Election 7 September

We have an election in Australia this Saturday. And our two major political parties are in a race to be the most cruel towards the most marginalised people in the world - those fleeing for their lives and seeking asylum. Labor took the lead by not allowing any legitimate asylum seekers arriving by boat to settle in Australia, and now the Coalition have raised the stakes by not giving asylum seekers access to legal aid!

I have enough trouble navigating our legal system and I studied a law degree. How the hell a non-English speaking person from another country is meant to represent themselves is beyond me. And making them do this in a life or death situation is beyond cruel.

When we sing our National Anthem we sing: "For those who've come across the seas we've boundless plains to share." What's happening to our society for us to change our values so dramatically? What sort of society do we want to live in? Our political leaders should be leading, not attempting to tap into the xenophobic undercurrents in Australian society.

As an entrepreneur, in theory the last party I should be voting for is The Greens. I've not voted for them before but I can't be a part of this cruel shift in values in our society, so based on both refugee and climate policy The Greens now have my vote in this election.

I'm still undecided on who I preference. Both major parties have good NBN policies, however neither of them have come out with a strong Computer Science eduction policy which I think is the most critical factor in developing a strong Startup Ecosystem in Australia. With only 4,500 Australian graduating with computer science degrees each year who is actually going to build applications and services that use the NBN? So I can't really distinguish between the two major parties to decide on who to preference. They've both dedicated so much time to issues like asylum seekers which should have a compassionate, thought out, logical, bipartisan approach, that they've ignored critical issues like eduction.

So I'm voting for The Greens this election. No policy of the major parties is enough to get my vote at the expense of such a deplorable change in our values.