A sausage for the nation

It’s election day in Australia today.

The Age predicts it’s going to be close.

I think we live in a lucky country, and I appreciate being given the freedom to vote, because there are so many countries who don’t allow women or minority groups, or anyone at all, to vote.

But I have found it hard to differentiate between party policies when most of the media and advertising from both Labor and Liberal has been slagging off the opposition. I did like this profile on Julia Gillard by Mia Freedman last week.

It may be unAustralian of me not to know much about politics. I am proud to have a female PM. But other than that, I’m disinterested and uninformed.

The other day work friends and I had a coffee, and they were discussing the election. I honestly had nothing intelligent to contribute to the conversation, and I emphasised this by saying ‘if all I’m worried about is the lack of picture on my hot chocolate froth, I clearly have no intellect regarding the election’. A friend of mine wrote on her Facebook that she is very excited to be able to vote for the first time today – this was a nice thing to see, I thought, despite my ignorance to it all.

It is very Australian of me, however, to be excited about sausage sizzles on election day.

I have a lot on today, so I chose to vote in the city on Thursday. My main concern about casting an early vote was whether I could still have a sausage today.

I put it to Twitter. @snagvotes said ‘Yes. It’s your democratic right! ;)’. @daisystreet said: Oh, absolutely! In fact, I think you should get *two sausages simply for being so organised. 😉

So today, after breakfast with the lovely Jentopia, belly dance and a spot of shopping, I went to my local primary school to get a sausage. I bypassed the queue to get my sausage. ‘I’ve already voted, I’m just here for a sausage’, I told the voters. 

Sausages were categorised by party leaders. Mr Abbott (or Mr Rabbit, as Gillard says) sausages were plain. It would have been great if they were rabbit sausages.

Julia Gillard, our first female and red haired PM was represented by Red Hot Rangas.

 When I was a kid, Mum would tell me she could never tell me who she voted for. It was a highly confidential and personal thing. My sausage choice didn’t represent my vote. Can you guess?