How important is this election?

Um… not at all important!

We’re choosing between two entities that are practically the same and getting more similar with each passing day….. and which are both hopelessly off-track with respect to our future wellbeing.

This election like all the others is essentially meaningless. We will traipse along to the polling booths and in effect pick one of two parties. There are a lot of others there but they will have no chance of gaining government.
The two we can chose from have in theory nothing in common but in reality are very much the same.
To be elected they have to appeal to the bulk of the voters who are inclined to be swayed by whoever offers them the most chance of continuing their tilt towards the life they believe to be their right.
So it is really an auction of promises a lot of which will not be kept.
Any genuine attempt at reforming governance will be lost in the scramble for the next few years in the drivers seat.
One lot is financed by big business and will use their power to push benefits in the way of tax breaks, cheap imported labour and deregulation that way.
The other is financed by the remnants of the unions and also by big business who have each way bets on the result. They will also push benefits to big business and also a few crumbs to the Unions.
After the result and the post mortem is over it will return to the usual squabbling in parliament with no improvements for the voters but a continued gradual erosion of life quality. The rich will get richer and the poor even poorer.

Robert, your comment is filled with despair. It is palpable!

The bottom-line in this election is that both major parties should be cast into Outer Darkness. As you pointed out either we get Big Business running the show or a combination of Unions and Big Business. Both of them are poisonous!

If the electors wanted to, they could refuse to vote LABOR or LIBERAL and elect only Independents. That would throw the cat among the pigeons, wouldn't it?

What it would do is to clean the slate, banish all the boof-heads, lawyers, and self-promoters.

We need a new way! The dinosaurs have had their day!

Pity we don't have a time machine.

If we could just get back to see, I'll bet those dinosaurs elected a bunch of drop kick independents to run the show in their day. A parliament full of such fools could make anything extinct.

After seeing the type of pointy heads we get from Tasmania as independents, & those couple of ratbags from the New England of NSW, only a fool could want more such rabble.

I just hate the way the major parties have perverted the democratic process with compulsory preferential voting for the lower house and 'above the line' voting for the Senate. I want to return to voting only for the people I choose - at least one for my local seat and at least the number of senators up for election on the Senate paper. I don't want a Senator from the Never-heard-of-it-before Party to suddenly appear because of a back-room with the faceless ones.

"the Ins are much better at talk than at getting things done (and passing legislation is not a necessary or sufficient sign of good government)."

Those who accept the message of the snake oil salesman, do so at their peril.