Last Saturday Australia elected a new government. Pollsters, punters, journalists and others were not surprised by the result. Most of them wondered only about the magnitude of a Coalition win in the House of Representatives and whether or not the composition of the new Senate could make life for the new government easier or harder, depending on who wins control.

In the 2013 election campaign most of the media-led public discussion was about the magnitude of the expected defeat of the Labor government and less about the real issues of the election. Namely, the present and future policy directions of the country under a Coalition or under a Labor government. In this respect, the Australian media in the last election campaign failed the people miserably.

We were almost led to believe during the last five weeks that the election was over, and that it was the polls and not the ballot box and the voters who elect governments.

Regardless of the final outcome, it was up to the 14.7 million Australian voters to decide last Saturday who were going to govern this country for the next 3 years. Last week we were all called to exercise a right that was not granted by benevolent masters, but that was obtained through the struggles, blood, sweat and tears of countless people all over the globe, relatively recently in human history.

Up until the late 19th century only people (males) with property or other caste and class privileges had the power to determine the fortunes of the lives of the entire planet. Up until the early 20th century only men had the right to vote.

It is worth mentioning that the short-lived Corsican Republic (1755–1769) was the first ‘country’ to grant limited universal voting rights for all inhabitants over the age of 25. This was followed by the Paris Commune of 1871 and the short lived tiny south Pacific island republic of Franceville in 1889. In 1893, New Zealand became the first major nation to achieve universal suffrage.

In Australia, a pioneering country when it comes to political and working rights, South Australia, the only colony without a ‘convict history’, was the first colony to introduce universal male suffrage for its Assembly in 1856. Women obtained voting rights in South Australia in 1895.

When the Commonwealth of Australia was formed in 1901, the Franchise Act of 1902, of the first Commonwealth Parliament, granted the right to vote to men and women who were British subjects and who were 21 years or older. This franchise applied to both houses of federal parliament and was free of property qualification.

Aboriginal Australia had to wait until 1965, in order to gain the same voting rights throughout the land, when Queensland followed the other states and permitted Indigenous people to vote in state elections.

The compulsory right to elect our own government, a right taken for granted or not exercised by 1.2 million Australians who did not enrol to vote, or by hundreds of thousands of others who did not bother to vote, was not granted, it was obtained through struggle by numerous people.

It was this right that we were called to exercise last week. Last Saturday, it was 70% of the Australian people who casted a valid vote and not the pollsters or the media who were called to shape the future of the country for the next three years. The right to vote, to decide and to surprise must be retained by the people, it must not be handed over to professionals such as journalists, pollsters, politicians and vested interests.

Australians of Greek or of migrant background, Australians who come from oppressive lands and who have experienced political persecution, violence and threats as a result of election campaigns and confrontations might value, perhaps, the electoral process better than others. This tacit knowledge though, this right was recognised by all Australian citizens who thought long and hard before they casted their vote.