THE upcoming state and federal elections present as unappetising a prospect as I can possibly imagine. The possibility of the LNP or the Labor party forming a majority government at either level fills me with despair.
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With a couple of notable exceptions, I have been a conservative voter all my adult life. I have lived in rural areas all my adult life, and shudder when I look back at the toll that has been exacted upon those communities by politicians, principally from the LNP, becoming increasingly self-serving and quite shamelessly abrogating their responsibility for those they purport to represent.
Ever since some mindless marketing guru suggested that the Country Party change their name to the National Party to appeal to a broader voter base, the policy direction of the now one-size-fits-all Nationals has been in a spiralling tailspin until we have finally hit the bottom of the barrel with one helluva bang.
It is our absolute right to demand substance and service over the pretense we have come to accept and the dismissive petulance we are continually offered by these simple despots with overblown egos.
The recent history of the Nationals has been a despair-inducing continuum of aimless, self-serving meandering, along a path of directionless, purposeless capitulation and compromise with the big-city base of the Liberals dominating the proceedings.
The National Party would now be more appropriately known as the National Disgrace. They have completely disenfranchised rural communities on every front.
Progress at a local level for country dwellers in education, health care, infrastructure, communication and every other essential element of modern-day survival have only been realised when they have been fought for tooth and nail by the average punter working from within communities, with little or no help from their elected representatives.
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Rural electorates are continually sidelined by the city-based dominance of the Liberal-Labor party factions and their media-centred, empire-building support base.
We exist now under the mantra 'vote for us, or we will punish you' in concert with an orchestrated cash splash giving seriously large amounts of taxpayer money to everyone from the local burnout club to some that are almost worthwhile; corrupt vote buying, pure and simple.
I sincerely hope the coming elections at state and federal level will see the largest ever recorded swing against the two major parties and that we will see a previously un-imagined presence in the new parliaments of independents and minor parties to hold these two gangs of ruthless rogues to account.
I also hope that voters will exercise their right to not put a number on the ballot paper opposite LNP and Labor candidates, so they don’t figure in the allocation of preferences.
This election, more than any other I can recollect, demands that people accept their democratic responsibility and discard those arrogant, under-performing politicians who continue to usurp a place in our parliament; those who pretend to represent and who see it as their right to continue under-performing yet still claim the benefits and retirement dividends that come with their protected species status.
It is our absolute right to demand substance and service over the pretense we have come to accept and the dismissive petulance we are continually offered by these simple despots with overblown egos.
Mike Logan, Forest Reefs
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