Changes back home.

It’s amazing how detached one can become from their home country when they are living abroad. For the most part I stay in touch with what’s happening in Australia by reading the news every morning, although it’s hard to always get a full picture, especially opinion of the masses, as I don’t have anyone to talk about domestic issues with over here. I haven’t worked with an Australia in, gosh, 3 or 4 years now, so while I’m still working with non-Chinese people (and non-Korean’s before) I’m still, by definition, working completely with foreigners.

I suppose that was why it came as a huge surprise to me to meet a Perth girl working for another branch in our academy.

A good example of how far detached I am from Australian news was the dumping of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for the deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. I was never a big fan of Kevin Rudd, I don’t voted for him, but I didn’t know his popularity had dropped to the point where his own party had elected him out. So alas, Australia has a new Prime Minister, and it’s first female one. Of course she wasn’t elected, but then neither was Kevin Rudd or any other Prime Minister, one simply votes for the party not the person so the party, as illustrated by the events of last week, as they decided on a new party leader to take control of the country.

It’s a little scary to think the government can put someone in power that the Australian people haven’t really taken into consideration during the last Federal election. Is this democracy? I suppose it is, but surely a federal election would have at least been a better option given the fact that most people didn’t like Rudd and the policies the Labor Party were pushing through. If the party didn’t like Rudd’s new taxes, etc, they could have thrown them out in the senate, but instead stood silent and showed their support. If they didn’t agree, the senators should have voted against these changes instead doing nothing, which is actually a misuse of their powers.

We don’t elect senator to please their party. We elect them to represent the people.

In my opinion, the Labor government should have called the election and have the people judge their fate.

3 Comments

• 

  By Mum and Dad, 28/6/2010 - Monday @ 6:34 pm

  Well said, David. The Labor Party caucus is too pwoerful and Rudd’s displacement was not in the spirit of democracy. ‘Ranga’ is in the same boat.
  Dad

• 

  By David, 28/6/2010 - Monday @ 11:15 pm

  Mum & Dad: In all fairness, who I am to talk about democracy, especially where I am now!

• 

  By Frugal Bastard, 12/7/2010 - Monday @ 6:49 am

  Not the first time it’s happened in Australian history. Won’t be the last either. Still within the rules of our government so everyone needs to understand that. We may never get to vote for the leader of the country and I’d hate to see it turn into a pointless popularity contest as there seems to be no more statesman in this country. They’re all in it for themselves these pollies.

Other Links to this Post

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment