Archive for September, 2007
Huh…what was that?
With an Australian federal election fast approaching I find the need to air my political opinions. This hasn’t been done for some time now, as about two and a half years ago I got sick of blogging altogether and grew tired of listening to politicians speak in tongues.
John Howard’s conservative government just has to go. Arrogance has crept in and some of the most recent legislative additions have hurt people. Workchoices being the prime example. I need not list the many other examples of bad governance. I do remember, as a long haired 23 year old, voting in the 1996 election which ended the thirteen year reign of the Labor Party. I recall being annoyed with the then Prime Minister’s arrogance. I still voted Labor but wished there was a new Labor face to vote for. This election has the same ‘boredom’ effect as far as I’m concerned. A tired government that has used all its tricks, told as many lies as it could and is entering a period of hibernation with which to renew itself.
Kevin Rudd is a fresh face. He offers new hope, but much like the Tony Blair era in England (which I witnessed first hand living in London from mid-1996 through to early 1998) not much will change. Workchoices will remain pretty much intact - I can assure you that it will. It is too difficult to change, much like the GST. The best potential benefit of a Rudd government is that we might just be able to expect that accountable and honest governing may resurface for the first time in a decade.
Of course, we are headed for strange economic times over the next few years. Anyone who refuses to acknowledge this has their head firmly buried in the sand at Main Beach in Surfers Paradise. There is incredible amounts of debt that will have to be settled - mainly by greedy householders. There is looming difficulties in worldwide oil and food supply, and we as a globe are entering a re-adjustment period where energy supplies will have to be gained from more sustainable means.
I remember my Grandmother telling me that watching the world develop in the twenty years after the Second World War was scary. She couldn’t see how the wealth and ‘good-times’ would continue. She died in 1986 and I often wonder what she would make of this digitally connected world that is still motoring along. Anyone that knew her would probably assume she’d have an online beer delivery company or something similar run from her one bedroom unit in sunny Redcliffe.
All I can hope for is that as a society we develop peacefully, sustainably, creatively and with great respect for what we could be leaving behind for the next generation of workers, mothers, fathers and children. The key to having a society like that is, as far as I can see, not borrowing from the future to pay for now. The concept of thinking more than 5 or 10 years forward seems to be foreign to most people at present - especially for politicians.
Actors…for real.
Advertisers, beware who you employ.
The man who became one of the faces of John Howard’s Workchoices programme has been outed as a cheating employer. Bastard!
Big business tried to make unions look like mafia style stand over men in recent television advertising. The problem was that they have used actors with pretty serious criminal backgrounds. Heh!
Turn off - tune out.
If you live in Australia just make sure to turn off your television for the next week or so. All this APEC stuff is boring me to tears. Police are warning us about violent protesters, protesters are warning us about violent police, a government is sealing off an entire city for a few overpaid and under-performing politicians to eat, drink and talk copiously - big deal.
As an alternative to these supposedly important political conventions, may I suggest that protest movements and general antidisestablishmentarianism groups have a massive convention - preferably here in Brisbane at the convention centre in South Brisbane. I don’t have any elaboration to this idea - I just thought it’d be funny having police protesting against protesters having a meeting.
One Brisbanian needs to lighten up a bit…
Watch out. Emos have discovered spray paint.