Australia votes
November 27th 2007 02:59
Yes I am a few days behind but it's not like I ever promised to bring you up to the minute election news. But Australia does have a new Prime Minister (PM) now in the form of Kevin Rudd and I was eager to find out what my generation things of this hand over of power.
Well unsurprisingly the majority of the feedback I received was positive considering that Kevin Rudd did will by having more than 50% of the votes. The reasons people cited for this swing to labor (Mr. Rudd's political party) ranged from the environment to Mr. Howard's broken promises.
Gen Yers are more enviro-conscious as a collective than any generation before them and are of the view that we do not inherit the environment from the previous generation but rather borrow it from the generations yet to come. What this means is that we are not amused by the damage done in the past and seek to rectify it while we rule the planet so as not to die via mass carbon monoxide poisoning. Mr. Rudd promised to ratify the Kyoto protocol and set specific goals and time frames for reducing carbon pollution. This was viewed positively by my peers. They understand that a drought here affects wheat prices in Ghana, so by not paying attention to the environment we are harming many more than just ourselves.
Next up we have the fact that John Howard prided himself on the economy and keeping interest rates low.
Okay firstly, the government does not set interest rates, the Reserve Bank of Australia does. This means Mr. Howard can only indirectly affect what interest rates do, but despite his promise to keep them low, they jumped 4 times in the last year... oops. The fact the last of these was less than a month before the election couldn't have done o much to help him.
Also cited as a reason for a new government was the fact that is was time or a change. We had had Mr. Howard in power for 11 years and he was planning to hand over to the treasurer Mr. Costello before the next election so even if we were to vote for Howard, we would not be getting him for the full term.
And finally we come to the matter of education. In Australia, education is not free. There are government schemes to help with payment but there is no way to wave the payment all together i.e. much of Generation Y is in debt, especially if they chose to continue studying after high school. What made this worse under John Howard were the Industrial relations (IR) laws that took away a lot of pay and union bargaining power. In contrast, Mr. Rudd promised to dismantle the IR laws and 'start an education revolution' complete with world class broad band for all. Internet savvy and debt ridden Gen Yers embraced this and voted 1 for labor.
In fact, the papers called the result a "Ruddslide" by way of demonstrating the new government’s popularity. Yes, certainly there are those among us that still do not thing climate change is a big a problem was it is made out o be but it appears there weren’t enough of them to win Mr. Howard the election, and judging by this display of environmental awareness, they won't have better luck next time.
Well unsurprisingly the majority of the feedback I received was positive considering that Kevin Rudd did will by having more than 50% of the votes. The reasons people cited for this swing to labor (Mr. Rudd's political party) ranged from the environment to Mr. Howard's broken promises.
Gen Yers are more enviro-conscious as a collective than any generation before them and are of the view that we do not inherit the environment from the previous generation but rather borrow it from the generations yet to come. What this means is that we are not amused by the damage done in the past and seek to rectify it while we rule the planet so as not to die via mass carbon monoxide poisoning. Mr. Rudd promised to ratify the Kyoto protocol and set specific goals and time frames for reducing carbon pollution. This was viewed positively by my peers. They understand that a drought here affects wheat prices in Ghana, so by not paying attention to the environment we are harming many more than just ourselves.
Next up we have the fact that John Howard prided himself on the economy and keeping interest rates low.
Okay firstly, the government does not set interest rates, the Reserve Bank of Australia does. This means Mr. Howard can only indirectly affect what interest rates do, but despite his promise to keep them low, they jumped 4 times in the last year... oops. The fact the last of these was less than a month before the election couldn't have done o much to help him.
And finally we come to the matter of education. In Australia, education is not free. There are government schemes to help with payment but there is no way to wave the payment all together i.e. much of Generation Y is in debt, especially if they chose to continue studying after high school. What made this worse under John Howard were the Industrial relations (IR) laws that took away a lot of pay and union bargaining power. In contrast, Mr. Rudd promised to dismantle the IR laws and 'start an education revolution' complete with world class broad band for all. Internet savvy and debt ridden Gen Yers embraced this and voted 1 for labor.
In fact, the papers called the result a "Ruddslide" by way of demonstrating the new government’s popularity. Yes, certainly there are those among us that still do not thing climate change is a big a problem was it is made out o be but it appears there weren’t enough of them to win Mr. Howard the election, and judging by this display of environmental awareness, they won't have better luck next time.
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