I am a young person and I vote.
I was just a whisker too young to vote in 2013. Last year’s Victorian elections were my first chance to vote and I exercised that right. I’m glad I did.
My vote matters. Your votes matter. I realise this and I hope you do too (especially you, Aussie friends). More and more, people – especially young people – seem to be either not bothering to register or just not showing up, even though in Australia voting is compulsory. (The Australian Electoral Commission estimated that 1.22 million eligible people were not enrolled to vote for the 2013 federal election. Around 400,000 of these were young voters who had failed to enrol.)
If you willingly don’t vote, then your reasons for complaining about the current state of things or whatever are pretty thin. Voting is our chance to express our opinion on events. Forget opinion polls; the important one is election day.
Why am I rabbiting on about this? Because it is possible that Abbott will call a double-disillusion election, at some point in the next six months or very early next year. He is capitalising on the climate of fear he has created.
We can’t get pulled into his web. We can’t let him scare us into electing him again.
On that front, while Shorten and the ALP do seem in some ways to be similar to Abbott and co., they’re not the same. Even if you can’t bring yourself to vote for them due to this, put them second or third, then the LNP last. We can’t let Australia be vandalised more than the country already has due to the stupidity of Abbott. I feel more comfortable with the likelihood of at least a semi-productive conversation with Labor than I do the LNP.
The ALP will do a better job of at least pretending to care about all of Australia and not just the bits they know. I’m not saying to commit to voting for them forever – in 2019 things could change depending on what occurs. Though I very highly doubt that the situation would have changed enough for the LNP to be palatable, I speak of the situation of Independents/ Greens etc.
It’s our future. We need to claim it back, before it’s too late.
My view is that it’s better in the short term to grit our teeth slightly and preference ALP second, than it is to risk putting both at the bottom or something….for that runs the risk of returning Abbott to the Lodge.
No thanks!
http://theaimn.com/youth-votes-matter/
http://theaimn.com/i-want-a-government-that-governs-for-23-million-australians/
myzania 