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.
