Dear undecided voter,

I am tired of reading about you in my newspapers and seeing endless vox pops with you on my television. I am tired of every politician in the country courting you and I am very tired of your terribly small but terribly crucial numbers. I am tired of listening to your ill-informed views, yes, ill-informed. There, I said it. Your views are ignorant. Everyone is trying to be nice to you in the hope that they win you over, but the truth is they are all tired of you too. I am tired of listening to you say how you’re a swinging voter when so often it seems you aren’t one at all. You just wanted the opportunity to suggest you’d vote for the other side so you can say how much you hate them.

I am tired of you saying you want more leadership from the major parties and what little leadership each of them has offered you have clearly been ignoring. You seem to know almost nothing of the policy debate that has happened during the election campaign and instead speak in slogans borrowed from negative advertising campaigns. I am tired of you believing in nonsense. I am tired of being patient with you about your anxiety about the goddamn boats. The boats are not a problem. Get a grip, read some facts. Kevin Rudd is also not a problem, people get pushed out from top level jobs all the time, it happens. You, undecided voter, hated him most of all. It wouldn’t matter if Tony Abbott knows the price of a litre of milk or not, I don’t and I’m a bloody mother on a budget.

I am tired of your ‘what’s in it for me?’ entitlement mentality combined with your jaded complaints about politicians lacking vision. Undecided voter, you are a big part of the reason why neither side of politics shows much leadership. Because if only, undecided voter, you were undecided for an actual reason. If only you were genuinely caught between a generous parental leave scheme and better ongoing support for childcare – that kind of conundrum we could understand. If only you were deliberating between a concern for the environment and your ability to make a profit from your farm. But instead you think in contradictions, saying things like Labor spends too much money and anyway, I want to vote for the Coalition so we get a bigger parental leave scheme. You think the Labor Party and the Liberal Party are influenced by internal interest groups but that the Greens and Family First are not. Just how is any political party expected to make sense of this? No wonder they are frozen in policy inaction.

And then after all that? When we finally come to the end of an election campaign with five weeks of your um-ing and ah-ing, what do you announce about your voting intentions? You declare that you’re voting for Labor to keep the interest rates down, or that you are voting for the Coalition because the cost of living is too high. (I am tired of you falling for bullshit). Or worse, that you are voting for Julia Gillard because you can’t quite put your finger on it but somehow she seems to want it more. Or for Tony Abbott because his voice annoys you less. Oh, undecided voter! I am so tired of you.