Morale at the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has hit rock bottom following recent ructions in the nation's capital which saw Australia join the likes of Italy and Japan in the league of Disposable Paper Cup Prime Ministers - no refills, no second chances.
The AEC has spent years trying to force people to vote, having early given up on the notion that people will get off their plump posteriors and tick a few boxes once every three years simply on the basis that they might like to have some say over who governs them. Apparently the chance to decide how much we pay in tax, what the laws regarding marriage are, what kind of environment we live in and what kind of schools our kids go to is just not motivation enough. The only reason people vote is that they want to avoid a fine.
Even then, there's an increasing percentage of people who scrawl juvenile obscenities on the ballot paper in the hope that someone other than an underpaid, casual returning officer's assistant will take notice of their political manifesto and call a double dissolution election based on the voter's expressed sentiment that "You're all f@$kin d*!kheads"
The sense of joie de vivre at the AEC, never very high, has taken a further dive in recent years as it has become evident that people are quite happy to pay to vote for people on restaurant, home renovation or singing shows - people who if they win will never affect the lives of the voter ever again - but can't be bothered to vote for free for someone who could make their lives miserable for the next three to six years.
A recent proposal to turn Australian elections into a reality TV style program was unfortunately blocked in the Senate.
On the surface of it, the proposal seemed to have some merit. Prime Ministerial candidates would be selected at the start of the electoral season and set to making cupcakes, cooking bbqs, kissing babies, making stump speeches and competing in contests in which they try to make the viewing audience believe the most preposterous and audacious bullshit. Australians could vote one candidate off every week and the last person standing at the end could get a record deal and the office of Prime Minister for the year - which, on current form, is about as long as anyone is going to get to stay in that job anyway.
On current reality show trends, the proposal would have been self funding and then some because people will happily pay 55c a go to vote on these things and there's no need for all that mess with little cardboard booths, strange people with disapproving frowns asking you if you've already voted in this election and the very real chance of dying of asphyxiation under the torrent of "how to vote" slips that are rained on you as you enter the school yard.
It is widely believed that the proposal was voted down by some of the uglier, unhandy politicians who could neither sing for their supper nor manage baked beans on toast if they had to make it themselves. However, recent leaks from sources close to the Prime Minister (whoever he may be) have suggested that it was really kyboshed by political strategists who knew that they could never get their guy elected if the public were allowed to scrutinize them and their apparent intelligence for longer than a 30 second sound bite per night.
However, it's clearly all irrelevant now that the people's choice of prime minister appears to be about as binding as cheap band-aids after a bath. Dissatisfaction with performance, poor polling numbers or just the ennui of being a member of the Australian legislature seem to be reason enough to given the current incumbent some free time to write his narky memoirs and a new guy a chance to experience something to be narky about.
The AEC has asked me to finish this post with a reminder to all that there are good jobs going there - particularly in their PR department - the occupants of which resigned en masse last Wednesday.
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