Author: Catherine (Page 31 of 54)

Meet the Small Parties: The Australian Mental Health Party!

May 14, 2016 / Catherine / 2 Comments

The Australian Mental Health Party is a very new party indeed – so new, that their website hasn’t entirely caught up with the fact that they have successfully registered with the AEC (congratulations, guys, you have!).

As such, they have, at this stage, a single policy statement, rather than a larger raft of policies, and they do not yet have any candidates listed. (This is where it’s a pity I’m going to be overseas for five of the next six weeks, because this post cannot really do them justice – so if you think that a single-issue mental health party might be your cup of tea, I’d strongly encourage you to visit their website again closer to the election).

The AMHP also has a Facebook page, which is more up to date, and mostly seems to collect news about how various policies affect the mental health sector. Quite a useful resource, actually.

Meet the Small Parties: The Arts Party

May 14, 2016 / Catherine / 6 Comments

With Eurovision upon us (not to mention the grand final of the all-important Museum Dance Off), and yesterday’s news about funding cuts to the arts, the time is clearly ripe to review the policies of The Arts Party!

Their front page is pretty active right now, what with the aforementioned cuts, but their mission statement is front and centre:

The Arts Party exists to encourage a more creative, cultural, educated and prosperous life for every Australian.

I am in favour of this.

The first thing that strikes me about the Arts Party policy page is that in addition to a brief blurb about what they are about, they tell us that they have forwarded their policy ideas to all the major parties ‘in the hope they will consider new creative ideas to improving the future of Australia’. This is an approach that I have never seen before from a minor party, and I think it’s a very good idea. The Arts Party is, by and large, a single-issue party, and single-issue parties traditionally exist to raise awareness and give voters a chance to show the government what issues they would like to focus on. There is nothing wrong with this, but if a party has formulated good policies in an area they care about, wagering them all on the lottery that is our Senate voting system is not the best way to get them implemented – encouraging larger parties, with more chance of forming government, to consider adopting these policies is a pragmatic approach, and turns the party into both a party in its own right and a well-organised lobby group.

They also invite suggestions and critiques (because of course they do, they’re the Arts party).

Meet the Small Parties: VoteFlux – Upgrade Democracy

May 13, 2016 / Catherine / 7 Comments

Squeezing in a quick political post before work for a party whose distinguishing feature – and selling point – is that it has no policies! The ideological, next-generation offspring of Senator Online, VoteFlux tells us that

Flux is an exciting and new political system for the information age. Vote for policies, not false promises, and make your voice heard.

Ah, but what policies? Well, that’s really up to you.

Flux is here to redistribute political power, empower the Australian people through real political participation, and enable specialists to help repair bad policy. Flux will give Australia the framework it needs to meet the challenges of the 21st century head on.

Essentially, Flux wants to put policy back in the hands of the people – creating direct democracy via a smartphone app.

Their plan is to create an app you can access from your phone and computer, and contact you every time a bill is put before the Parliament. You get one vote per bill, and, can use the vote immediately, give it to someone else to cast on your behalf, or save it for another issue. So if you don’t have many opinions about the environment, but care passionately about funding to public schools, you can hoard all your votes from environmental legislation to use on education legislation, effectively making your voice in that area louder.

Flux is very clear that they do not have policies. They are about increasing political engagement:

Flux as a party is a vehicle for driving this systemic political change, with no policy platform beyond parliamentary reform. Flux as a system, is a tool for changing how policy is shaped. It will allow more voices to join the conversation, empower specialists to become politically involved in their fields, and grant Australians direct access to producing better policy for a better Australia.

While they do not have policies, Flux does have values:

We value people, not some people, but all people, and recognise our differences as strengths, not weaknesses.

We believe in a free and open society, characterised by freedom of speech, freedom of association, and the free flow of political ideas.

I’m trying to unpack this in a way that does not come across as patronising, because I think the two founders of Flux are intelligent, idealistic people, and these are great qualities in politicians. But they also come across as being a little unaware of how people work outside their bubble (which, I suspect, is populated with bright, idealistic people like themselves). The emphasis on freedom of speech and the free flow of political ideas are both lovely, but also a little disquieting to anyone who has spent time being female and political on the internet – or, I suspect, aboriginal anywhere, to pick just two examples. Freedom of speech and free flow of political ideas can be about giving everyone a chance to speak – but it also can make it harder to fight against people who want to use that platform for abuse, and it’s easy to underestimate the effect of some ‘free speech’ on the people it is directed at. I do think the intent here is absolutely benign, and in keeping with VoteFlux’s philosophy of increasing engagement in the political process, but I’m not sure about the outcomes. Maybe I’m just too old and cynical…

Overall, I think Voteflux is a really interesting idea, and I’m all for more participation in democracy, but I am a little dubious about how it will work in practice. It does seem open to being manipulated by special interest groups – membership of Flux is free, and Flux senators have committed to voting the will of the people as determined by their app. And I think this is likely to put any Flux senators in a very uncomfortable place sooner or later. Traditionally, conservative churches are really good at getting people out to write letters, campaign or vote on issues of their choice (much better, in fact, than most people on the left) – but the founders of Flux are evidently quite progressive. I like their principles, but they aren’t going to get to vote their principles.

I’ll be honest here – if VoteFlux gets into the Senate in Victoria – and currently, I’m not sure if they even plan to run in Victoria – I’ll sign up like a shot, because (as I’m sure you’ve noticed), I feel strongly about politics and am absolutely positive that my influence here could only be a good one (!).

But I’m not, after all, sure that I could bring myself to vote for them in the Senate. Voting for Flux means voting for the policies and ideologies of whoever in Australia manages to best organise themselves to vote, and I’m not at all sure I’d like what we’d get as a result.

Meet the Small Parties: Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party

May 12, 2016 / Catherine / 15 Comments

It’s time once again for us to consider the delightful smorgasbord of unfortunate opinions, charming idealism, delicious eccentricity, lateral thinking, and, occasionally, surprisingly good policy that is the tiny parties running for election in the Australian Senate. (And, lest that sentence really sounds far too sarcastic, I should point out that it’s rare to find a tiny party that has no good ideas at all. Even the most racist, chauvinistic and mildly unhinged parties will generally have one or two areas in which they display good sense, and sometimes even brilliance. One day, I should start a party that compiles all the weird good bits from tiny parties’ policies…)

To kick off this joyous carnival of political diversity, we have none other than Derryn Hinch, and his brand new party, Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party.

Take a moment to appreciate the name of this party.

And now, take a moment to consider the level of maturity that is displayed daily for our delectation by Members of Parliament during question time.

I think we can all agree that Derryn Hinch, with his characteristic cry of ‘Shame, shame, shame’ would be an ornament to this august body. Personally, I’d like to see him as speaker.

(Incidentally, I am delighted to note that Hinch himself is running in Victoria, which means I could actually vote for him and do my bit to make this vision to come true…)

But let us set aside, for a moment, this frivolity, and have a look at what Hinch’s party wants us to know about itself and what it represents.

It’s on!

May 8, 2016 / Catherine / 1 Comment

For anyone who missed the news, the Double Dissolution was called today, and the election will be on July 2.

The Electoral Rolls will close at 8pm on May 23rd, so if you have not already done so, please make sure you are enrolled to vote – you can check your registration here. (Yes, this is longer than the one week which is the legal minimum. Turnbull has chosen to delay issuing writs by a week, and to lengthen the time to enrol for an extra week after writs are issued. This is a good thing, but please don’t be complacent – make sure you get onto this if you have moved or have just turned 18. It doesn’t take long, but it’s important!)

Nominations will close on June 9, and ballot paper details will be issued the next day, with early voting opening on June 14. If you are travelling between June 14 and July 2, the AEC provides information here on how to vote. A number of Australian airports, and many of our consulates and embassies overseas, have overseas voting centres. This list, naturally, does not exist yet, and by the time it does, I’ll be overseas myself, so I recommend checking back on June 14. You can also apply for a postal vote here, and this will be sent to you at an address nominated by you on or after June 14. Depending on where you are located, this may or may not be practical.

From the point of view of this blog, the decision to close nominations on June 9 means that I will definitely not know who is on the ballot paper in Victoria before I leave, which is frustrating. At this stage, I plan to write up as many of the absolutely new parties as I can between now and then (once my other writing projects, and, you know, my full time job (!) allow time for this). I am probably going to prioritise those parties which appear either especially entertaining or especially enraging, because this is going to be a bit of a gruelling task and I might as well get some fun out of it! If there is anyone that you are desperate to hear about as soon as possible, let me know in the comments, and I’ll see what I can do.

Once I’m back in Australia on June 29, you may or may not be treated to jetlag-fuelled analyses of the independents on the Victorian Ballot. I’ll also link to anyone I find who is also analysing small parties – once again, if you spot anyone good, please link to them in the comments, ideally on my 2016 Election page.

And in the meantime, if you haven’t read it already, go and have a quick look at my post on the new Senate Voting rules. You’ll want to bear these in mind on July 2 (or whenever you cast your early vote)…

New Senate Voting Rules

May 7, 2016 / Catherine / 4 Comments

If your Facebook feed is anything like mine, you will have noticed a sudden and somewhat vicious outbreak of political warfare between the ALP and the Greens a month or two back. While said outbreak covered a wide variety of contentious issues, the underlying cause appears to have been the new Senate Voting rules, which were voted in by the Coalition, the Greens, and a pyjama-clad Nick Xenophon, and opposed by the ALP, Bob Day (Family First, who has attempted to take this to Court), Ricky Muir (Motoring Enthusiast), David Leyonhjelm (LDP), Jackie Lambie, Glenn Lazarus and John Madigan.

The goal of this legislation is ostensibly to get rid of Group Voting Tickets and thus make it easier for people to direct their own preferences when they vote above the line, rather than having these directed by the party, often in directions unsuspected by the average voter. Other goals attributed to the legislation include getting rid of microparties and independents, and making it easier for the government to get a majority in the Senate. Whether or not the legislation will have any of these effects remains to be seen.

I’m going to discuss the Bill in detail below, but for those who want to cut to the chase, here is how you actually vote (paraphrased from sections 239 and 269 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act).

Above the Line: You can now number your political parties and grouped independents (but not solo independents) above the line! Very exciting! Your ballot paper will ask you to number at least six parties/groups above the line in order from 1-6, but you can do more, and you probably should if you don’t want your vote to exhaust. However, since the government is aware that people don’t tend to read instructions and they don’t really want to have a huge number of informal votes, your vote will still be counted if you only put a ‘1’ in a single box above the line. This just means that if your first preference doesn’t get up, your vote is ‘exhausted’, and there are no second or third preferences to count. Voting ‘1’ only above the line will not mean that your vote then gets channelled down a list of parties determined by the party you put your vote beside – that is exactly what this Bill is meant to abolish.

However, voting above the line does still mean that the party you vote for decides which candidate gets first dibs on votes for that party, so if your party has decided to put someone loathsome at the top of their ticket, you might want to consider moving below the line. Also, you are considered to have voted for *all* the candidates for the party you put first, then *all* the candidates for the one you put second, and so forth, in the order they appear on the party’s ticket.

Below the Line: This is now a much less risky choice than it used to be, because provided you successfully manage to count to twelve below the line, your vote will be counted. Your ballot paper will ask you to number at least 12 candidates in order from 1-6, however once again, you can do more, and I would, once again, advise you to do so, so that your vote doesn’t exhaust. Below the line is still the only way to vote for ungrouped independents, alas.

Oops, I voted Above and Below the Line: You enthusiastic thing, you! Don’t worry, if only one of them is formal, they will count that. If they are both formal, your below the line vote will be counted.

Honestly, while there are things this Bill could do better, this is pretty good as far as it goes. My biggest issue with it is that a lot of votes are going to exhaust, leading to people not getting the full value of their vote if they only number 6 places above or 12 places below the line. But I am definitely in favour of making it easier to vote formally below the line, as I know the huge numbers of candidates can be offputting and overwhelming.

So what about the rest of the Bill? Continue reading

Impending election, registering to vote, and an announcement

April 25, 2016 / Catherine / 2 Comments

Well, here we are then. Malcolm Turnbull has his trigger for a double dissolution, and indications are that he is going to pull it in early May, for an election date of July 2, or, just possibly, July 9.

Before you get any further into this post, there is something you need to do. Yes, I’m being prescriptive about this, but I’m assuming that if you are here and reading this, it’s because you care about voting.

So first of all, please visit this link and make sure you are currently enrolled to vote at the right address and in the right electorate and with the right name. If you are not there, you can enrol online or through your local post office. You can also update your details online.

According to the AEC website, the electoral roll closes 7 calendar days after the writs are issued – that is, after the election is declared. If you are not enrolled at this point, you will not be able to vote, and you will also not be able to change any of your enrolment details after this point.

(I could have sworn it was three days only, but I can’t find information about this. My advice would be to get your enrolment sorted now – you lose nothing by being a little more organised, and you don’t want to risk losing your vote if I’ve got this wrong.)

Sorted?

Good.

Now for the announcement.

As you know, I usually spend the two weeks leading up to the election feverishly reading and reporting on the policies of every party on the Senate Paper (and not sleeping). That’s not going to be possible for me this year, because I’m going to be overseas for five weeks from May 24th – and I am not going to spend my hard-earned long-service leave reading and writing about politics. Sorry.

Apparently, close of nominations can be anything between 10 and 27 days after the election is called, so the earliest we could possibly know who is on the ballot paper will be May 16.

My plan is to create, as early as possible, a list of all parties who are running in this election, with links to their websites. I’ll also link to anything I’ve written about them in the past. And then I will do my level best to write about all the brand new parties and independents between now and the election. If, by some very unlikely chance, I have time, I will return to update the posts I wrote in 2014 about existing parties.

I’ll also be writing a post sometime in the next week or two about the new Senate Voting Rules, so that you know where you stand with those. (Not today, though, because I have laryngitis and my brains are made of marshmallows.)

I apologise for the reduced service this year – blame it on Malcolm Turnbull’s impatience! If he’d stuck to a proper electoral term and an election in September or October, there would not have been a problem…

Safe Schools

March 23, 2016 / Catherine / 5 Comments

There are probably other things I should be writing about right now, but I can’t stop thinking about Safe Schools, and the current business with the Government having an enquiry into it, and deciding to weaken it, and possibly even de-fund it.

This feels very personal to me, because Safe Schools is, first and foremost, an anti-bullying program, and I was bullied constantly at one of my high schools, and to a lesser degree in my first primary school. The bullying I dealt with was not physical, though in retrospect, a lot of the most unpleasant parts from high school are things I would now recognise as sexual harrassment. (I didn’t have the vocabulary at the time to know what to call it, though I hated it quite intensely.) But the schools I went to also had no idea how to deal with bullying, which made it worse.

It wasn’t that the teachers were unsympathetic (though the phrase ‘character building’ got thrown around more often than it should have been), but all that happened if you told them about it was that they would talk to the bullies, who would then know we had dobbed on them. Needless to say, this didn’t help. But I was lucky – one day our House teacher, Mr Doyle, declared that he preferred to spend his lunchbreaks in the classroom, which meant that my friends and I could, too, and suddenly we had somewhere we were safe. (At the time I was too relieved to consider his motivations; in retrospect, I think that Mr Doyle was a very kind man who gave up his right to take lunch with his colleagues in order to give a handful of teenagers some respite.) This helped enormously, but it didn’t really address the underlying issues. Years later, discussing our time at that school, my friends and I began to realise that, while we were at the bottom of the heap, just about everyone in our year was being bullied by someone – it was a completely dog eat dog culture, and nobody knew how to fix it.

Safe Schools is designed to give both students and teachers tools to deal with bullying, and in fact attempts, from the earliest stages of primary school, to address the issues that lead to bullying. This is, in my view, immeasurably important. I did OK, eventually, but other people have been far less lucky. According to Kidspot, children who are bullied are three times more likely to be depressed, and nine times more likely to consider suicide than those who are not. This is an enormous problem.

So what, exactly, is the problem with an anti-bullying program? Well, as far as I can see, the issue is that one of the sorts of bullying addressed by the program is homophobic bullying. And there are people who apparently feel that telling kids that it’s OK to be gay “actually bullies heterosexual children into submission for the gay agenda“.

The Australian Christian Lobby, Vilification, and Marriage Equality

February 16, 2016 / Catherine / 3 Comments

The Australian Christian Lobby is asking the government to suspend anti-discrimination and vilification laws in the lead-up to the plebiscite on marriage equality. They say that this these laws would mean that it was not possible or safe for the ‘no’ campaign to put their case against marriage equality.

To me, this sounds like an admission of defeat. If you can’t put your case without committing “any public act that could incite or encourage hatred, serious contempt or severe ridicule [because of someone’s] race, homosexuality or transgender status, or because they have HIV/AIDS“, then there is something seriously wrong with your case.

(For those who are curious, here is a quick guide to Australia’s anti-discrimination legislation, both Federal and state by state)

I am a Christian. I also support marriage equality. I support marriage equality in part because I am a Christian, and to me, that means I have a duty to seek justice and to stand with the oppressed. Setting aside all other considerations, our marriage laws are unjust on a purely practical level. As we saw with the sad case recently in South Australia, where a young British man died on his honeymoon and his husband was excluded by law from being named as his husband on the death certificate – and was only able to make funeral arrangements under the sufferance of his father in law – our laws do not protect gay couples at the times when they most need protection.

If I died, the law would automatically assume that my husband was my next of kin, entitled to make decisions about everything from organ donation to funeral arrangements. If I had children, my husband would not have to do a thing to be recognised as their guardian. If I didn’t have a will, he would still be my chief beneficiary. If I were sick before I died, there would be no question of him being unable to visit me.

My friends who are gay cannot take these things for granted. If their partners’ families do not approve of their relationship, they risk losing everything in an emergency, including the right to be recognised as a part of their partner’s life. Even with a registered relationship, one does not have the same rights as a straight couple would have.

This is not just, or right, or fair, and it sends a terrible message to young people who might be gay – it tells them that their relationships are second class, that the state does not recognise them as equal, and it validates the opinions of those who do not accept them.

But getting back to the Australian Christian Lobby, their argument seems to be, as I understand it, that *any* statement against marriage equality will be viewed as discriminatory, and therefore they can’t argue against it.

Look, I don’t much like the Australian Christian Lobby, but I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt for a moment. I’m going to assume that they are coming from a place of sincerity – that they really do fear that they are being persecuted, and that anything they say against marriage equality might get them jailed for vilification.

And so, if anyone from the ACL or who agrees with them is reading this, let me say, with as much kindness as possible, that I believe you are mistaken.

The times, they are a-changing

February 7, 2016 / Catherine / 0 Comments

Just a quick, happy post today, because I’m feeling more optimistic about Australia and our treatment of refugees than I have in some years. And while I suspect what I’m going to write will be not news to most of my readers, I want to put this on record, for next time I feel that there are no mainstream politicians who are willing to show compassion on this subject.

Yesterday, the Labor Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, wrote an open letter to Malcolm Turnbull offering to take in the 267 asylum seekers who the High Court has ruled can be returned to Nauru.

Annastacia Palaszczuk, the Labor Premier of Queensland, has said that Queensland is ready and able to house these asylum seekers, and she will be ringing Malcolm Turnbull tomorrow to tell him that it’s time to put politics aside and think closely about these young children.

The Labor Chief Minister for the Australian Capital Territory, Andrew Barr, was then ask by Twitter followers whether he had seen the letter from Daniel Andrews, and whether he would take the same pledge, and replied ‘Yes and Yes‘. He will release a statement tomorrow.

Jay Weatherill, the South Australian Premier, also a Labor Party member has written a letter offering South Australia as an alternative home for the 267 asylum seekers.

Thank you, State Labor Party leaders.

(I trust this is giving Bill Shorten something to think about.)

But here’s where I truly start feeling optimistic, because it’s not just Labor.

While Liberal state leaders are a little more cagey about these specific children, Mike Baird called Daniel Andrews a good man, and while he said he was more focused on resettling the Syrian refugees, he also said that if the PM had any additional requests, New South Wales was prepared to help.

And Will Hodgman, who is the Liberal Premier of Tasmania, while also avoiding the #letthemstay campaign, has said that Tasmania will welcome an increased refugee intake, and will push for this to happen as soon as possible.

Not precisely a statement of support, but both of these statements sound a lot like they are really itching for permission to offer help, so good on them…

Not a peep out of Colin Barnett (Lib, WA) or Adam Giles (Country Liberal, NT), but this is already amazing and wonderful and beyond anything I thought would happen. I love the Greens and the cross-benchers to bits, and the Greens in particular have been consistent in their efforts to keep kids off Nauru and bring some transparency to conditions there, but the reality is, we need a major party, a party that has a realistic chance of Government at the next election, to take up the cause of not torturing refugees.

In other words, Labor, this is your opportunity to win back those votes you are losing on your left flank.

Make the most of it.

As for me, I’m going to enjoy getting to write some thank you letters for a change.