This is a guest post by Gloomy, who wishes to merely dip his toe in the blogging waters....
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The Federal election is boring me.
Fortunately, there is another election campaign going on at the same time – the election for the illustrious ACT Legislative Assembly is being held on October 16. While this means that Canberra residents have to go to the polls on two consecutive weekends, it has fortunately meant that out ACT “politicians” haven’t had much airtime over the course of the election campaign so far. They have just been drowned out by the Federal campaign.
Nevertheless, some local media is still finding some time to cover the local derby. A quick glance at the ABC Online *forum* will give you an idea of some of the hot issues concerning Canberrans: Bicycle lanes on main roads! Fireworks! The Dragway! Happy chooks! (If you’re confused by the last one, a group called “Free Range Canberra” is running on a campaign to close down Canberra’s battery hen operation – apparently there are 250,000 battery hens in Canberra.)
Strangely, the ABC forum doesn’t mention one promising young candidate, *Mr Kurt Kennedy*. Mr Kennedy’s certainly got some interesting policies. Take his views on the issue of interest:
Interest rates should be zero. The government will not receive interest as part of its revenue.
The expectation of receiving interest on deposits/lending is nothing but pure greed. What is the difference between a person who lends money and does not charge interest and the person who lends money and charges interest? The person charging interest is greedy.
If you lent someone a pen to use, do you expect that person to give you the pen back and in addition give you another pen?
No, indeed.
I’ve often thought there weren’t enough fruit trees in Canberra. Fortunately, Mr Kennedy has a solution to this problem!
Use fruit bearing trees as street plants to provide a source of free food for the community. Include fruit trees as an extended plant issue scheme. Information brochures on how to propagate fruit trees from seed will be made available to help you grow your own fruit trees.
Home owner have the option of replacing their street tree (when due) with a suitable fruit tree if they are willing to look after it and reap its fruits. Suitable trees may include figs, persimmons (sic); that is trees that are low maintenance, do not need spraying and are not dangerous.
And what better way to make good use of your fruit tree than to share its bounty with your family? But it would be such a hassle to drive all the way across town to share some apples or persimmons with your parents. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if they lived close by? Mr Kennedy’s thought of that too, with a policy to encourage people to live close to their family members:
When you buy your home within walking distance of any of your family member (parent-child, and sibling relationships), you can be eligible for a proportional duty reduction. This is to encourage people to live near and walk to visit loved ones, thus reducing the use of cars and increasing community closeness and interaction.
That’s the solution to our transport woes! If there’s one thing wrong with our transport system, it’s the number of cars clogging our roads with people driving to see their loved ones.
And if there's one thing wrong with the Australian legal system it's that it's way too hard to dig your own well. But Mr Kennedy will fix that, by “making it easier for you to dig your own well to get water”. You can use the water to irrigate your fruit trees!
Mr Kennedy has also brought a refreshingly new approach to political campaigning. Here’s an extract from his press release of 25 September:
As you can see from my campaign calendar, I've been very busy. I am going to write in the first person now as I am capable of changing and adapting. There's no rule that media releases should not be in the first person, especially when I am uploading them into my web page. (...) The National Library has approached me to archive my campaign webpage as they consider it is of "national significance". How mind blowing; I was happy to oblige.
In spite of his radical and thought-provoking policies, part of me can’t help but hope that Mr Kennedy is not successful in his campaign. It would be such a waste were he elected to the ACT Legislative Assembly. After all, he has so much to offer the world of music through his *music mirror* palindromic compositions. The benefit of palindromic music, as Mr Kennedy points out, is that you only need to do half as much work. Of course, one disadvantage is that it doesn’t end up sounding very good, but that’s a minor quibble.
I think he could be onto something with these palindromes. He should consider encapsulating some of his policies in palindromic form.
A suggestion: Apple ho ! Help, Pa!
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