I've never understood How-to-Vote cards. Ever. I just can't understand how you can get to a polling booth and need a stranger to hand you a piece of paper to tell you how to vote. Bewildering. So I never take one (occasionally, for variety, I take one from everyone just to mess with their heads). But today I broke my own rule and took just one - from my son who was wearing ALP colours for the first time even though he is not yet old enough to vote. Truth is that while I am a political animal I have not ever nor will I join a political party. I don't think any party has the monopoly on good ideas or bad and I hate the fact that toeing the party line means a pretence of just that. But I love politics as a sport and feel very disheartened about the number of young people who refuse to engage in the political process. You can choose not to engage but you can't choose not to be governed and surely it is better to have a say rather than leave it up to others to decide for you? This is why I am incredibly proud of my young man not for his politics per se but for his political interest and conviction. I rather prefer to exercise my political interest as a commentator rather than a campaigner. So tonight I was in election night heaven in the Social Media Lounge of the ABC Brisbane studios tweeting my little heart out. I had the laptop, the iPad, the iPhone and the camera and was surrounded by a group of talented tweeters (many of them my own QUT Journalism students) monitoring what the social media world had to say about the events as they unfolded. I guess politics runs in the family. There are a lot of worse ways to spend your time ...
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