The Election is Over

As of yesterday, and Julia Gillard is our Prime Minister. Yay!

I am hopeful for the way things are going to go. It's kind of exciting that it is a minority government, because hopefully it will mean more voices for more people, so those of us who aren't in the inner city suburbs or in the eastern states will get more from our Government. Infrastructure is not a huge priority over here (for the Federal Government), and doesn't seem to be a big priority for State Government either. The roads near us have been being slowly improving (very slowly) for the past three years. But we still need more. We need public transport. Even the public transport currently available in our area is ridiculous. We are waiting for a new hospital in my electorate (we were promised) and several years later are still waiting. We aren't getting our local train line, because one of the first things our Liberal State Government did was cut funding and plans to build it.

I'm going to write to my Local MP about these things. I have no idea if it'll make any difference, but if I don't do it, I can't complain, because I haven't tried.

That's why when my coworker told me he had put in a blank ballot paper, I told him he would have no recourse to complain about the Government. Because he had no place in the process of electing them.

ps. we now return you to your regular viewing.

Election

And he's changed his mind so many times! Yes, we want an ETS... NO we don't.
Yes Work Choices was an excellent thing... NO it's dead and buried.

If we get Tony Abbott as PM, I think it will be really scary.

On Saturday we get to vote.

The Election is on Saturday. I recommend reading this Infograph to dispel misinformation. Read it all the way through.

I got the latest information from my local federal government representative today (Liberal). I read it, the messages sounded good, it was filled with smiling people who looked happy.

One problem; I read it, I looked at all the pictures and... there was not one person who looked like me. Everyone was white. There were no aboriginals (or people with dark skin), there were no asians. There weren't even any eurasians (and of course there are lots of us). But of course there weren't! I can't explain the lack of indigenous Australians (other than an over-sight), but of course they can't have asians, they've been harping on about "keeping out the boats" for months! Guess what the faces of the "boat people" look like?

To be honest, it doesn't make me feel comfortable at all when I hear any of the political parties trying to get people on-side by bagging boat people. Because when I was a child in the 80's, and people were more overt with their racism, I used to get told to "go home". Which is a bit difficult as Australia has always been home to me. What with being born here and everything.

Way to make a girl feel alienated in her own country.

Make your vote count on Saturday.

The Media Barrage Surrounding the Prime Minister

This is a few days late ;) But I feel the need to comment.

So yeah, Julia Gillard is our new Prime Minister. :)

Although I'm not entirely happy with the way things played out, I am also not pleased (at all) by the guy that randomly called work yesterday and tried to engage me in a conversation about how pissed off he was that a WOMAN is leading the country. Yeah, dude get over yourself. Although I'm not happy with the way it went down, I AM happy with the result. I think Prime Minister Gillard will be awesome.

Steph @ 天高皇企鹅远 put together a post (with awesome pictures) that says it much better than I can.

Also, Dear West Australian (and other Media Sources). WTF is wrong with you? The anti-woman and anti-ALP sentiment that you now post in your "Agenda Letters" are frankly alarming (the poster that likened women to white-ants in all male institutions being a prime example); the fact that you no doubt played a role in the lack of confidence in Mr Rudd, yet now pretend to be shocked despite weeks and weeks of claiming Kevin Rudd would lose an election called tomorrow is really really frustrating.

Also, please stop being a hotbed of chauvinistic sentiment. It does not make me want to read your paper.

This Mysoginistic society really worries me at the best of times, right now I am CONCERNED.

But still I'm really hopeful for the future, and that my country doesn't work against itself.