Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Webdiarist David Markham lives in Canberra, having previously lived in other places including Sydney, Northern NSW, and for a time, many years ago, in Toronto in Canada. He has done a number of jobs in his time - taxi driver, cleaner, barman, but have mostly worked in the public sector.  He takes a great interest in legal matters (his first piece for Webdiary was Ineligible candidates). David is coy about his age, but admits to having gone to school with Malcolm Turnbull. Thank you, David; we look forward to your report on the result...

The big day is here
by David Markham

The excitement in this part of the world, that being the bit between Queanbeyan and Yass, is palpable as we prepare for the excitement of tomorrow's ACT election. About a month ago Ian MacDougall had a piece in Webdiary about this election. I note that his story received no comments whatsoever, which I regard as enormously encouraging. As for those of you with the misfortune to not live in the land of the swooping magpie, may I give you a potted guide to the election.

In his piece, Ian commented that he was going to the launch of the Community Alliance Party. I have heard this new party somewhat unkindly referred to as the Whingeing Old Farts Party. I regard this as unkind because, being a whingeing old fart myself, I cannot understand why this would be construed as a criticism. I have no idea what the Community Alliance's policies are, or if they have any. This is not necessarily a negative. If they do indeed have no policies this would, in my view, make them a better receptacle for my vote than most of the other candidates.

Currently in Government is the Australian Labor Party. Labor has a lot of policies - so many that it is fast running out of time to release them. It may have to retain some for the 2012 election. There is of course no point in releasing policies in that useless three and three quarter years out of four that do not fall within an election period. Labor's main policy is to keep Jon Stanhope as Chief Minister - all other policies are subservient to this. Frankly this is an appropriate policy focus, because if Mr Stanhope was not Chief Minister I cannot imagine what he would do with his time. He may have to spend more time with his family. Now I know absolutely nothing about Mr Stanhope's family so this should not be considered personal criticism, but whenever a politician retires to spend more time with this family, I always wonder whether anybody has sought the view of the family.

The Liberal Party is led by Zed Seselja, who at 30 appears to be the senior member of the party. One of the Liberal people standing in my electorate (and I say one of them because the ACT has an electoral system that may be understood by Malcolm Mackerras but certainly not by anyone else) is a gentleman called Coe. Reminding you of my view of myself above, I will note that Mr Coe appears to be about fourteen years old. He has adopted the slogan 'Go for Coe' and I am training my dog to do just that should he come a-knockin'. The Liberal Party also have a lot of policies, none of which I have bothered to read.

The final party, or at least the final party that I know about, is the Greens. The Greens appear to be very nice earnest young people who fulfil the old definition of a person with a PhD - that is, somebody who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else. I would consider voting for the Greens but I am afraid that if they actually won they would be so traumatised they would need a long course of reiki, or origami, or whatever the f*** it is that I am trying to think of.

So there you have it. Since I moved house recently I have not found anywhere to put up my dart board, so I have no means of working out who to vote for. A friend has told me that he dislikes all the candidates that he knows so intensely that he is only going to vote for candidates that he has never heard of. This sounds like a very sensible plan.