How have been coping with the election campaign? (Australia’s Federal Election is on Saturday the 9th of October)
We need to hear from all sides in order to make an informed decision and I think it’s a wonderful privilege to be able to participate in our democracy. However, I get a bit tired of the mud throwing.
I’m really over seeing TV ads that have each side saying nasty things about each other.
One of those ads was on last night and I asked Emily, who’s just 8 years old, what she thought of it all. She wasn’t quite sure, so I asked if she could think of a better way for political parties to advertise themselves rather than saying something nasty about the other side. She thought about it for a while and couldn’t come up with an idea. Then suddenly, she got it. They could tell people what’s good about their ideas instead of being nasty about the others.
It might be a bit naive but I think it’d be great if our politicians took the advice of an 8 year old and only focussed on what they can do rather than what they think the others can’t.
Posted by Rodney Olsen
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Hi Rodney,
This election has been quite clean. The attacks have been limited to a person’s suitability to hold office and the policies they advocate. I thought that these are fit and proper subjects for an election (or any other selection process). There has been no push polling, no character attacks (besides suitability) and no attempts to hung an an oponates family’s dirty washing out to dry.
I think that the Liberals tried to do muck rake against Latham at the beginning of the campaign. Latham’s tactic of disclosure, anger at dirty tactics and tears worked!
Maybe you should explain to your 8 year old daughter that the way our society develops the right things to do is to allow those who disagree to critize what we want to do. Then we need some grace to listen. Some of the things we hear we can safely dismiss as wrong. Others have some element of truth in them. If we are wise, we will change what we want to do accordingly.
It is a bit like trying before you buy it. Often, once we have done the thing (implement the policy), it is almost impossible to undo.
Thank God that our best politians do submit there ideas to public debate and then modify them – even if they never admit to it.