The aftermath

 

“Today is election day and I hope that, like me, you find it a bit of a thrill. Not too thrilling – we are not Americans after all. But, once you have exercised your democratic right to grumble about over-long queues, over-cooked sausages and over-zealous volunteers, I hope you can take a little pride in participating in Australian democracy.” This from Misha Ketchell, editor of that excellent on-line source The Conversation.

Yes, what a day and night that was. Our voting queue at the local public school was very, very slow but it gave you time to vet your queue mates for prospective friendship and admire their dogs and children. And, of course, to scoff down a democracy sausage liberally covered with onions. This took me back to helping out at a sausage stall at Bondi Public School to benefit WAYS, the wonderful youth service in the Eastern Suburbs. My job was to chop up 20 kilos of onions! I’ve told my offspring I want this achievement on my tombstone.

Our electorate, Mackellar. was being contested by one of the so-called “teal” independents, Dr Sophie Scamps, who won relatively easily against an incumbent Liberal; my previous Eastern Suburbs electorate, Wentworth, also fell to a “teal” independent, Allegra Spender. These wins and those like them around the country may have brought talented women into the governing mix but oddly removed sitting Liberal members who can be said to be centrist. So the Liberal party must inevitably reflect a more right wing position.

This tectonic shift in voting patterns which brought a slew of talented women into parliament has also taken me back towards my earlier news obsession. For all the years I edited the Australian Jewish News I read inter alia each day two broadsheet newspapers and weekly news magazines like The Bulletin, Time and Newsweek as well as the Jerusalem Post and others. I also watched ABC news obsessively along with whatever commentary programs were on at the time like This Day Tonight and Four Corners for example. Even when I worked at the Great Synagogue, I kept up much of my news obsession. But in recent years for no good reason I’ve turned into a news hermit. I don’t even buy a newspaper.

Election night has stimulated me to change back a little. I’ve found myself watching The Drum and ABC news in the evenings this past week. The big difference from my earlier life as a news junkie is that now I watch on my computer and knit or embroider while I do it.

I wonder if this huge shift in voting patterns has anything to do with the huge shift in working patterns. Never since the introduction of the eight-hour working day, or the insertion or women into the workforce during the War, has there been such a change with so many people now, men and women, working from home. I can’t yet see the link but the coincidence is curious.

And a last offering in our phrases department. My dear friend Janet in London told me that her father used the saying “better than a slap in the face with a wet herring” rather than just  “wet fish”. Very Monty Python!

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

Italian novelist Italo Svevo: “There are three things I always forget. Names, faces and – the third I can’t remember.”