A terrifying future…is such a thing REALLY worth voting for?

Bad Ideas – November 3rd, 2007 by Sarah

Ok, this could simply be me trying to push a somewhat Labor-hackish (yes, hackish is a word because I just decided to make it one) agenda, but honestly, why does the Liberal party seem to think that scaring the Australian public into voting for them is a good idea? Yes, I find The Rudd’s constant child-hugging, animal-stroking, hardhat-wearing antics somewhat irritating, but honestly, it’s much more endearing than Little Johnny’s line of ‘oh, Australia will FALL APART and we will ALL DIE if Labor gets in’. I don’t know about the average voting Australian who isn’t a member of a political party and hasn’t been forcefully indoctrinated with large amounts of bias nonsense, but to me, a bright, positive view of the future is much more appealing a notion. I do like The Rudd’s new climate change ad on the tv. It has lovely shots of glorious Australian scenery and Kev’s bright and reassuring tone rather than scary horror film style music and a deep, manacing voice-over man. In spite of this however, I maintain that all these silly advertising campaigns actually do is irritate us so much that we forget to consider actual government policy. Sad to say, this is true of both sides. So really, it only makes sense to vote for child-embracing and animal loving over doomsday predictions and horrid, horrid music, right?

On a similar note, since both parties are doing their very best to distract us on issues of policy, how on earth are we actually supposed to choose Australia’s future leader when each candidate’s every move is planned with perfect precision? There is no way we can make the choice based on personality, since everyone has been so primped and preened that any uniqueness they may have once possessed has all but disappeared. The media is champing at the bit trying to catch some poor pollie doing or saying something particularly ridiculous that might offer us evidence of actual human-being type qualities, but so far hasn’t managed to come up with anything particularly inspiring. No, the Peter Garrett debacle does not count, as that was simply a case of desperate journos taking completely innocent comments totally out of context in order to create a hint of a story. I’m actually starting to feel sorry for those poor souls covering the election. They have so little to work with that the only stories they can come up with seem to be based on total fabrication.

So we aren’t meant to vote based on policy, or based on the unique attributes of our pollies since they are all fairly interchangeable. Great. What are we to do, apart from start filling out immigration forms? I put it to you Australia, choose brightness and light over gloom and doom, if for no other reason than to protest against politicians trying to scare us, and to prove that we can see past lame strategies put in place simply to distract us. Or conversely, as suggested by the marvellous Lucy Saunders, a friend of mine and blogger for the ABC, perhaps The Rudd and Little Johnny should just have it out in some sort of entertaining obstacle-course type scenario that will obviously involve tasks of humiliation. That way, not only will we be able to discern between the two without having to rely on government policy or personality, we will be immensely entertained and the media will finally have something worthwhile to comment upon. Everybody wins!

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