Tag Archives: idealism

Landslide?

28 November, 2007

Not really.

For all the papers are touting the enormity vastness hugeness snufflufflagusness of Labor’s win back home I think it’s important to remember that the gap between Labor1 and the Coalition is not that big: 41.59% of voters gave the Coalition their first preference and 43.9% gave it to Labor. Then there’s the 7.57% who voted for the Greens and the 1.97% who gave Family First the nod. In fact the only places where there was a genuine landslide for Labor was at certain polling booths in the Northern Territory. Indigenous voters gave Labour more than 90% of the vote. Hmmm. I wonder why?

But in most of Australia, there are people around you who did not vote the way you did. Who do not agree with you and are not happy right now. I kind of think it’s important to remember that. They’re feeling now what we were feeling over the last eleven-and-a-half years.

That said, here’s what I hope the new government does over the next three years:

  • Make the banking system not the most expensive in the whole entire universe
  • Not go ahead with Gunn’s pulp mill in Tasmania or any new pulp mill ever
  • Do more than just say sorry to the Stolen Generation
  • Get rid of all refugee detention centres
  • Do everything that can be done to combat global warming
  • Devote way much resources to working on the Australia-has-no-water problem
  • Fix broadband. I’m in the US of A right now which has—compared to Europe—a very crappy broadband service and it pees all over what’s on offer back home
  • Start funding the arts again. Especially the Australian film and television industry which has almost disappeared entirely. And could you spend some of that money on script development?
  • Not sell uranium to anyone. Don’t mine it either.

And lots of other stuff I can’t think of right now. Like can I have a Vivienne Westwood ballgown?

Do I think it will really happen? All of it? Prolly not. But some of it’d be good. I reckon, anyways.

  1. For those who are wondering, no, I’m not spelling it wrong. It really is the Labor-without-a-U party. It is confusing and annoying. [↩]