By volition and inheritance, I am a life-long Australian Labor Party supporter.
My paternal grandfather was a labourer on the Balmain Wharves at the time of the formation of the Labor Electoral League (precursor to the Australian Labor Party) in 1891.
My mother's father, also a life-long Labor supporter, spent his working life as an employee of NSW Railways in Goulburn.
My mother's father, also a life-long Labor supporter, spent his working life as an employee of NSW Railways in Goulburn.
I have, often at risk of limb, if not life, handed out ALP how-to-vote cards and scrutineered vote-counting in unwinnable conservative rural seats at Federal and State elections for over 40 years.
(Labor got 5 votes at my last outing as a scrutineer in my home town in north-western New South Wales. I assume that these votes were mine, my wife's, my friend's, his wife's and his father's.
The voters who wanted to rearrange my facial bones were my fellow-patrons from the local pub.)
I resigned my ALP membership some years ago in exasperation.
I had the expectation that branch meetings should be focused on resolutions on party policy directions from the members, not raising petty cash from cake stalls.
Nevertheless, my support on polling days - long, hot days in the sun handing out how-to-vote cards - has continued.
The cake-stall members are notable by their absence.
I am tired and frustrated by the futility of this activity.
If fairness and reason were effective, we would have achieved equity and justice on our society long ago.
Rita May Brown famously said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Pissing into the wind has just left me soaked to the bone.
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