I’m getting nervous about the election tomorrow. I’ve been registered to vote since I turned 17, in preparation for when I turned 18. The coalition government was voted in the year before I could have my say. That’s a decade of horrifically depressing voting for me. Every election I get excited that this time the people of Australia will have come to their senses, and every time my heart breaks a little more… and I wonder how my fellow citizens can be so selfish and shortsighted with their reasoning and votes.
For those that don’t know, voting is compulsory in Australia. We are legally required to enrol, go to the polls and put our ballot in the box. We don’t technically have to fill out the ballot, but I really don’t recommend that. Our electoral system is not perfect — a party may receive the most votes but still lose the election because they didn’t win the majority of seats in parliament — but the fact that we have mandatory, preferential voting system is a start. The problem is that when the Liberals (that’s large ‘L’ Liberal, not small ‘l’ liberal — the Australian Liberal party is on the conservative, right wing side) win, I can’t just blame it on a lack of voter turnout…
Giles looks scared, too.
(I made those fridge magnets and the puppets from the other recent post for an art project back in semester 1 last year, based on the blatant racism of the Howard government and all those APEC costumes we see Howard and Bush dressed up in — if anyone wants to turn the photos into LOLpols, be my guest.)
I need help.
Around four years ago I started dismantling our old washing machine with the intent of making the drum into a coffee table. It’s been sitting in the backyard ever since, because I reached a point where I physically couldn’t remove any more of the casing.
Do you know how to take apart a front-loader washing machine?
Do you have tools that I could borrow?
Do you know people with tools I could borrow?
We’ve been on a bit of a cleanliness/house-proud kick here lately, and I’d really love to get this done. Google is offering me nothing but instructions on how to fix washing machines. It’s not helpful.
For more views, see The Washing Machine Project I’ve set up on Flickr.
“Two things happened to me yesterday. The first was I received all this shit about voting for the first time, which I chucked in the bin, cos I reckon all politicians are a bunch of dickheads. And the other thing was my old man was watching a documentary about insects rooting on fig leaves, so I caught the end of the world news. And I saw this guy who was being chased by his own government, and I didn’t understand anything about it except that he was wearing a Nick Cave t-shirt. And then I wondered how a guy my age, with my taste in music, had gotten himself into a situation where his own government was trying to have him shot, just because he had something to say. And I realised I’m lucky because in this country, I can rant and rave and call the Prime Minister a dickhead without the army coming in and shooting me, and stopping you all from listening. And I figured that in this country, we don’t vote to keep the best party in – cos there’s no such thing – but we vote to keep the worst party out. Because I don’t want to end up being watched by some bloke at the other end of the world who thinks that this can’t happen to him.”