Election 2010, II

Australian election is today. From talking to people on Friday in work it seems most people aren't too enthused about having to go out and vote today. Every ad in newspapers and TV is focused on just how bad and untrustworthy the other party is. It really is negative stuff. This BBC blog from Sydney seems to be pretty accurate as far as I can tell.. Certainly, it has been a very insular campaign, with hardly any focus on the rest of the region or the rest of the planet..The relationship with China; the ongoing mission in Afghanistan; where Australia fits in with what looks like being the Asian Century or, if not, the Asia-Pacific Century. None of these topics has been the subject of serious or prolonged discussion. Even "the boat people" have felt like an abstraction, rather than real people from real countries. That seems pretty true when items such as internet access gets a lot more coverage than the war in Afghanistan. Speaking of boat people, just in contrast to Tony Abott's ads, here's a graph showing the number of "boats" in relation to all Australian immigration (it's the tiny bit of green at the bottom): And SBS news provides statistics that show "Australia was 68th on a per-capita basis and 91st relative to national wealth." in the ranking of which countries take the most refugees. Anyway nobody in work seems to happy to have to vote for either prospective leader.