Opinion: Australia votes and then life goes on

For the past week, they’ve been handing out How to Vote cards, and willing their candidate over the line.

Anne is a “rusted on” Labor supporter, Len’s a hardened Nationals man, and Janette says Farrer needs a change and donned the orange for an Independent.

With none of the violent clashes and polarised extremism evident in so many other countries, they happily chatted together, even handing out each other’s brochures when nature called, or a coffee was needed.

According to Len, 99.5 per cent of those who voted early were “really lovely people”; the other half a per cent were… well, we won’t say what he thought of those.

Our new cadet journalist, Adam chatted with quite a few early voters last week and said 11 out of 12 people he’d spoken to said they were voting because they had to.

It doesn’t say a lot for the average person’s level of engagement with the political process.

But then, according to our campaign workers, the most common theme they’d heard was how boring this campaign had been.

I thought it was just me, but apparently I’m not alone.

Maybe the relatively short campaign got lost in amongst Easter, Anzac Day and two long weekends in a row.

Maybe Albo and Dutton aren’t that charismatic.

Or maybe the campaign has been overshadowed by far more interesting global affairs.

Maybe, come Saturday night, things will get a bit more interesting.

For the first time, Gen Z and Millennials will outnumber Baby Boomers at the polling booth.

Young voters tend to lean left but they are also more politically disillusioned and less committed to the major parties.

Unlike many other countries, voting is compulsory in Australia so by Saturday everyone will have had their say.

Schools will have had their coffers topped up after the Big BBQ, and we can all go back to doing what we were doing.

Because in the lucky country, regardless of who wins, and despite what the campaigners would have us believe, not a lot will change on Monday.