Election 2010

Well the federal election here is going to be held on the 21st August. Right now it seems pretty tight in the polls but there isn't much in the way of election fever on the street. Certainly the lack of election posters hanging from lamp posts (and prospect of being left to rot in the rain in the following weeks) makes everything feel a little more subdued, but even so I think there's a general disinterest this time around. Australia has mandatory voting, something which has always struck me as a good idea, but lunchtime chats recently have sometimes consisted of ways people could get out of voting, like people trying to avoid Jury duty. Given the charisma of the two party leaders perhaps that's understandable. There have been plenty of tv ads for both parties (the Green party also exists but they're pretty much non-existent outside of the Senate) recently, mostly consisting of listing all the broken promises the other candidate has made. The liberal party leader and opposition candidate for Prime Minister is Tony Abott. An iromman competitor at 52 years old, he's a former seminarian and could be said to be one of those in the party very skeptical of those fancy scientists and their "theories" on Global Warming. In fact one of the main reasons he became leader last year was because the previous liberal leader was too supportive of an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Their party's tv spot is pretty poor, or maybe its just a poor reflection on Australia that their 4th most important policy point is "Stop the boats". I guess from the regular news coverage you could be forgiven sometimes for thinking the country is being swamped by "boat people". But considering that the total number of refugees arriving this way compared to those who just fly in and overstay their visas is just a drop the issue seems a little hyped. The Labour party on the other hand, with Australia's first female Prime Minister Julia Gillard, has just made the election promise of finally building a new rail link that would provide an alternative route from the big population centre of Paramatta, in Sydney's west, to the city centre. It all feels very familiar when I think of what they've been promising for years in Dublin. They've been proposing this link for more than 20 years, keep promising to build it every few years (along with several grand plans for metros and tram lines in the city that keep getting cancelled because they'd be too expensive or cause too much disruption) and no doubt people are taking it with a pinch of salt a week and a bit from election day. The ETS scheme, or the failure to implement one, is also said to be one of the reasons Kevin Rudd's popularity dropped so severely and, along with the whole mining tax issue, let to him being shafted after less than three years, despite the huge popularity he had to begin with. But listening to politician's views on climate change here in general is depressing stuff. According to ABC news here this evening it seems that only 56% of politicians trust the IPCC (only 44% of liberal party politicians have their views informed by scientists). And maybe worst of all it seems 40% of all politicians are ok with a 4C degree rise in global temperature, while some are even ok with a 6C degree wise. Needless to say we're all fecked if that happens.