FRIENDS, ROMANS, POTATO HEADS...

This weekend, across the state, local council elections will be held. I have no idea who’s running or what they stand for. I have only a peripheral knowledge of what the local issues may be. The media is no real help: it was in vain that I searched the TV guide for Gruen’s Council Election Special.

            The reason for this dearth of information is, ironically, that local government is the political realm where we are supposed above all to find out for ourselves. The system’s designed that way. The idea is that we all get involved at the local level and those who show skill there become our representatives to the State Parliament, while others end up in Canberra, each step in the process nourished by an informed and engaged grass-roots polity. That’s the idea, anyway.

            The reality is that I know much more about the issues and candidates in the US Presidential election. I have books in my library about Paul Keating, John Howard, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and others; I’ll spend forty minutes listening to Barack Obama give a speech. There’s an independent candidate for council living opposite me: will I devote a quarter-hour to crossing the street and enquiring what his platform consists of? No, probably not. My ignorance of the specifics involved means I’ll probably just vote along the usual party lines. And there’s the rub.

            You see, I’m not alone in my laziness. Think for a moment: how many people do you know who complain about the state of our politics, the quality of our politicians, and the calibre of our leaders? Are you one of them? Now, how many of these whiners bother to even vote properly, much less make an informed choice based on active engagement in the process? How many of us even know who our Mayor is, let alone ever attend a council meeting? And yet we feel entitled to crap on about the major parties letting us down, and when elections roll around we trumpet the donkey vote as though we’re somehow reclaiming the system by surrendering it.

            When we abdicate our civic responsibilities, we leave the field to the vested interests, the party machinery, the NIMBYs, ideologues and every other species of gold-plated hustler who can slither by unnoticed and build a nest in our government; and they nearly all enter by the ground floor: they start locally.

            Don’t get me wrong, I’m unlikely to visit my local council chamber any time soon – unless to organise a rubbish pick-up. But nor am I a hypocrite: I know – and so do you – the consequences of inaction. We’ll keep muddling along, doing the bare minimum to contribute to democracy. And when the circus ramps up next year and we see the lack of real options at the federal level; when we’re asked to decide between a conniving party hack who couldn’t lie straight in bed on the one hand, and a rabid reactionary who’ll gut education and public services on the other, maybe then we can remember, and stop bitching as though it’s somebody else’s fault.