Oooh, look! A box of democracy!

[highlyeccentric]

Thought for the day- polling day edition:

So this is what student activists look like now. Labor Left activists, no less. Sober and disciplined, thoroughly Ruddified. With wardrobes and manners fit for small talk with benefactors...

Outside in the quad, once the champagne was drunk, the snapper finished and the speech from Laurie Oakes over, McFarland's cocktail-dressed successor, Kate Laing, passed me her business card. On it I noticed the council logo, based on a Soviet star, is now stamped on official stationery innocuously in a mild blue ink.

This refined new world of student politics seemed all the more striking two days later when the antics of the Liberals of Lindsay became public. While young activists wear suits like old conservatives, old conservatives, a dentist even, have taken to a classic tactic of student activists, distributing fake leaflets in the dead of night.

...

The reams of copy written about the conservatism of my generation may need to be revised. Material changes to the way the country works, rather than embracing right-wing ideology, explains why university students these days appear so sober, sensible, professional. They embrace casual work not necessarily because they embrace the casualisation of the labour force but because that is the work that is available and that is what is necessary to support yourself through study now.

Student leaders court corporate benefactors, not because they believe sponsorship is the best funding model but because that is what is now necessary in the era of voluntary student unionism, an era set to continue even if Kevin Rudd wins government today.

Describing us as conservative only paints half a picture. We are not a conservative generation. We are a generation that has come of age in conservative times. We have done what the times demand. If the times ever change, so will we.
-Lisa Pryor, SMH 24 November 2007

Went and exercised my democratic rights this afternoon. Numbered the ridiculous Senate ballot paper 1-79. Twice, in fact, since the first time I got down to 40, and was deciding between the crackpots (which is worse? Family First or the Pauline Party? Socialist Alliance or Fred Niall?) and discovered that I had accidentally overlooked the entire labour party. Oops.

Also had great difficulty getting my ballot paper into the box of democracy on the way out, but that could just be because i'm stupidly uncoordinated.

Bonus Points to me for: Resisting the urge to tell the Greens Party campaigner to save the trees when declining his offer of a how-to-vote slip.

Comments

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

Teehee. You shoulda said that.

[kayloulee.livejournal.com]

Wow. You actually went the number-all-the-candidates route? I couldn't be bothered, just did the above the line thing and went on my way. And guess who was at the absentee votes table at my polling booth (Federal Hall! One line of people, five booths, and three official types!). Actually don't, you'll never get it. It was my most favourite ever history teacher from years 10, 11 and 12, Mr Hackett. After voting I went and talked to him for a while. The guy can read medieval Malay, of all things. He's pretty much one of the biggest history-nerd types I've ever met.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

MEDIEVAL MALAY?
malaysia had a medieval period?

at least all the parties recycle those forms now.

[(Anonymous)]

ah, i sold out. i usually vote for a certain minor party and this year instead voted for a certain major party in the house of reps due to desperation over a certain possibility. still stuck to my guns in the senate, though. that way we avoid the two nasty situations (regardless of who is in power, these situations suck): (1) government owns both houses, (2) opposition owns senate and sulks about ratifying anything. then we have a double dissolution and we all reminisce about when it was Time.
oops, i'm replying in the wrong thread. i meant to reply to a certain other thread.
oh yay, i'm so politically correct

[kayloulee.livejournal.com]

I guess so! I guess he means the time that equates with the Western medieval period?