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Politicians. Someone wise once said that “politics without politicians is the way to go”. Actually, I don’t think anyone wise ever said that. But the fact remains. I feel particularly able to speak on this subject at the moment as we’ve just undergone the joyous (snort) circus of our state election. Ok, I know it’s nothing compared to the elections held by our dear American cousins, but it’s a circus none-the-less, all so we can replace one bunch of incompetents with another. Pardon me for not shouting with joy. Now, I know there are some of you out there who are going to say that not all politicians are incompetent – I know that not all of them are, at times it just seems like it – more on that later.

Different countries, I believe, have different ways of viewing their pollies. I know, for instance, at least from what my dear co-editor has told me, that the Dutch actually seem to like their politicians, and that they actually are reasonably competent. On the other hand, the turn-out for voting in the USA seems to show exactly what they think in general (I rather suspect that there’ll be a much larger turnout at the booths over there in four years time… over here, voting is actually compulsorily and a lot more complicated) of both the pollies and the system. In Oz, however, I think the best way to describe it is that a lot of us only trust our politicians as far as we can throw them. I may be wrong in that assumption – but at least I feel that way and that’s all that counts, right? And the interesting thing is that our politicians seem to be aware of this fact and strive not to dissuade us of it, nor disappoint us. For example, only the other day was it discovered that 3 billion – that’s billion with a ‘b’, not an ‘m’ – dollars worth of gasoline excise required by law to be spent maintaining our roads (this is supposedly our windfall from the high petrol prices) has mysteriously ‘vanished’ and been funnelled into other projects. Or, late last year, one of our Federal Minsters lent his son his govt phone card, and his son then gave the number out to various other people and promptly wracked up 50 grands worth of calls. And then there’s the whole ‘travel rorts’ scheme, not to mention the voting rorts they’ve just had up in Queensland.

In the meantime, it just looks as though I’m going to have to put up with this next bunch. Labour’s been voted back into power by a landslide (something I don’t really find surprising at the moment). Hopefully they’ll do a better job than the last lot, though I’m not holding my breath. :P

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