Corflutes essential in this festival of democracy

They are, of course, our political hopefuls and I kind of get a little teary and sentimental seeing their faces smiling out from the plastic, all of them apparently believing in the process of democracy and wanting to play their part in it, even though many ultimately will not get within a bull's roar of the Assembly but try in any case.

And corflutes put a face to a name. They add some colour to this festival of democracy. They crowd our verges but not for long and - come on - an ACT election only happens once every four years. (And I love how the canny candidates - I'm looking at you Joy Burch and Bec Cody - get in quick and position their signs right in front of trees or poles so no yahoos can play the game of 'How many corflutes can I knock down with my car?')

It's less than a month until the October 17 election for the ACT Legislative Assembly and I think the more corflutes, the better.

They at least remind us all that an election is actually happening in our little Territory.

Because a lot of people in Canberra like to pretend they don't live here. And that the ACT election has nothing to do with them.

I mean that in the sense that they treat a federal election like the second coming and the ACT election is just a piffle, not worth a skerrick of their time. Like it's just so small cheese.

They like to live in a big-picture world and not bother with the so-called minutiae. Maybe thinking they live in Washington or something.

A very senior Defence person once told me they had sat next to Chief Minister Andrew Barr at a sporting function and had no idea who he was and sounded quite proud of themselves because of that.

Well, no, that's not great.

Not to bore you with the details, but our Assembly, of course, makes decisions about everything that is truly important in our lives.

Education, health, the environment, our open spaces, our housing, how we care for the underprivileged. Whether our rubbish gets collected or not. The old rates-roads-and-rubbish responsibilities of a local council combined with the big-ticket items of a state government. It's a lot. And it deserves respect. Doesn't mean you have to agree with every decision and who's in power. But our Assembly punches above its weight and we need to think carefully about who we vote in to make the decisions that do affect numbers at our kid's school or the quality of our hospital or whether our neighbourhoods are properly planned or not.

Radio 1RPH volunteer announcer Rod Taylor has set himself the formidable and commendable task of interviewing every one of the more than 100 candidates who had put their hand up for this election.

He was expecting to meet "self-serving narcissists and party drones" but instead was pleasantly surprised.

"I've found a group of people who care deeply about the future of Canberra and feel the best place to do that is as a member of the Legislative Assembly. Or at least, they've done a convincing job of appearing that way," he said.

So let's embrace this polling season and let the corflute stand. They can be up for only six weeks and need to be removed within 48 hours of the polls closing. C'mon people, let's live a little.

And, yes, The Simpsons corflutes getting around town are facetious and a little bit of an affront to the people letterbox-dropping and meeting punters in shopping centres. But they are, also, funny.

Just don't Vote 1 Ralph Wiggum.