It’s election month in Australia and it’s a crazy time. On my name day, 21st May, Australia goes to the vote to determine the new political party that will govern us.

I don’t take this responsibility lightly. I’ve always been someone who valued that we can vote in relative peace and that we can have a say. I never understood people who would say to me that it’s a pointless activity, that they deliberately don’t vote or they muck their paper up deliberately to make it into a donkey vote.

Why would people deliberately do something like this when others in history fought for the right to do this or that in some countries, they don’t even get this choice?! It’s nonsensical to me and says more about them that I care to know.

Others have said to me “but there’s no such thing as democracy anymore so why bother?” Again, I simply don’t understand. I believe that as long as we have an opportunity to vote, then we must continue doing so. We will only starkly realise it’s importance once this has been taken away from us and I don’t want to live in a society like that.

Every voting day whether for Commonwealth or State elections, Andrew and I head off, hand in hand, to the local high school to vote. It’s become our little ritual and I look forward to it. ?

Let’s see who gets in this time but I do so want a change from the ultra right wing conservatives who are in now. We need some real reforms that will set Australia into a new future.

If the current Liberal party gets in again, well, Australia deserves what it gets.