Today in the city I encountered a lost tourist looking for Flinders Street Station (”it’s that big building with the dome”), a Korean student looking for the Block Arcade (”follow me, I’m walking right past it”), and unless I’m much mistaken I passed Katy “Jo Grant” Manning in Degraves Street.

So, let me get this straight…

You can start an illegal war based on flawed evidence that most people didn’t believe, then refuse to apologise for it (even when your allies admit their mistakes).

You can pretend the war hasn’t impacted our safety, while security specialists are warning otherwise.

You can form alliances with a party that even the Queensland Nationals describe as “the lunatic right” for Senate preferences.

You can have your ministers carry on like Tony Abbott with his infamous Cardinal Pell interview.

You can lie for political gain about asylum seekers throwing their children off boats. And the following election have the cheek to use the catchcry “Who do you trust?”

You can spam the electorate with phone calls and emails and hand out dodgy How To Vote cards.

Just whatTF do you have to do around here to get yourself voted out?

I mean, I know the incumbents are likely to do well when the economy’s happily bouncing along, but really… a fourth term with an increased majority and maybe even bloody Family First holding the balance of power in the Senate?! Labor’s far from perfect, but after 8 years, I reckon it was time for a change.

…

Thankfully the voting process itself was relatively painless, even if the queues were lengthy. I knew who I’d vote for… though I did have to think long and hard about who to put last. There was stiff competition between CEC (woo hoo! Maglev monorails!), Family First (pull down Satan’s strongholds), Fred Nile’s party, the DLP and the increasingly tame-looking One Nation.

But the vital question was always going to be: where does one find the polling place with the best sausage sizzle? My nearest polling place is the local Anglican church on the corner. I wasn’t optimistic about the sausage factor there… to my mind churches are more likely to harbour cake and marmalade stalls. I reckon the best places for sausage sizzles are the local primary schools — hard up on cash, and with a big involved parent population eager to do some fundraising. But kudos to the Anglicans, who had the barbecue happily running (as well as a plethora of marmalades and secondhand books). One sausage as sustenance for the voting queue, another as a reward afterwards. You bewdy: lunch taken care of.