You can't always get what you need.
The election race has been run and won - it was the dullest (and longest) campaign ever and the victory speech had neither heart nor movement. It may have been what Australia deserved - an extremely conservative society with extremely conservative leaders - a match made in hell.
Where were the questions from media interviewers to make the contenders accountable? Isn't that one of the tasks of journalists? Here's what I'm talking about. According to my observations of the election campaign, the word TERRORISM was never mentioned. Yet it has been the reason put forward by the coalition for invading Iraq and the rationale of both major political parties supporting the presence of our troops in Afghanistan and was the driver for some extreme legislative change, the anti-terrorist legislation. Yet neither side of politics mentioned it. And what's worse, journalists were complicit in the process by not mentioning it either. They allowed the parties to set their own dull agenda and travel the long campaign road without being brought to account.
Yeah, we've probably got the government AND the press we deserve but I don't reckon it's what we need and with no winds of change on the horizon, Australia will be mired in conservatism for some time yet.
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Here in the USA we allowed a man to steal the top honor. How awful is that.
The problem here is that there are 2 major newspaper owners, Murdoch (you'll know him) and Fairfax - and in some cities, mine for instance, only one major newspaper. The journalists don't have alot of options for employment, so they are very conservative and toe the line.
What a different world we might have had if that debacle in Florida hadn't occurred and Al Gore had been made president.
It's not like there isn't an amazing array of forums that aggressive probing journalism could use.
Did you write in an earlier blog about people (including yourself ;-) becoming too comfortable and losing their edge?
I think it's a leadership thing - people seem to need leadership but leadership has been uninspirational of late. We need to be trained to care - just as many were trained to fear and be inward looking over the last 10 years. Now enough people (swinging voters mainly) are sick of that and waiting for something different and more positive to be awakened in them.
More importantly, how did your coffee date go with the Thai girl?
Carla
You're right Carla - in fact my dear old Gran used to say, "We're so lucky to be living in Australia....etc." and I had to agree. But even a Rolls Royce needs maintenance and alot of energy went into its building too. To me, we have some new problems and challenges (that we've never encountered before) and we need new solutions - the old thinking that went towards creating these problems cannot fix them.
As for the date, it was going to be an alcohol date but I had to postpone it and you may be psychic because I've rescheduled it as a coffee date for next week...problem is, I have to do a bit of travel and may have to cancel again - I can see us both losing interest.