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We are wrong to assume our involvement in the political process ends with the casting of votes. If the experience of a fetid election campaign, of leadership abdicated and of a hung parliament leads us to offer more modest local forms of participation and leadership, all Australians will gain.
It would be easy to cast a donkey vote or a vote for a minor party and to thus wash your hands of the responsibility for our governance for the next three or so years. In a representative democracy, a vacuous election represents a lazy polity.
Ngunnawal Elder Aunty Janet Phillips says that for Aboriginal Australians there's no 'justice'; 'just us'. How can we turn this election into a building block for a more equal society? The answer involves weighing up the known policies and track-record of both sides to assess their impact on the growth of inequality.
The public sphere is often spoken of as debate, conversation, market place, or theatre. The dominant image this election campaign suggests have been of monologue and static. There is not much point in a public space if you can't hear yourself think there.
This election campaign has been reminiscent of the Italian hunting season, where it becomes dangerous to go out of doors when so many guns are pointed into the air. Elections are like the shooting season. High fliers are safe. Low fliers are not.
This election we consider a PM who is doubted because of her atheism, an Opposition Leader who is doubted for being too 'Catholic', and the Greens who are doubted as being anti-Christian. Church social agencies have been involved in important issues with each of these groups.
Tony Abbott is wrong to suggest that B. A. Santamaria made Australian Catholicism 'more intellectual'. Santamaria embraced a form of doctrinaire conformism that is the death of thoughtful commitment. It would be worrying if this kind of integralist Catholicism infected contemporary public life.
Broadband policy is the only major point of difference between Labor and the Coalition in the lead up to this Saturday's federal election. The minimalist approach mooted by the Coalition fails to appreciate fast broadband's nation-building potential.
In an election campaign characterised by the avoidance of commitment to any principle that might cost votes, the Bishops' advice avoided bagging particular political parties and enunciated broad humane criteria to guide voters. It could have offered more.
In Sunday's Liberal campaign launch, Tony Abbott repeated the phrase 'big new tax' five times. Through taxes, we invest in a civilised society that would provide for us in times of need. Taxes are therefore not a necessary evil. They are a necessary good.
'This election', says Tony Abbott, 'is about you.' Recently, passengers on a Perth bus found themselves involved in an impromptu social experiment. 'This guy has no money and tried to give me a ticket that's two days old,' the bus driver said, 'What do you reckon? Should I let him on?'
Gillard was photographed looking up to Cardinal George Pell with an admiring glance, and attended a fundraiser for expenses associated with October's Mary MacKillop canonisation in Rome. She offered $1.5 million in government money, but much more than that in flattery to Catholic electors.
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