Safe Seat Blues

My fifth election song, performed on ABC Local Radio Brisbane on 22 November 2007, two days before the 2007 federal election.

I go to buy my groceries; I can’t afford them anymore

The hospital is full of patients sleeping on the floor

I can’t afford to buy petrol to drive down a potholed street

I think I know what my problem is – I’m living in a safe seat

I got the safe seat blues; same party in power since 1923

And there ain’t no politicians give a damn about me

Ian Macfarlane’s got 19 percent, he’s in Toowoomba most of the week

but if you ever want to plant a tree, he’ll make you listen to him speak

And in the seat of Griffith, you can ask for anything you like

but if Rudd’s living in the Lodge, you won’t even get a free bike

Way down in Bennelong, they don’t know what to do

but for anything they do get, they thank Maxine McKew

Out there in the marginals, they spend an arm and a leg

You’d get less pork barrelling if you locked a pig in a keg

And when I have a problem, I give my local member a ring

but you don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing

In the city of Newcastle, they like to have their fun

but they had to have an earthquake before anything got done

And on the sunny Gold Coast, there’s no point in having elections

but they have to clean the blood off the walls after pre-selections

I know I live in a democracy and I know I got the right to choose

but if too many of my brothers and sisters vote the same way as me,

I got the Safe Seat Blues.