Federal Erection

At midnight tonight political advertising for Saturday's Federal Election ceases. What a freakin' relief. Not half the relief that most of us will feel come Sunday morning, though.

What a teeth-grindingly irritating campaign it's been. Maybe I'm just becoming less tolerant of political posturing. Whatever the reason, never before has the gallery of hopefuls seemed more shallow, plastic and frankly full of shit. It really saddens me that the direction of our nation is dependent on this process and these people. Not all of them, but certainly most of the ones who will be in a position of real power.

One good thing that has come out of this election has been the final realisation that "climate change" is probably not a good thing, and perhaps we might do something about it. During the last few weeks a report was released exposing Australia as the number one per-capita emitter of greenhouse gases, so it's well past time we made a few changes about the place. The thing is, I recall reading about global warming, as it was known before the term was sanitised, back in the late Eighties, and it's only now that everyone is suddenly up in arms about it. And until very recently, the PM declared himself to be a "climate change skeptic", but has suddenly switched teams just as everyone started voicing concern. "Everyone" being a substantial proportion of voters. The man is a hack, and has had eleven years to do something positive towards reducing energy consumption, and moving us towards cleaner technology. Hopefully, come this weekend he'll just be another page in the country's history, and the new Labor government will get cracking on supporting the development and implementation of green technology, penalising polluters and encouraging those doing the right thing. Of course, in an ideal world The Greens will have the balance of power in the Senate, and can lubricate the whole process.

Anyhoo, enough of my personal political misery. Here are a couple of websites that help unravel many of the mysteries of the electoral process.

The first is the Australian Electoral Commission. Useful are the General FAQs, polling place finder, and practice voting, which is probably recommended for anyone wishing to vote below the line on the four-foot-long Senate paper. (In Queensland we have 65 candidates' names filling out the ballot paper this year, including the superbly named Merlin Manners. I also notice that there are two competing -- wait for it -- fishing parties vying for the Senate this time around: The Fishing Party and the Australian Fishing and Lifestyle Party. Are there so many fishing issues? And what could have driven a wedge between the two that they couldn't unite and further fishing interests together?)

Not so useful, but quite interesting nonetheless are surveys of informal votes in past elections, how the votes are counted (I'd never been quite sure of how the Senate vote worked, to be honest), and how a political party is registered -- if only I'd shown Pauline Hanson this link a few years ago.

The other site I've been digging in to a little for electoral information is, of course, the ABC's Election site. It's a bit late in the evening so I'm not going to trawl through the site too much for you -- you can savour that pleasure yourself -- but a couple of points of interest include the overview of each electorate, the election glossary, the election calculator, and finally everything you need to know to make sure your vote counts.

So may your pencil be sharp and your after-voting beer cold come polling day. Personally I'll have my eyes closed and fingers crossed from about dinner time onwards.