We went to vote early this morning at 8am at our local polling booths in The Muse, Sydney Technical College. It was a quiet turn-out, pamphleteers were subdued and the weather was drizzly. I went in and voted, what I felt to be, conservatively. Labor above the line and Jenny Leong of The Greens for the House of Representatives. I felt certain that the Liberal Government would lose this election.
Later in the afternoon I had lunch with my family. I asked my parents if they had voted and they said- “Oh yeah, we did that first thing this morning.” and when I asked them who they voted for, my dad said with a laugh “Oh, old man Johnny.” I nearly fell off my chair! After my proclamations of disgust were hushed down by my sister, embarrassed to have a political argument in the middle of a sushi restaurant, I reiterated my question of “Why?”
Their response only further dismayed me. Now my parents have very poor English and not much understanding of the Australian political system. My mother piped up with “Interest rates.” and then they both declared that “Unions” were a very bad thing. I couldn’t believe my disappointment. Howard’s tacky scare campaign had worked like a charm on uneducated people like my working class folks. These are people who lived in the Western suburbs and had voted Labor all their life. They, of all people, should have realised that their debt-ridden lives remained unprotected by Howard’s ‘prosperous’ economy by the interest rate rise only two weeks ago and as life-long sweat-shop workers, they should have understood the value and immense importance of Union influence on the manufacturing industry. I was saddened and frustrated, particularly by my mother, who I felt, too easily bought the party line that we were all middle-class and that the only thing that really mattered and was worth protecting was a right to make money.
I felt that even though my parents had enjoyed a small degree of prosperity with their business, they were worse off than my unemployed students, who at least had some exposure to a broader take on the election. This whole week, I have been teaching about the election, from reading both major political parties’ policies to simple lessons on how-to-vote, mixed in with a daily reading of a newspaper article on the election. We discussed the different ‘issues’ that they considered important and how this would influence their decision. As the majority of them are welfare recipients, many felt they would be better off under a Labor government. There’s no clear policy that would back up this claim but they felt strongly about this nonetheless. I was disturbed that none thought of Immigraton to be an issue that concerned them. When I mentioned that I would vote against a Liberal government because of their treatment of asylum seekers, they remained unconcerned. I couldn’t understand how, as refugees and immigrants themselves, they did not feel any compassion for the refugees in detention.
Another startling finding, was how many Vietnamese immigrants who had left Vietnam as refugees expressed a deep-seated apathy about the whole democratic process. “Oh, all politicians are liars, so what’s the difference? I’m going to leave my ballot paper blank.” Now trust me when I say, I had made a great effort to present these classes as impartially as possible reading all manner of opinion pieces from all the major broadsheets and tabloid papers as well as both Liberal and Labor party policies but here I was unable to remain objectively calm. When asked as to why they left Vietnam, most Vietnamese refugees will happily state, “For freedom.” or “To live in a free country.”, which more specifically means, “To not live in a Communist country.” In this democracy, such an idealistic claim doesn’t have much meaning when they reject their right to vote. I have a Pakistani student, Farooq, who had only recently spent two months in Pakistan during the turbulent election and when she recounted her story of her time there, it did seem foolish to take this process for granted. How can only 30-odd years completely erase the memory of persecution and terror under a Communist regime? How did the optimism that compelled someone to leave their country become this lazy indifference? I don’t quite understand it but it reminds me of a story of how Jewish victims released from Auschwitz were found complaining of the food they were given only one week after their liberation at the end of the war.
Maybe the last thing we need is an Australia- STRONG – PROSPEROUS – SECURE.
Leave a Reply