable candidate, I am delighted to see Obama emerge victorious and hopefully that will give him the boost he needs to take New Hampshire in a few days. What, however, strikes someone such as myself as truly extraordinary is that this is the first week of January, and yet we won't have a final outcome until early November, and even this time next year, the Dear Shrubbery will still be in power! From afar, the election process to gain the US Presidency is frankly a bit of a curiosity, something peculiar to stare at for a bit and shake your head in wonder. I live in a part of the world where the date of the election is not even announced until six weeks beforehand, and thus the formal campaigning is rather limited in duration. Now, since the date of the election must fall on a Saturday during a particular period roughly three years since the last election, there's naturally some moves being made as the announcement of the date becomes progressively more imminent, but it's more subtle and the floodgates don't open until six weeks prior. What's more, there's none of this jockeying for candidacy as the Prime Minister is simply the head minister of the party that achieves a majority in the House of Representatives. Given all of the campaigning that had already taken place last year, it feels to someone such as myself that the Iowa caucus should have been the US election itself and you almost start wondering why Obama hasn't been sworn in yet.
One other thing absolutely blows my mind, and even more than how drawn out the process is - namely, just how much money is funnelled into this, even into the marginal candidates who don't have a snowball's chance in hell of even competing with the lead candidates, let alone actually gaining the nomination. Once everything's said and done, I'd love to see a comparison of how much Labour's successful Australian election campaign last year cost compared to how much each Democrat and Republican nominee spent simply in campaigning for the primaries. I don't doubt that the latter will cost more than the former. It makes me sad really, that there are people out there with so much money to burn yet so little clue what to do with it. You could probably fund a year's worth of food for an entire small African country! And the wonders this money would do if it were pumped into health or education ...! Instead, all that money is going to waste on campaigning - and barely 15% of the people eligible to vote actually turn up. What a waste. Though given how the US seems to be in a permanent state of somebody campaigning for something, voter burnout would hardly surprise me. |
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[9 September 2006|05:00 pm] |
Today was election day here in Queensland, so I went and did my legal duty and voted. Talk about an uninspiring election. Peter Beattie's Labour government is rather tired and worn and needs to be kicked out, but the Liberals and Nationals can't get their coalition in order and I find their policies repulsive anyway. And for my seat, we had the most dismal choice of candidates. While some other seats have people representing various minor parties or running as independents, the only non-Labour or Liberal choice in Indooroopilly was the Greens. But I decided not to follow through on my intention to write "give me a decent candidate and I'll give you a decent vote"; sure, they haven't given me any decent candidates, but I can still give a decent vote if I must.
What amused me was the how-to-vote cards. For those unfamiliar with the Queensland system, it involves preferential voting; you put a 1 next to the name of who you wish to vote for, and then, if you wish, you can distribute preferences to some or all of the other candidates. The Liberal how-to-vote cards told you to vote 1 for the Liberal candidate and give no preferences; the Labour how-to-vote cards told you to vote 1 for the Labour candidate and give no preferences; but the Greens were actually nice enough to distribute preferences to the other candidates (2 to Labour, 3 to Liberal). Well, in any case, the Greens got my vote as a protest against the major parties, and I imagine they've picked up a fair few protest votes this election.
The result of this election really is a foregone conclusion though. All the Liberals and Nationals had to do was create a solid, unified front and they probably would have won this election on the back of people becoming tired of Beattie, but they well and truly failed. The complete disorganisation of the Coalition camp gave Labour so much fuel for their propaganda that I think they will have swung almost every swing voter in the state. I didn't really see the point in voting in the election, but Australia has this bright idea known as compulsory voting. Now, personally, I was under the impression that the right to vote included the right to express your discontent with your choices by not voting, but evidently the lawmakers here have a different opinion. It cracks me up when people suggest that compulsory voting is necessary to ensure a good turnout. No, it's not. Let's have a look at New Zealand's political history, shall we? Over the last 100 years, with elections every three years, only two elections have had a turnout below 80% (the lowest being 77%), and we have often achieved a turnout higher than 90%; the record was in 1984, with 93.7% turnout, not far shy of the 95% turnout figure that last night's news claims that Queensland achieves with compulsory voting. So I definitely do not see the necessity of compulsory voting.
Now, back to working on assignments. Woo. Hoo. |
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[23 August 2006|02:51 pm] |
You can tell it's election season in Queensland. Every item of mail I received today was some sort of election campaign leaflet. "Local MP working hard", "local MP can't get the facts right", "Peter Beattie must go", "Liberals/Nationals can't govern themselves, let alone Queensland", and on it goes. Well, I already know who I am going to vote for. When I get my voting slip, I'm going to write across it "give me some decent candidates and I'll give you a decent vote". I seriously considered voting against Peter Beattie just because he's been in power for eight years and I'm sick of him for a good number of reasons, but none of the minor parties inspire anything in me and the Liberals and Nationals are pretty much everything I dislike: socially conservative and economically liberal. To hell with compulsory voting. I don't see why I should vote when not one of the candidates has done anything to earn my vote. I'm not looking forward to next year's federal election. Do I follow this year's state election strategy of demanding a decent candidate, or do I suck it up and bring myself to vote for Labour in the hopes that it gets rid of John Howard? Australian politics is in a terrible state. That said, politics in general has always been in a bad state. There's only one politician I can say I truly like and that would be Julius Vogel, Prime Minister of New Zealand 1873-1875 and again in 1876, a brilliant man well ahead of his time. I do also admire David Lange (NZ PM 1984-1989) in some respects, especially his excellent public speaking ability and his wit; my favourite example would be his comment to the US ambassador, who owned a racehorse named Lacka Reason: "you are the only ambassador in the world to race a horse named after your country's foreign policy."
Now, while it may be obvious that it is election season here, some other seasons aren't quite so obvious. I'm specifically referring to winter, which seems to have packed up its bags and moved south. Today's highest temperature? 26.3 (79.34F)! Yesterday's? 26.9 (80.42)! The lowest daytime temperature all bloody month has been 21.1 (69.98F). This might as well be summertime in Wellington. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that August is the third month of winter, not the third month of Slightly Cooler Than Summer. It shouldn't even be allowed to hit 20 at this time of year. I hate living in Queensland so bloody much. The weather could at least do us a favour and rain. I can't remember the last time I saw green grass.
Now to stop procrastinating and do some work for university. Woo. Hoo. |
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