DS1 is working for the AEC today, manning a polling station in a nearby electorate. It's a good opportunity for a uni student to earn some money (apparently it's close to a thousand dollars for one, very long, day of work). He'll even get a superannuation contribution ;)
The electorate we live in in is a 'safe' Liberal seat (it was won with a 15.7% margin at the last Federal election) so how I vote really won't matter very much. It will be much more interesting in the neighbouring electorate when Tony Abbott (the ex-PM) is standing for re-election in a traditionally 'safe' seat, but is facing a strong independent candidate (Zali Steggall) who is being given a lot of support by a grab-bag collection of 'anyone but Tony' groups such as GetUp! (Labor activist group), 'Vote Tony Out' (the ultimate in negative campaigning as far as I can tell they really don't care which party forms government, as long as Tony Abbott doesn't get re-elected), and the usual Labor, Green candidates (who don't stand a chance of getting elected, but their preference flow to Zali will boost her chances, as long as she comes second on the first preference count). Polls funded by GetUp! suggest he is trailing Zali 46:54 (but I can guess how 'push' polling funded by GetUp! is! - I'm amazed how much coverage these sort of biased polls get in the national press - e.g. the front page of the SMH), but more independent polsters have it around 50:50 (still a very close thing for a formerly 'safe' seat, which shows how unpopular Tony is with some 'swinging' voters).
In any case I'll be voting Liberal in my electorate. I don't think the Libs have particularly enticing policies (in fact I'm not sure they have any new policies this time around), but the Labor policies appear to involve an even larger amount of 'tax and spend' than usual (I think the fact that Labor has been consistently ahead in the opinion polls since the last Federal election has them thinking they can get a 'transformative' platform endorsed by the voters, simply because the electorate has had enough of the coalition and wants to 'give the other side a go'). A lot of the policy (e.g. climate change action) is not fully costed, and other policies (eg. subsidising child-care worker salaries) have not been costed in the 'long term', so, like the NDIS scheme and NBN, are likely to be massively expensive after the first decade, and almost impossible to wind back the cost.
I probably won't be too adversely affected by Labor's tax grab if they get elected, as it is mostly targeted at those in the very top tax bracket, or who make use of discretionary trusts, have very high super balances (tens of millions!) etc., but I suspect that what might happen if Labor wins is that they will get their spending promises enacted (after all, who doesn't want to spend more on schools, hospitals or the needy?) but then fail to raise the revenue required to pay for it all. A lot of their tax changes will have serious trouble getting through the Senate (where minor parties and independents have the 'balance of power'), so we could end up with four years of Labor budgets promising to be 'balanced' but which end up blowing out the deficit (even more) -- that seems to be the usual pattern when Labor gets into office.
We'll see what happens this time around...
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