Electioneering

I know, I know, it’s been a while. I’m sure I have been doing stuff (like getting my tax paperwork ready – a perennial exercise) which has kept me away from these pages, but I am back.
Australia remains in the throes of a Federal election campaign and the more I see of the jockeying and posturing for position, the more I think that some people have no idea what “democracy” actually means. Or maybe it’s just me that thought that in a democracy, a group of people votes in the person in the area they want, who then, together with people voted in by other areas, s/elect the person to lead them. It doesn’t seem to work that way in a two-party preferred system. Before you even have the chance of running for one of the major political parties, you have to gain “pre-selection” for a particular seat. Too bad if you wanted to run and you are not the party favourite. But you can always run as an independent. And sometimes, independents do seem to hold the balance of power in Parliament. That being said, I admit that I really don’t understand the whole political jag (although a friend has patiently tried to explain it to me on a number of occasions).
I don’t know whether it’s a coincidence or not, timed to run in the lead-up to the election, or as a result of the recent bombing of an Australian Embassy overseas, but ads have just started up here telling people to be “alert” for suspicious things as they go about their everyday lives – is someone taking photographs of a landmark building, has a car been parked for too long outside a building, is there an unattended package left on a bus or at a transport station? Of course, at the same time, if not in the same ad break, there are also the ads for the Liberal Coalition reminding us of how John Howard (current Prime Minister) has done and will continue to do whatever it takes to make and keep Australia safe – including pre-emptive strikes on territory belonging to our Asian neighbours.