I’ve been thinking over the last few days about the fact that Tony Abbott’s “infrastructure” spending is 98.4% on roads (I’m not making that up – that’s the actual percentage), it suddenly occurred me that all those times I’d heard that Tony Abbott was a Rhodes Scholar, it turns out that he was actually a Roads Scholar. How foolish of me.

I’ve just voted, and despite the temptation to take the easy way of voting above the line in the Senate, I resisted, because I really don’t want to allow my preferences to be decided by the political party I vote for above the line – so I struggled on and filled in all 110 boxes under the line.

At one point as I was sliding the ballot paper side-to-side in the narrow voting booth, the paper nearly slipped down the crack at the side of the booth and disappeared – I rescued it just in time. Additionally by the time I got to number 110, the pencil I was using was in serious need of re-sharpening – there is a non-trivial possibility that some people voting below the line will cast informal votes because of blunt pencils.

It’s pretty clear that the current system is broken and needs to be reformed in one or more of the following ways:

1. Tighter rules for nominating candidates/parties, to restrict the number of candidates to a sensible level.
2. Allow preferential voting above the line. i.e. allow numbering the parties (not candidates) in order of preference.
3. Have a minimum allowable number of votes below the line to cast a formal vote. e.g. like in NSW where as long as you’ve numbered 1 to 15 (or more) then the vote is valid.

It’s decision time tomorrow, and in my final pre-poll blog posting I’m going to lay out why I could never vote for a party led by Tony Abbott. The problems I see in him are pretty much exemplified in the story from last year, when Tony was banging on in parliament about how a poor pensioner’s electricity bill had more than doubled as a result of the carbon tax. Subsequent enquiries established that the power bill had doubled because the pensioner’s electricity usage had doubled!

I can only see three reasons why Tony Abbott could end up quoting this power bill in a political attack in parliament:

1. He is foolish. Someone passed the story on to him, and he just started using it without checking the veracity or validity of the argument – he just foolishly and rashly rushed in without stopping to think about it.
2. He is stupid. Perhaps he is too mentally incapacitated to understand how power bills work, that the cost is proportional to energy used.
3. He is deceitful. He knew that the story didn’t stack up and had no validity, but to gain political points and publicity he deliberately told untruths, saying that the massive bill increase was due to the carbon tax, when it simply was not true.

So which is he? Foolish, stupid or deceitful? Or some amalgam of all three?

Whatever the proportions, he ought not to be leading this country.

Moments before the coalition release their policy costings, supposedly “well before the election” and  “in good time” for the Australian public to scrutinise, the AEC confirms that 2.25 million people have already voted.  Talk about evasion. If ever earth is threatened by a rogue meteor, don’t send Bruce Willis – send Tony Abbott, the master of evasion.

1.4m have voted at an early voting centre. Additional 850k postal. Total 2.25 approx

— AEC (@AusElectoralCom) September 5, 2013

Tony Abbott has spent much of this year and the election campaign crowing about how the coalition’s policy costings will be out “well before election day” and that the Australian public will have plenty of time to scrutinise the details.

As it turns out that “well before election day” means sometime on the Thursday before the election, less than 48 hours before polling places open, and well after some 1.2 million people have already cast their vote by pre-poll voting.

I’m not sure what I find most disturbing about this, that Tony Abbott is engaging in such brazen chicanery(*), or that apparently 53% of the Australian public are prepared to support such a charlatan.

(*) Chicanery = “trickery or deception by quibbling or sophistry”

Finally, a non-glib, tangible statement from Tony Abbott that I can totally agree with, as he announces that the Liberal Party will no longer accept tobacco party donations. Given that we’ve known for decades the damaging health effects of tobacco, it’s about time that the major political parties recognised that accepting financial support from this industry is unhelpful, undesirable, and in my opinion morally wrong.

I find it hard to think of a more clear-cut example in the modern western world of the rich and powerful exploiting the poor and weak, than tobacco companies peddling addictive and harmful drugs to the populace.

I’m not sure I’d go as far as Kevin Rudd suggests and actually ban political donations from tobacco companies – refusing such donations ought to be a principled ethical choice by the political parties, not just a legalistic compliance with legislative requirements.