Australia’s Voters: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The Australian Federal Election

It’s at times like these that it’s very easy to understand the phrase “between a rock and a hard place”. Tomorrow all Australians old enough to vote will find themselves between a rock and a hard place.

Some Australians between rocks and hard places

Because tomorrow, Australia has to decide who will govern this country for the next three years. The choices aren’t great.

Regular readers will know how the political system works here, having read my post Australian Politics Explained. From my post Australian Politics: A Modern and Brief History, you will also have noted that I think Australian politics is exciting and entertaining. At times I’m even tempted to say it’s “amusing”, but that would be stretching the point. After all, the politicians are the ones that set and spend our taxes, nothing funny about that.

The choices

There are one or two fringe outsiders you could pick; one new party on the scene this year is the modestly named Palmer United Party. Clive Palmer is, at the moment at least I think, Queensland’s richest man. I read somewhere that he has spent about one and a half million dollars on his campaign, I even received a DVD of his in the post…

But the reality is though that there are only really two major contenders in this election.

Australian Labor Party versus Liberal National Party

Or, if you prefer, it’s the ALP versus the LNP or Labor versus the Liberal’s, who are also sometimes referred to as the Coalition (it’s a long story).

Remember, we have to vote here, we are one of the 10 countries who currently enforce compulsory voting. We have to make a choice otherwise who knows what might happen to us!

Yes, who does know? Because I don’t.

Anyway, who will I be voting for? This is really tricky; on a personal note I like the sound of the National Broadband Network, NBN as it’s known. A fibre-optic broadband service being rolled out throughout the whole country giving us superfast and whizzy interwebthingy access.

I really, really want one of those.

To get it though, I need to vote for Labor.

On the other hand, I really hate the carbon tax. Remember the carbon tax was brought in by the Gillard government after she had said no government of hers would ever bring in a carbon tax? Well she did bring it in and the Liberals have promised to axe it.

Labor without Gillard has promised to make changes to this tax, but if I want to get rid of the carbon pricing completely, I need to vote Liberal.

Cake and eat it

Trouble is, I want lightning fast Internet and I don’t want a carbon tax. You see, a rock and a hard place. But politics isn’t just about what I want, it’s not all me me me, it’s about what’s good for the community in general. Hey, maybe I should be a politician.

I’m not, of course, but tomorrow I need to choose one and my realistic choice is between these two.

First, here’s the current leader of the Labor Party, picking wax out of his ear and eating it…

And here’s the leader of the Liberal party, answering (or rather not) a delicate question…

Anybody got a coin?