It seems as though I will have guests in my city shortly. In a few hours time, my parents will have arrived in Canberra following a route taking them from Ottawa to Vancouver to Sydney and finally to Canberra. There are no stops in between in that they will not be spending more than a few hours in any airport before heading off. I can only imagine how tired they will be. The plan is to show them around the city and then we're all off to Sydney for the weekend. I wish Canberra's weather would be a little more hospitable, but it looks like it will be 15C with rain. I guess cold temperature follow Canadians.
The ACT, and most of Australia, switched to daylight savings on Saturday the 11th, unlike North America which does it on a Sunday in November, for the time being. I can see how it may be useful but I don't see how you can save any energy from it. We also find ourselves in the unusual position of having more daylight savings days than normal days. It seems like a colossal waste of time.
It was also Labour Day a few Mondays ago. Here, Labour Day is the first Monday in October but it doesn't really signify anything like the beginning of the school year, like in Ontario. I think it's just another day off, sort of like Colonel By Day (Civic Holiday) in Ottawa. Still, it's good to have a day off.
Politically, there's just been an election in the ACT with the Green Party holding the balance of power. The ACT is divided up into 3 constituencies each electing multiple members based on the proportion of votes each candidate receives. Currently, there are 17 seats in the ACT Territorial Legislature with the Labor Party taking 7, the Liberal Party taking 7 and the Green Party taking 3. It will be interesting to see what kind of horse-trading will go on to see who forms the government.
I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd elucidate the differences between the Australian and Canadian voting systems. First of all, in Australia there is compulsory voting and registration, meaning fines can be, and are, imposed on those citizens who do not vote. Secondly, in some jurisdictions, there is a system of proportional representation unlike Canada's first-past-the-post system. And thirdly, most Australian jurisdictions practice something called a preferential voting system. That means that when you vote, you rank candidates from 1-whatever (1 being most preferred) and then the votes are tallied until someone gets a majority of preferences. For example, if after counting all of the 1st preference votes no one candidate has 50%+1 votes, then begins a tally of the 2nd preference votes, and so on until someone has achieved a majority. It's an intriguing system that as far as I know, is uniquely Australian or if not, at least Australian originally.
That's really all there is to say other than be sure to read all of my New Zealand posts. I've got some great pictures up and maybe it'll give you some ideas of where to go.
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