Green Thumb Sunday #10 - Winning and losing

Well, the government of Australia has changed. We all went to the polling booths yesterday Saturday 24 November, and resoundingly and all across the country people decided that 11.5 years of the Liberal National Party Coalition was enough. Bring on some changes. I like to think the issues were education, health, industrial relations and climate change. I like to think people are sick of being told that the economy is the most important thing in life. Certainly in the past 20 years the Australian economy has seen enormous growth in personal and national income. We are so much more affluent than our parent's generation. We have so much more stuff, so much more comfort, so many economic choices. But what does that matter if the environment or our social wellbeing suffers?

In our little corner of Canberra we tried to do our bit to get a Greens candidate, Kerrie Tucker, elected to the Senate. And she got so close! It was fantastic how well she polled but it seems she didn't manage to get quite enough of the primary vote to get a quota. There are two senate seats in Canberra and Canberra for as along as I can remember has been a Labor town (at least at the Federal level). So, Kate Lundy the Labor Senate candidate had no trouble getting into parliament. The race was to unseat Garry Humphries, the Liberal candidate. He needed to get 33.3% of the vote to give him enough of a quota to have the preferences flow to him. He just managed to get 33.9%.  So close.

So on this day after the nation voted I fell both pleased and disappointed. Winning and losing - that's life. Not such a bad thing. For Green Thumb Sunday I'll share with you our magnificent street tree - the Eucalyptus Mannifera  and our attempt to have the importance of the environment recognised. Judging by the commentary last night on the television, it seems that Nationally there will be 4 or 5 Greens in the Senate. In my view, this is a good thing for the health of Australia's democracy and for decision making into the future.

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