Election jitters
Update: Phew.
Little Miss Alison has had a difficult week. My synapses have been dangling forlornly in empty space like shorting cables, and the crease in my forehead has been more suggestive of terminal stupidity than of signs of intelligent life. I think I caught the virus that I so successfully avoided during the Melbourne Festival. Anyway, I've been feeling miserable. It's very badly timed: I have a big black novelish deadline coming up at the end of the month, and a few thousand coherent words to smith before then (but a review of Mr Brian Lipson's and Sir Francis Galton's extraordinary A Large Attendance in the Antechamber coming up soon, I swear).
But I think I've also got the jitters. I'm not sure I've ever felt so anxious about an election. The thought of the Coalition continuing in office seems unbearable, and I almost daren't believe they will lose. I've even become an obsessive psephologist. Goddamit, Australia: surely it's time to kick these sneeringly complacent moral bankrupts out of office?
6 comments:
I woke up this morning with a terrible feeling that this would be my generation's Don's Party election. It might not be time after all. Nothing is looking scarier today than the 16-seat vertical cliff-face that Labor has to scale...
It's going to be terribly close or a landslide; there can be no in-between.
For my next trick, I will not only swallow my pride, but eat my hat.
Heigh Ho the Witch is Dead!
Well, it ended up being the landslide none of us quite dared believe in. I feel the most intense relief. To think my daughter - now just finished school - was seven years old when Howard was voted in!
I am not so sanguine about Rudd, but he has the virtue of not being Howard. And I think Gillard will make an excellent deputy PM. But we'll have to wait and see what difference it makes - whether the more extreme terrorism legislation is wound back, for instance. I'm expecting simply a more moderate conservative government. The danger might be that Rudd will be a less messianic version of Blair (and Blair has made Britain into a very scary police state, remember). As far as the arts go, Labor isn't much better than the Coalition. Neither are particularly interested in them fort heir own sake, and neither have any kind of vision of the place of the arts in Australian society.
I am not expecting miracles with Rudd, but am immensely relieved to know that Howard is finally gone. The thought of another 3 years was just too depressing.
After I cast my vote, I told the Greens and ALP volunteers that I hoped for Labor in the lower house, Greens with the balance of power in the upper house and one of them said a Libs loss in Bennelong would be nice. And it all looks like coming to pass. How good is that?
As for the Arts, well, to have a government that doesn't incarcerate refugees, doesn't promote a false war on terrorism, brings the troops home, and protects its citizens here and overseas, that's a good start. Does anyone remember David Hicks? And how he was locked up in Australia until just after the election?
Happy new Australia, Alison (and everyone else). We wake up to a new country, one with a bit more hope.
Post a Comment