BY ROBERT CATTO
GENERATOR
Guidance: Where is the edge?
Assignment: Today you must shoot any subject but at waist level, using a lens closest to the current temperature in Fahrenheit (currently 66°), and your favorite camera.
We’re coming up on a federal election in Australia; so it’s safe to say some people are on edge.
But it’s hard to discern left from right out on the streets - unless they’re standing next to a sign in a t-shirt, handing out ‘how to vote’ cards, of course.
Will we continue on the conservative path that’s seen three prime ministers (and two deputy prime ministers) in the past six years? Or return to a more liberal - though that word means something else, here, as the Liberal party are the conservatives - progressive, considerate way of running the country?
Polls are split, margins are slim; and every third ad on television ends with the declaration “authorised by” and their party affiliation.
A minority leadership could lead to small-party deals alliances on the left, or the right; and both sides are doing their best to play up the evils of the other. Signs and billboards reading “Make Australia Great” do their best to imply the brand of politics others have put forward elsewhere.
As a citizen of other countries, but not one here, I don’t have the option of contributing a ballot - yet. So, I hold my breath, and see what happens.
Former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating was on the radio today saying he hoped voters would “drive a political stake through the dark heart” of the current Liberal (conservative) government; and a poll suggests the most popular politician in Australia today is the prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern.
We’ll see on Saturday whether that sentiment is reflected by the actual outcome…and what that will mean for all of us, whichever side we chose.
Footnote: the dark heart remains.
