In 2016, when some of my friends told me they weren't going to vote in the federal election, I was aghast. How could they not? I was so keen to get voting that the night before the election, I made a Word document to practise the order of my preferences and memorised it.
Fast forward to last week, when I had a slight panic on the train because I couldn't remember which Saturday the election was held on and feared I had accidentally missed it.
Australian politics can be brutal and the past three years were no exception. We've had more dehumanising voting campaigns, more sex abuse coming to light, more climate inaction and somehow yet another prime minister.
I know we've just had a month of election campaigning, but if you asked me to talk about specific campaign events, I would struggle a bit. This election cycle seems to me like an endless blur of Clive Palmer ads and social media scandals. I know the gist of the major policy proposals, but if I'm being honest, I overwhelmingly found myself tuning out.
In 2016, I was indignant at Bernie Finn's anti-trans and homophobic comments and the toxic debate surrounding Safe Schools. When I recently read that Scott Morrison was questioned on whether he believed gay people were going to hell and he gave a noncommittal answer (which he later revised), I thought of a John Mulaney quote from his comedy special New In Town: 'This might as well happen.' As a queer woman raised Catholic, I could explain how re-traumatising this type of commentary is to me, but I know that this is just another part of the continuing acceptance of public debates on the humanity of LGBTQ+ people; gay people going to hell can be framed as a legitimate political discourse now.
And while I'm glad that action to address climate change has come back the political forefront, I find it hard to read or hear about it without feeling a sense of hopeless climate anxiety. I recently read a statement from the UN where the speakers remind the audience we only have 11 years to prevent irreversible damage from climate change.
I can't help but do the maths. How many election cycles is that? What age will I be then? What about my younger cousins? With the limited amount of time we have, it's demoralising to hear the Coalition's so-called 'war on