Vote for the person

SINCE we are stuck with the imperfect democratic model for the coming election, it is very important that we persuade our fellow voters that their vote is extremely important and, being so valuable, should be exercised only after careful consideration of what we hope to be our future for the next four years at least.

This means that in addition to selecting whichever of the differing policies appeals most to our sense of what is fair, reasonable and desirable, that because policies can be thwarted for various reasons and sometimes become undeliverable, we should also look beyond this and attempt, so far as possible, to make a judgment of the personal qualities of the candidates.

In the end, it is the individual members of parliament on whom we must, eventually, rely, and we should seek to elect people of good character, with a social conscience and of sufficient intelligence to make good decisions when circumstances change, as they inevitably do, and it is necessary to depart from the party line.

With the generous GST carve up we receive from Canberra to fund health, you would think fixing the chronic problems in the system would have been their priority over the past four years. Some may accept these promises on face value, but I think putting faith in Santa Claus or the Easter bunny would be more justified!