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I am not sure if you have heard anything but evidently there’s a federal election next month.
18 May 2019, where Australians go to the polls or, like me, have chosen for the mail-in option to avoid queues. Yes, I will miss the sausage sellers but it’s a Saturday and that’s why Bunnings exists.
The election ‘looms’. Don’t you just love how media can turn the mundane into drama by adding the word ‘loom’ or ‘looming’? For goodness sake, it’s happening – that’s surely enough.
18 May, precisely one month after what would have been my father’s 103rd birthday. Before you try out the calculations, I was born prematurely by about two decades.
My father was a staunch Liberal follower. He could have gone into politics if John Halfpenny hadn’t cut his career short. By that I mean, my father who was a farmer by trade, conducted a very successful concreting business but had to retire early due to the union movement at that time. John, of course, who resigned from the CPA (Communist Party of Australia – so as to not confuse anyone over acronyms) revelled in a career with the ALP (sorry, another acronym).
Yet my father was staunch in his political views well before he met Halfpenny, whom he used to call ‘Halfpenny, Halfwit’.
I never got into a political argument with my father, unlike one of my brothers, except for one factor, and that was about superannuation. Dad was convinced that the government should be in control of everyone’s superannuation. My view, and sorry Dad (RIP – another acronym), was why in the hell (blasphemy) would I trust any government or politicians, for that matter, with my money?
Superannuation is a godsend (making up for the blasphemy above) and thanks PK (the only thing you may be remembered for).
However, I have deviated somewhat from the subject of elections. I think there are three types of voters (probably many more).
There are the staunchers, like my father, who vote for a party regardless of policy, but because it is inbred within them.
There are the careless. Those who seriously don’t give a damn, but turn up on polling day because they have to, to avoid fines (definition of fines: a way of incentivising engagement?).
Then there are the swingers, like me (not in any physical or sexual innuendo sense) who consider policy put before them. This category comes with its own potentially damaging idiosyncrasy. Most of us swingers look at policy from a narcissistic perspective. We look at policy based on the WIIFM factor (OK, another acronym for: what’s in it for me?).
Call me a narcissist if you want, but at least I have had a good look and I have a considered opinion.
Come 18 May 2019, what sort of voter will you be?