First, a bit of housekeeping: I took some time the other day to add tags to most of the entries, at least the ones after leaving home. They appear at the end of entries and help describe what was in each one, so theoretically you click on a tag and can see all the entries that deal with that subject. As you can see, some of my entries jump around a bit and so have many tags. Anyway, go nuts... or not.
Now, on to the election. Saturday was the big federal election. If you are familiar with the Parliament system, like England, this will make sense. (If not, join the club - I'm already Prime Minister... I think...) When someone runs for Prime Minister, they are essentially running for a seat in Parliament. If their party has a majority of seats, they as the leader are then Prime Minister. If not, they are just another Member of Parliament (like a Congressman). The candidates for Prime Minister do not run against each other but are put in "safe" electorate areas - ones that traditionally vote for their party. Then the other party tries to run a strong candidate against them. That is what happened on Saturday - the current Prime Minister, who is in the Liberal party, ran for his seat against a good candidate from the other party, the Labor party, and lost. The rest of the country elected mainly Labor candidates too, so not only did he not become Prime Minister, but he lost his seat too, which was a huge upset. So the new PM is Kevin Rudd, and the old, John Howard, has a week or two to get the heck out. Oh - another interesting thing is that everyone 18 and over must vote or they will get fined about $150. It creates a much different atmosphere around voting, I think.
So that was the big excitement around here on Saturday. Sunday, I wandered out on a wild goose chase for a farmer's market. (Turns out I was just on the wrong side of the bridge/main drag - dang!) Instead I stumbled upon the anniversary celebration of the State Library of Queensland in West End. They had a bunch of activities but what caught my ear was a concert by the Birralee Blokes, who I guess won the national choir competition last year and get to record a CD. They did a few songs a capella, including Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and a traditional Kenyan Christmas song, and then a few songs with keyboard accompaniment, including some funny sea shanties. Completely delightful!
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The Australian election got a fair amount of play in the US press. You can find stories online from the Detroit Free Press and the New York Times. I'm not sure if all the play was because it was a big upset victory for a more liberal leader or not. However, none of the US reports I read really explained how the voting system works as clearly as your posting. And the part about being fined for NOT voting...wow! Cool idea!
I'm so glad it made sense ;) I had to ask a lot of questions, some multiple times, and write it all out a couple times before I had it down enough to write that! Interesting that it got a lot of play in the US - one of the big critiques (though not the major issue) of Howard is that he just blindly follows whatever Bush does. As for being fined for voting, I think it's cool but it actually makes a lot of people resent voting, and the people who don't do their research don't care who they vote for. It's said that some 30% of voters change their mind the day of the election. Wow.
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