Electing for an election

Here in the Great South Land we are busy with a quick Federal/national election campaign. We like ‘em fast down here.

Don’t get me wrong, we are quite keen on contests and games and so on. We like those glacially slow cooking shows (why are they so freaking slow? If someone on one of these shows was to come on and read aloud, ‘See Spot Run,’ it would sound like Homer's Odyssey being read on Crack) where a couple of carefully chosen lovelies preen in front of the cameras boiling the odd egg and weep piteously as some over-fed compare wonders aloud if they might not have added just a tad too much Andean Yak chili or some such.

We are also pretty keen on team sports. We like to pretend that teams with the same names as suburbs are made up of a few mates who actually live in those suburbs and who like to get together on a Saturday arvo for a bit of a kick. We know, but don’t like to admit to ourselves, that what we actually have are platoons of corporate controlled steroid-stuffed, logo-encrusted bruisers bussed - by the highest bidder, to a wind-whipped, over-priced concrete bunker for a bit of a punch up for the cameras.

But we’ve not super keen on democracy. So un-keen are we in fact that we are one of the few places in the world where the population must be complied to vote by threat of fine.

Still, like it or not. here we are.