On Sunday morning, many Australians found themselves staring into their morning coffee wondering at what point the Labor Party lost the unlosable election. Unless you were a Greens voter, in which case your morning tumeric latte was vocally moaning about the electoral return of ‘ScoMo’!
Betting agencies had paid in favour of a Labor win days in advance, and even the Liberal leader called the election win a ‘miracle.’ And as a Pentecostal Christian, Mr Morrison knows a thing or two about miracles.
I am a young, female, Victorian, inner city dweller, but I made the decision to give my vote to the Liberal Party, as I have since the 2013 election, the first time I voted. I walked to the ballot box proud, with a smile on my face, glad to be participating in the democratic process and making my unique voice heard.
However, the elation I experienced on Sunday morning over the Liberal win was short-lived. According to social media, I am scared, uneducated, a bigot, should be ashamed, have condemned this planet to burn, pathetic, not a feminist, probably hate gays, hate minorities, and probably want to stop women having access to abortions.
Of course, none of this is true. I simply voted how my Dad told me to vote.
I’m not a bigot, I just listen to my father, Mark, who is a senior executive with KPMG and has a ‘good business head’ on his shoulders. Who wouldn’t listen to a legend like that?
Wandering around the streets of Melbourne, I was sad that many people saw Liberal voters as a negative influence on this country. Not all of us are actually right wing – some of us simply vote according to how our wealthy parents tell us to vote.
I would like our nation to take a collective deep breath and hear me out, please. I would like to remind Australians that some of us have a father who works for KPMG, and a mother that works as a periodontist, that support us through our Commerce studies at the University of Melbourne, with an unspoken arrangement whereby we receive weekly bank transfers of $550 that we both pretend does not occur.
We who voted for the Coalition did not vote out of fear, nor naivety, bigotry or anger. Rather, we voted with our parents, because what is in their economic interest is ultimately in ours. considering we rely on them for subsidies.
We voted with our parents in the hope that by pleasing them, they would be proud of us and tell us that they loved us.
Labor supporters, I am sorry you were left blindsided and heartbroken. But here’s one for you - get some better parents. They will show you the way.
‘Rip it, lick it, stick it. Listen to your ‘rents. Never forget the Northern Beaches.’ The LNP slogan for their 2019 campaign was far more insightful than they ever truly realised.
More to come from my perspective.