I, like millions of others, have already cast my vote at an early polling booth.
As I walked past the many volunteers (and the Liberal and Labor candidates), I politely declined their proffered How to Vote cards saying I knew what I wanted to do. They just smiled and moved on to the next person – until I got to a very noisy older woman who, when I refused her Liberal HTV, loudly called after me, Vote Liberal. I smiled and replied not a chance as I joined the line.
Obviously not happy with my answer, she stepped forward to shout “Labor haven’t released their costings”.
When I replied that Tony Abbott did the same when the Liberals were last in Opposition, she said “Tony Abbott? That’s ancient history.”
As the line was moving forward, and out of respect for someone volunteering their time to be involved, I said no more. As I moved away, a Greens volunteer gave me a thumbs up and the Labor candidate quietly said “On that note…”, before engaging with another voter about Labor’s plan for aged care.
As I left the booth after voting, another volunteer approached me to express their thanks, saying how that woman had been yelling the same thing at everyone who went past and how annoying it was.
Under different circumstances, there are many things I would have liked to say.
A party that has run up a trillion dollars in debt has no right to ask how are you going to pay for it.
A party that is predicting hundreds of billions of dollars in deficits over the next decade and beyond should not be fixating on Opposition policy costings.
A treasurer whose December fiscal outlook was wrong by $100 billion only a few months later is not to be trusted about projections for the future.
A treasurer who brags about a $100 billion windfall just by changing his guesses, and rather than banking it, then proceeds to spend $70 billion of it (and counting) in more promised spending is not in a position to be pedantic about Labor costings.
The election table is groaning under dead cats as the Liberals look for some traction on the dung heap they built and are rapidly sliding down.
I don’t want to hear any more.
Five more sleeps and we wake up to find out the result of what I think will be the most important election in my lifetime. A choice between profit or wages, between greed or saving the planet, between transparency or secrecy, between democracy or the cult of Morrison.
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