Open Writing

Dear Del,

I have a few idle moments while I wait for the day when the very last things which need to be done for our relocation, must be done.

As you know, the country is preparing to vote for a Federal election. Usually we quite enjoy the cut and thrust, name calling and the creaky old skeletons which are brought out of the cupboards, dusted off and paraded for the entertainment of the population. However this time, it has been so predictable and boring it has often been as interesting as being asked to choose between two bowls of forty-eight hour old cold porridge.

The debates have been uncharacteristically polite and almost to the point where they could have taken place in a Victorian school girl’s college.

The endless kissing of babies and feigned interest in the dribbling children’s names and ages while the poor kids try to squirm away from the grinning stranger confronting them, have been as unbelievable as ever.

The public hospitals have been the venues for many photograph opportunities. Bored sick patients try to look interested when approached while in actual fact they are probably really worrying about the outcome of their last procedure or whether they will get a visit from someone who really cares about their health later on in the day.

There have been a few who have been sufficiently well to tell whichever representative they are meeting what is wrong with the health system but they are not recorded and few are photographed.

Some delightfully uncomfortable moments have occurred during school visits when children have asked the sort of probing questions that few adults would have had the effrontery to voice out loud and we have been rewarded with the sight of a politician completely lost for words.

The promises of our golden future have been spilling onto the front pages of the newspapers and over the news bulletins every day. If any one is silly enough to believe them or goes to the trouble of reading the fine print, most of the money being promised to fix various ailing problems in our communities will be coming out of some other necessary area. The old robbing Paul to pay Peter adage comes into play. Many of the promises are not due to come into affect until the second term of the hopeful party. Thus ensuring they have sufficient time to think up a good reason why the promise can’t be kept.

The bias of the commercial television stations is so visible it is quite ridiculous and after watching a few of the press gallery interviews in full and then hearing the snippets of reports that reach the evening news, I wonder if the journalists were too busy eating the free lunch to have listened at all. A couple of wide awake cameramen have caught people napping during the final stages of the speech as the food and wine become more affective than the less than visionary words passing over them.

Our letter boxes have been stuffed with cards, letters and various other types of mail-outs to remind us of how wonderful they all are and how much they will do if only we would vote for them. Our mail box has a very prominent ‘No Advertising Material’ sign on it but it seems all of this stuff which must cost millions of donated and raised party funds to produce while it depletes a fairly large forest area for the paper, is not advertising material.

Democracy is a wonderful thing isn’t it? We can at least listen, feel cynical and make up our own minds eventually and then blame everyone else who in our own opinion was silly enough to elect the wrong party, or the party which elected the wrong leader.

Because voting is compulsory in Australia and you face a fine if you don’t have a good reason for doing so, we decided for convenience sake, to vote early.

We thought very few people would be at the booth set up for people who for one reason or another can’t get to vote on the official date. We expected because it was the first day, we would be the only ones casting our votes and the officials would be sitting inside out of the cold enjoying a cup of coffee and a chat. But to our surprise the people handing out the ‘how to vote’ papers were all there in force and a queue stretched quite a long way down the path and out of the building, causing a log jam on the pavement.

We all stood about freezing in the wind blowing up from the sea and chatting idly about this and that while shuffling forward slowly. I think we must have looked like a group of morose and slightly depressed children waiting to go into the school doctor for our vaccination jabs.( Now that shows my age. That stopped during the times when free education for the masses was slowly eroded away.) We would stand in line feeling that we had only two choices to make. Did we want to have it jabbed into our arms or our bum? Not a lot of difference in either choice. If we chose a jab in the arm we could be sure some smart Alec would punch it and a jab in the bum would hurt every time we sat down to watch another election promotion. Which just about sums up the last few weeks.

Thank goodness it will be over soon and we can all get back to moaning about whichever cold bowl of porridge the majority of us swallowed.

Even Teddy who usually loves elections has become fed-up and quickly returned to blowing his flutes while packing up the precious contents of his sheds. At least that activity gave him the opportunity to kill a large colony of red backed spiders which had been breeding in there. He was most impressed with the sizes of some of them. It would have been a very different story if he had been bitten. They are very poisonous, but luckily not very aggressive.

I do hope we don’t have to pack up our home or have another election for a very long time Del.

I also hope you get some pleasure out of which ever porridge you choose,

From your ‘flower child’ friend,

Cynthia.