Why should I bother voting at all?

Leader of the opposition Tony Abbot helps Federal member for Kooyong Josh Frydenberg launch his election campaign from his office in Kew. Picture: News Limited Source: News Limited

Kate Midena. Picture: Supplied Source: NewsComAu

YESTERDAY, the election was called, and my heart sank.

A girlfriend messaged me about it, and my only reply was: "Argh, really?"

Although I have only been of voting age for eight years, never have I felt so disillusioned about an election. My problem? I just don't agree with many of the policies any of the political parties hold.

And even more than that? I don't particularly like any of them, either.

My conflict has been dormant for quite some time, but flared up when Labor announced their asylum-seeker policy change in July. That was the last thread tying me to the Labor Party and when it announced plans to send future asylum seekers to Papua New Guinea, they lost the only thing I felt like they had going for them.

My response to this decision was influenced by a recent holiday I took to Darwin. While there, I met a 17-year-old boy who had fled Nepal, seeking asylum in Australia. He had been held in detention for six months when I met him. He came alone. A friend he had made while in detention committed suicide weeks before. The pain on his face was heartbreaking. As I looked at his frail little figure I thought about all the other 17-year-old children I knew - the ones who are studying for their HSC, starting apprenticeships, working after-hours at Coles. At the time, I could not believe we treated anyone like that in this country, let alone a child - but little did I know that it would get worse. We would now be sending these people to one of the poorest and most dangerous countries in the world. It seems to me we'd rather pay another country to take away our "problems", rather than carry the social cost of embracing a group of broken people. Remember, that's what we're talking about here. People.

I cannot tell you how much it upsets me that yesterday, before Rudd announced the election date, he went to church. It seems Rudd uses Christianity when it's convenient, and it not only smacks of hypocrisy, but highlights a lack of personal identity. The more Rudd changes his mind on things he has previously been so vocal about, the less I trust him. If you're an avid social media user, you would have seen a picture doing the rounds which shows an excerpt from an article Rudd wrote for The Monthly in 2006. The quote reads:

"Another great challenge of our age is asylum seekers. The biblical injunction to care for the stranger in our midst is clear. The parable of the Good Samaritan is but one of many which deal with the matter of how we should respond to a vulnerable stranger in our midst. That is why the government's proposal to excise the Australian mainland from the entire Australian migration zone and to rely almost exclusively on the so-called Pacific Solution should be the cause of great ethical concern to all the Christian churches. We should never forget that the reason we have a UN convention on the protection of refugees is in large part because of the horror of the Holocaust, when the West (including Australia) turned its back on the Jewish people of Germany and the other occupied countries of Europe who sought asylum during the '30s."

How someone can backflip so much on an issue they seem to feel so strongly about as a Christian completely baffles me. But it also frightens me. If Rudd and the Labor Party can change their minds about an issue that affects the world's most vulnerable, what else will they change their minds about? The carbon tax? Disability care? The volatility of their party casts doubt on their ability to lead - I didn't agree with the ousting of Rudd in 2010, but I agreed even less with Rudd's re-entry to the leadership in June this year. People around me were saying things like 'Justice has been served!" - but since when do two wrongs make a right? And don't even get me started on the multi-million dollar "You Won't Be Settled in Australia" campaign.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and wife Terese Rein leaving St John the Baptist Anglican Church at Bulimba before announcing the September 7 election date. Picture: Mark Cranitch Source: News Limited

Heartbreakingly, the Liberal Party agrees with Labor's asylum-seeker policy. Tony Abbott's insistence that we need to 'stop the boats' is fear mongering at its worst. His campaign is designed to scare us. Little do many Australians realise that the 45,000 asylum seekers who have recently come here by boat are what other nations receive in a single day, not to mention the fact that we are one of the wealthiest and most spacious countries in the world.

In addition, the attitude of "Let's help the rich get richer" seems to be entrenched in the Liberal Party, as evidenced by their stance on public education and public health - two issues which have always been election deal-breakers for me. I strongly believe this country should be pouring its money into the areas that need it the most. Will the Liberals commit to doing that? How long will the Gonski reform last if Abbott is elected? Abbott said on Friday that he would honour Labor's funding commitments to schools for four years from election, but what happens after that? And will Abbott be able to engage with world leaders?

I can't even begin to lift the lid on Indigenous affairs. Neither major party has a strong solution to minimising the huge gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The intervention just hasn't worked, and when it was extended for another ten years in 2012, indigenous leader Djiniyini Gondarra, who represents 8000 Yolngu people of East Arnhem Land, told AAP: "For those of us living in the Northern Territory the anguish of the past five years of intervention has been almost unbearable. This legislation will be the cause of great suffering in our hearts… it will be a day of mourning for all Aboriginal peoples."

I've been to one of these intervention set-ups in the NT, which claims to be drug, alcohol and pornography-free on paper but translates in real life to third-world housing conditions, through the roof domestic violence rates and a people who are scrambling to find and keep their identity. The apology to the stolen generations in 2007 seems like the distant past when faced with the fact that for every five Indigenous kids living in NT communities now, only one will be able to read at the minimum NAPLAN standard. Where is the party committed to working with Aboriginal leaders like Dr Djiniyini, rather than ruling them?

I almost feel it's hardly worth writing about the minor parties - they have become so overshadowed by the major parties in the past few months. But I will admit that Katter's Australian Party scares me in their radicalism, and while the Greens are highly passionate, they also seem young, inexperienced and impulsive. A vote for them or any other minor party will essentially go towards supporting either Labor or Liberal, and then we're right back to where we started.

So what do I do? Who do I vote for? There seems no real point of difference between our major parties, and it leaves me at a loss. I don't want to cast an informal vote, and I want to play a part in our nation's future. But at what cost? If I lean one way, I'll be damaging people who come to this country to seek refuge; if I lean the other, I'll be putting thousands of kids in public schools and the welfare of poor Australia at risk.

I know that the election is not just up to me, but surely I'm not the only one feeling the weight of this?