With an election to be held sometime this year, it’s time to start pondering that important but not necessarily easy question: who to vote for.
This is simple for those born into a political party or otherwise partisan, a non-issue for the apathetic but problematic for those who care but dislike Labor and Liberal in equal measure.
I used to be a traditional Labor voter by default as I would rather have bicycled from Perth to Sydney for no reason than voted Liberal. But it’s just as hard to vote for Labor these days.
Voting Liberal is difficult for those with an aversion to conservatism. At best, conservatism is a timid way to achieve continuity, but at worst it’s regressive and stunts natural progress.
Why would anyone want to be stuck in the past when the future can be glorious lump of moldable clay? And yet Tony Abbott likes to promote his conservative bona fides as if he is proud of it.
But Australia’s past is not all glory. We are a country yet to cut the imperial umbilical cord and we have a poisonous history of race relations. Surely we can do better than use the past as a blueprint for the future.
As some in the Labor Party are every bit as conservative as those in the Liberal Party, a second reason is probably needed to justify an anti-Liberal stance.
For me this is that the Liberal Party will always be associated with John Howard and his politics of division. As Prime Minister, Howard appealed to people’s lesser angels in regard to race and refugees and pandered to white riffraff because he thought them an important constituency. It’s a shame for his legacy because Howard was at times a dignified leader.
But Labor has been more disappointing in recent years than this summer’s One Day cricket.
The Rudd Government doesn’t even pretend to live up to the economic reform legacy of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating.
The Labor Party failed to support a Productivity Commission recommendation to lift restrictions on the parallel importation of books which would have reduced book prices for consumers. Although the extra few dollars book-lovers spend on their weekly pilgrim to Borders may not rival indigenous hardship as a matter of national concern, it’s telling that the Government favoured rent-seeking publishers over competition and consumers.
And yet the Government has no qualms about spending money like a drunk expends dignity. It’s easy to splurge on infrastructure and national broadband when you possess a tax-payer funded credit card but harder to prudently spend on targeted projects after a cost-benefit analysis. A colossal $6.2 billion was also given to the car industry to protect it from nothing but market forces.
After its ultimately wise stimulus spending, the Rudd Government is continuing to act like bad old Labor with a money twinkle in its eye and the financial restraint of Tiger Woods in a girly bar.
The Prime Minister is also doing his best to impersonate an ideological undergraduate who swallowed a political theory book with his silly essay on the global financial crisis in The Monthly.
Those unable to vote Liberal and uninspired by Labor are in a voting quandary and have no choice but to swallow major party pride and look the way of minor parties.
The Greens are superficially appealing if you’ve grown attached to this planet, and see some merit in preserving it for future generations. But unfortunately a spokesperson from the Greens will invariably open their mouth and you are reminded that just as a leopard cannot change its spots, neither can a kooky left-wing party.
Family First and Steve Fielding are also amusing and that is all that will be said about them.
The Shooter’s and Fishing Party is not the most logical candidate for those who don’t shoot, fish or have time for absurd single issue parties.
The Citizen’s Electoral Council at least have a broad focus and a website. But it quickly becomes apparent that they are further left on economic matters then the Greens, which is no mean feat, and seem to worship US rabble rouser, Lyndon LaRouche, as some sort of prophet.
With political parties like these, democracy isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, and a benevolent dictatorship seems more palatable.
An election will be called sometime in 2010 and you may be none the wiser as to who to vote for. All I hope for is that Mary MacKillop performs her third miracle and installs Julia Gillard as Prime Minister and Malcolm Turbull as Opposition leader, the Labor Party re-owns Paul Keating and disowns Kim Carr and one of the major parties morphs into a political party you actually want to vote for.
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