A quick post on slurs and preferencing

I’m not planning on doing an ornate series of posts for this election like I was for the last election. If I have to say anything, I probably will say that my opinion on the fibre to the node is the main one in a series of issues that will possibly sway me towards preferencing the ALP over the Libs.

The election is still a couple of weeks away, though.

Ok. That out of the way, it’s worth getting in a post about hardened, rusted-on political party members. I’m not a member of a political party and because I also consider myself a swinging voter, I think that I’m way more objective than most.

I had this discussion with someone on Twitter who is honest enough to post his party membership upfront in his Twitter bio. He’s a Labor man. But I thought this was a rather interesting tweet when he posted it:

Post election post

You have to love parliamentary democracy. Even better, you have to love the comments on this article in the Herald-Sun that proves my point that I made several weeks ago about Australians: We all know bugger all about our own system.

The article itself begs some pretty powerful questions.

Firstly, how illiterate actually is the Herald-Sun's readership?

Secondly, is our system actually broken?

Keeping your member "local"

One of the downsides of not having a proper civics syllabus in our secondary schools is the fact that Australians know bugger all about their own system. This is a DISGRACE!!!

Our kids learn about civics the same as we did – bits and pieces of it are carved off and farmed out to subjects as unrelated as legal studies, economics and history. And really, it’s not good enough.

So I thought that I’d get something out there that has been bugging me ever since Julia Gillard became PM: Folks, (and I may be preaching to the converted here) we do not elect our Prime Minister.

The first I heard about this, was a few disgruntled souls voicing their opinion that Kevin Rudd’s rolling by Gillard was undemocratic as apparently, Australians elected Rudd as PM for this entire term of government.

As a reminder, again, we do not elect our prime ministers. PMs get the job by virtue of being the leader of the government, normally formed by a group of members of the House of Representatives who hold the majority of seats. When a political party, defined as a group of like-minded people campaigning under a single platform, form a majority in the House, they get to be the Government. Currently, this is the ALP. Their leader, who is elected by the party room, is the one who gets to be the PM.

Likewise, the group of members who don’t consent to join this first group get to be the Opposition. The dominant political party in this group is the Liberal Party, so their leader gets to be Opposition Leader. Funnily enough, I don’t hear a squeak from Australians about supposed democratically elected Opposition Leaders when they get rolled by their party room. Anyone remember when Malcolm Turnbull got rolled in favour of Tony Abbott? Even further back, what about then Brendan Nelson was done away with? Bueller? Bueller?

In other words, elected politicians replacing their leader is entirely democratic within the context of Australia's parliamentary system.

Adding to the noise on this, consider the following.

Julia Gillard as PM is entitled to live in the Lodge in Canberra, as well as Kirribilli House whenever she’s in Sydney. She has since said that she will not move into the Lodge (or Kirribilli for that matter) until she’s democratically elected by the Australian people as PM.

Let’s call this an election promise, because assuming that Labor wins and Gillard sticks to her word, she obviously may not move into the Lodge.

The media also likes to call this a battle between Gillard and Abbott, or as they like to call them, “Julia and Tony”.

(As an aside, I don’t think that a single news outlet in the States would ever, in a million years, have referred to the last presidential battle as being between “Barack and John”)

The simple fact is that punters are ill-educated in this country and they think that this is between two prime ministerial candidates. The best thing that the media can do is be a little more responsible about the news that they put out there.

In reality, as far as the lower house goes, the only electing that you do, is for your local member.

I live in a safe Labor seat and my local member is Jenny Macklin. If I were to vote for Macklin in this next election, I would be voting for Macklin and no one else. Certainly not Gillard, even though her policies would affect my decision making in this regard. I’m not even voting for Macklin in her role as Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, just for her primary role as the Member for Jagajaga.

So again, you vote for your local member. Obviously, this means that it does pay to know a little about the candidates. Nominations don’t close until the 29th of July, so at this stage, I only know for certain that Macklin will be running but even then, it’s possible that there may be a pre-selection battle in the local branch of the ALP that I don’t know about.

Your local member. What does this mean?

Your local member should represent your community. Oh sure, there are many Australians who just see a vote for their local member as a vote for who you think should be prime minister, but those people need to frigging well wake up to themselves and consider who is going to best represent them, because that’s who they’re voting for.

With that in mind, I thought I’d compose a letter to my local MP and ask her what she’s done for Jagajaga during the past electoral term. I may have potentially missed something, but I simply don’t know and I suspect that I’m not too different to a lot of Australians in this regard:

The Hon. Jenny Macklin, MHR
Member for Jagajaga
149 Burgundy Street
PO Box 316
Heidelberg VIC 3084

Dear Jenny,

I do hope that you don’t mind me addressing you as “Jenny” in this letter and not the usual “Minister” as your position befits. I am writing to you as my local member of parliament and not to you in your capacity as a minister of the Crown.

As I’m sure you would be aware, there is an election coming up and I am of the understanding that you will be re-nominating as a candidate for Jagajaga, if you haven’t done so already.

So that I can vote properly and not roll a dice or blindly follow a how-to-vote card like so many Australians do, I thought I’d ask the question: Is it possible for you to send me a summary of what your achievements have been in the last electoral term?

Please note – I am not looking for your achievements in your role as the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, nor am I looking for achievements that the Rudd and Gillard governments have managed. I am simply looking for what it is that you’ve done to benefit the people of Jagajaga specifically during the current term and nothing more.

This list of achievements doesn’t need to be limited to stuff related to your parliamentary duties. For example I note that the Member for Warringah is a member of a surf lifesaving club in his electorate and although he doesn’t get rostered on terribly often, he has a record of turning up to do his shifts. So community stuff would be a pretty nice thing to have written in this list as well.

Although the election is still a little while away, please be assured that I will consider every syllable of your response when I get to the polling booth in August.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Yours sincerely,

Dikkii.

It would be really good if we all did the same thing with all our local members.

Save the Net

The Get Up! group has launched their campaign against mandatory internet censorship. It's worth getting behind.

For those who don't know, the federal Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy is proposing internet censorship at ISP level. In my opinion, the moves being planned are an INTERNATIONAL DISGRACE!!!

From Wikipedia:

In October 2008, Senator Conroy announced that filtering of illegal material would be mandatory for all Australians, and there would be no opt-out provision.

Wikipedia refers to this article to cite this.

From Get Up!'s website:

The Federal Government is planning to force all Australian servers to filter internet traffic and block any material the Government deems ‘inappropriate’. Under the plan, the Government can add any ‘unwanted’ site to a secret blacklist.

Testing has already begun on systems that will slow our internet by up to 87%, make it more expensive, miss the vast majority of inappropriate content and accidentally block up to 1 in 12 legitimate sites. Our children deserve better protection - and that won't be achieved by wasting millions on this deeply flawed system.

(Their emphasis)

Regular reader Paul has already pointed out on his blog that anything that gets introduced can be gotten around. And it looks relatively simple too - any 12 year old kid can do it.

The thing is, why should the rest of us carry the can for parents who are too irresponsible to supervise their kids on the internet? Or install their own net nanny programs?

I actually think that we probably need to consider something far more serious than just joining an internet petition. I for one will be sending a snail mail letter to my local MHR, Jenny Macklin, who also happens to be the federal Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.

But I'd like to go one step further.

Conroy's faction within the ALP is the Transport Workers Union. This is their website. And this is their email address: twu@twu.com.au .

Let's go berzerk and bombard them with complaints. After all, Conroy responds to a higher power, and it's them. He will do their bidding.

(Thanks to Sean the Blogonaut)

Tweedledum and Tweedledumber

It's election time again in the State of Victoria, this Saturday. Which means that we have to vote again.

And may I just say that it is heating up.

Now it has, believe it or not, been many years since I voted informally. I have voted properly in at least the last two state elections.

And each time, I went for the little parties - the Greens and the Democrats before my preferences found their way down the ballot paper, first to the ALP, (in most instances) and then the Liberals.

This time around, the politicking has been brutal.

And I for one want to vote informally again.

Allow me to demonstrate my predicament:

1. The Democrats are dead. Doornail dead. So preferencing these guys early on is not so much of a big issue. And the best part about this is that it doesn't matter where you vote, because they are equally dead everywhere. So I'll put them up the list, because I still think that if they got their house in order, they'd be a force again one day.

Ain't gunna be this election, though. And that's the easy one.

2. Prefencing higher up in my vote for a local member of the Legislative Assembly (lower house) is likely to be the Greens again. But this is going to be even more interesting now that the Legislative Council (upper house) is a vote by proportional representation. This time there is a real good chance that the Greens will end up with the balance of power. And I hope that they do.

3. Following on from that is a plug to my good buddy Gurm Sekhon who is running for the seat of Richmond in the lower house. As a Greens candidate. And he stands a damn good chance of geting this, however...

4. In some seats, the ALP and the Libs have done a preference deal. WITH EACH OTHER!!!! How can it be allowed that the two major political parties can freeze out the minor parties like this? It is an outrage.

I'm actually quite disgusted at this act of bastardry. Gurm stands to be humiliated at the ballot box because the major parties fear the Greens in Richmond.

And unfortunately that leads to this...

5. It is more than likely that my preferences on my ballot sheet (cause I live in a pretty safe Labor seat) will trickle down to the majors, no matter how I number the boxes. So I have to think about in which order I'm going to put my lower preferences.

6. It goes without say that Family First, the CEC and the other crazy nutjobs will get my lowest preferences.

So the question is, in what order do I number the boxes next to the Labor and Liberal candidates?

The problem that I have in this particular instance is that I haven't been greatly impressed by the quality of either side. On Liberal's side, there has been references to all sorts of things that happened under the current Bracks government. Some of these have been criticism from the Auditor-General's office. This is particularly hypocritical given that the previous Liberal government under Jeff Kennett sought to close the Auditor-General's office down and replace them via public tender.

Labor aimed a particularly well-aimed shot across the bow of Ted Baillieu as a former director of real estate company Baillieu Knight Frank (now Knight Frank Australia). During his time with Knight Frank, the Kennett government unfortunately used this company as the agent for the sale of land that used to house schools. Which means that Baillieu is an easy target. The one thing that bugs me about Labor's approach in this election is their willingness to attack Baillieu personally at every turn.

And that has me wanting to number Liberal ahead of Labor this election.

It is simply wrong, wrong, wrong to play the wealth card in the quite nasty way that Labor have been doing. Labor ads have played up public information about Ted Baillieu's investments in such a nasty way.

And they do not have clean hands themselves. Labor ministers such as Justin Madden and Mary Delahunty have populated their register of interests with such transparent and honest descriptions such as "Madden Family Super Fund" instead of actually writing the names of the investments themselves.

Baillieu, on the other hand has paid the price for neatly populating his form with all the companies he owns shares in (which is quite a lot).

Conflicts of interest?

Well this won't be sorted out until someone passes a law that forces members to place their investments under administration by a neutral third party in a blind trust as soon as they're elected to parliament.

But I can tell you this much - until Madden, Delahunty and anyone else on Labor's side portray their financial affairs with the same kind of scrupulous openness that Baillieu has, they are in absolutely no position to point the finger.

Until then, this sordid stuff stinks. Just imagine if you had to defend your personal investments when applying for a job.

Thank God for minor parties. (The ones that don't suck, anyway)

This blogger declares an interest of sorts - he will be handing out How-To-Vote cards in the electorate of Richmond where he will be helping Greens candidate Gurm Sekhon get elected to State Parliament this weekend. Even if you plan to vote for one of the major parties, put the Greens First on your ballot paper. What's the worst thing that can happen - one gets elected? More power to democracy, I say.