CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Dorothy Matilda-Mackay (70) says she’s sick of this two-party system that has directly benefited her specific generation and class of Australians since she first started voting.
Once a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal voter, Dorothy admits to secretly voting for Paul Keating in 1993 – when it looked like Labor were becoming the type of political party you could publicly claim at opera pre-drinks.
But after the rise of both Mark Latham as Labor leader and the carousel of Liberal leaders, she believes the major parties are drifting away from what they used to be.
It is not clear what Dorothy thinks the major parties used to be, unless she’s referring to a not-so-distant era of Australian polticis when the entire Federal democratic process was beholden to sectarian branch stacking and openly sexist policymaking.
But in 2025, with a climate crisis looming, and a bunch of granddaughters who are burdened by the glass ceiling of corporate chauvinism, Dorothy has decided she is white and rich enough to vote for neither party.
But she’s still going to vote.
She’s just going to vote for an Independent that espouses the same exact same politics that she likes to imagine Malcolm Turnbull would have brought to the Liberal Party if he hadn’t been knifed by that mouth-breathing Queenslander that is currently campaigning to become Prime Minister.
After upgrading her private health insurance, and insuring there’s enough in the trust for even her most unmotivated adult sons to never have to rent, Dorothy is ready to disrupt the entire political system.
With no need for Medicare upgrades, free TAFE, or power bill relief – Dorothy is joining the hundreds of thousands of post-war 5th-generation Australians who are committed to making sure the next term of Parliament has to negotiate with the biggest crossbench in the history of Federal politics.
But Dorothy says a minority government isn’t a bad thing.
“I read somewhere that Julia Gillard had the highest rate of passing legislation in any government”
“I wouldn’t have voted for Tony Abbott if I knew that was going to be the case”
“But too be honest. She was a bit radical, wasn’t she?”
