Jayeless

Now, we all know how mean to me my government is, don’t we? Okay, well, here’s another example of their abject meanness.

In the next couple of weeks, my electorate gets to vote in a by-election for who will replace Peter Costello, former treasurer and renowned whiny-pants who has decided to retire from parliament two years into a three-year term because it seems he can’t bear life as an Opposition MP. Voters in my electorate get to rank twelve different candidates in order of “worst candidate ever, please God no” to “better than the rest of them I guess” (this is how I intend to rank candidates, anyway. Start from the bottom and work up!) but tragically do not get to vote against the Government, who decided they couldn’t be stuffed fielding a candidate. Instead, we have to vote against the shitty breakaway anti-Communist offshoot of the ALP, the DLP, whose entire ideology after all this time seems to be, “Communism is evil. The ALP is evil because they don’t fight against Communism like we do.” I have to admit, I would really struggle about whether to put the DLP last, or One Nation (right-wing nationalist anti-immigrant party. Its candidate is a Hungarian immigrant. A+ GUYS!)… I hate them both. Tend to think I’d end up going with One Nation for last place, though, if I had to choose. I mean, at least the DLP’s not nationalist.

However, I do not ACTUALLY get to choose, because as I have already established, my government is mean. I still do not have the right to vote.

Yep, despite the strength of my political opinions, and despite the fact that I researched ALL the political candidates to see who was preferable (hint: Clive Hamilton is not it. I like the Democrat), the electoral system still deems me too childish and immature to possibly be allowed to vote. Not that it really matters, because my electorate is about as safe a Liberal seat as seats get and my one vote wouldn’t single-handedly overturn that, but that’s not the point. The point is, WHERE ARE MY DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS? Don’t try to tell me that it is perfectly acceptable for me not to have any because I am only seventeen, because that is a weak argument if ever there was one. Give me proof that my eighteenth birthday is a wondrous day of magical enlightenment so wondrous that it justifies my lack of basic democratic freedoms prior to then, or don’t say it.

In addition to that, I would like to point your attention towards the lovely birthday card I scanned and inserted at the top of this entry. (Were you wondering where that came in? Well, it’s here.) For my seventeenth birthday, the Australian Electoral Commission sent me this nice birthday card promising “a birthday present that will last a lifetime”.

Well. The birthday present to which they refer is the right to vote. This year they sent me this stupid card and an enrolment form that I can fill in and hand over and everything, but it won’t actually grant me the right to vote until my eighteenth birthday.

So this wonderful “birthday present” the AEC promised me? Basically, it’s a card taunting me about how I still don’t have the right to vote and how I still have to wait an entire year to be granted this thing. This thing that is my fundamental right as a citizen of a democracy. I mean, what a present, Australian Electoral Commission. Taunting! I tell you, I will cherish this gift for my entire life. Being taunted about not having rights is my favourite thing!

I got this card almost a month ago, because that’s when my birthday was. For the remaining 11 months and 2 days, I get to stare at it and not vote in the by-election, and then I might also get the opportunity to not vote in a federal election and not vote against both major parties for the terrible policies of each of them. On the bright side, my state has fixed terms so it is guaranteed that I will get to vote in a Victorian election about a month after I am finally given my democratic right to vote. So at least I’ll get some opportunity to use it…?

Mon, 23.11.2009, 3pm • 2 Comments • Tags: Australia, politics, life, ageism, rights