Cause that's the important bit

Last Saturday, before my triathlon, Australia had its federal elections. I went to an election party with my friends and it was great fun. An afternoon of lawn bowling, Risk: Transformers, a pinata, and of course, a barbie with snags, was followed my sheer energy as the Australian Labour Party decidely swept into power after 12 or so years of Liberal Rule under John Howard.

It was pretty cool to watch the results as they came in, particularly with such a partisan crowd! It's what SHOULD have happened in 2004 at home. But, let's not go there.

It wasn't until election night, though, that I realized (good lord - I just spelled realized with an s! I've changed it back to a z. Must resist the change....) that Australian voters don't vote for the prime minister directly, they vote for members of parliament in each of their home seats, including the leaders of the parties, in this case, Kevin Rudd and John Howard. When one party has a majority of seats they are the leaders and form their government, including selection of the prime minister. The leaders of the party are already known before the election; in fact Kevin Rudd took leadership of the opposition from Kim Beazely about a year ago in the lead up to this election.

So, this week, Rudd has been in Canberra and today he selected his cabinet. As the Australian system has ministers of each area - sort of like our Secretaries - each member of the cabinet gets a portfolio. Usually, like at home, the person is selected for the portfolio, but Rudd selected all the Cabinet members first, then assigned portfolios to them. His deputy prime minister is a woman, Julia Gillard, the most senior female politician in Australia and she's been given the portfolios of workplace relations (a huge election issue) and education (another huge election issue). Pretty big stuff. But the one that makes headlines in the US? Peter Garrett as Minister of Environment.

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/11/29/australia.government.ap/index.html

Ah well, once a rock star, always a rock star. And the US media loves a celebrity.

Other interesting tidbits from the election:
There is a preference voting system in Australia. This means that if the party you've selected in the vote doesn't win the seat, you can indicate who your vote will go to of the other candidates. So, the people who are tallying the votes actually have to go back to the losing votes and reassign their vote. The other 2 big parties in Australia are the Nationals (Liberal preference) and the Greens (Labour preference). There are also Democrats and I'd presume they are Labour preference as well. I think that's how it works. I don't think the US has something like that. Right?

Good lord. I need to take a civics class. Or whatever class it is that teaches you about government. Cause as I was trying to explain our system to people and compare it to the system here I realized I'm a bit woeful on the details. Ooops.

There was a great ad run by Get-Up during the election. As there are more than 2 viable parties in Australia - well, there are the 2 big ones, but the little ones don't seem as little as the little ones in the US - Get-Up ran an ad with reps from the 3 non-Liberal parties: Labour, Greens, and Democrats, with the message: "It doesn't matter if you vote Labour, or Greens, or Demorats, just vote to save our senate and end the coalition's power." Just such a good ad - reminding people that a democracy can't really exist if one party has a stranglehold on the Senate and the House. (Although it may not be called the House here. I'm still figuring it all out.)

John Howard lost his seat of 33 years to a journalist from ABC (The PBS equivalent). So, even if the Liberals had managed to hold onto the government, Howard would have been out. Sort of a sad way to end 30+ years as a pollie. He's been gracious about it all. But he can talk the talk - he is a politician after all.