Category: politics (Page 9 of 42)

Victorian State Election Wrap Up: Who’s Who in the Legislative Council

March 27, 2019 / Catherine / 0 Comments

So I got absolutely knocked flat by Christmas last year, with 18 singing engagements in December, in addition to my actual full-time job (which was being particularly trying), and I never did get around to see what Santa had brought us for the Legislative Council.

And then I got knocked flat again by grant applications and helping with Midsumma and getting to know my new Division, so I got halfway through writing this and then ran out of time.

But it’s never too late to amend matters, and besides, it looks like at least one person has crossed the floor since the election already, so maybe waiting to see who was really there was the wisest option…

… So I wrote the above in February, along with about half of the profiles below, and then I got totally overwhelmed with running an event at work, and I’m never going to finish this dratted thing and I really need to start working on the Federal Election, since there are more than fifty parties registered already, and I’m about to be flattened by grants again. So I’m going to put this to bed, even if I have to make my analyses much shorter than I wanted them to be.

The Legislative Assembly

We are only going to take a quick peek at this, since we already knew roughly what was going on here – namely, a walkover for the ALP. But there are a couple of things worth noting.

It turns out it wasn’t the End of All Things for the Greens after all. I really should stop believing the press when they say this, since they do so after every single election. They didn’t manage to keep Northcote, but they did, finally, get Brunswick, and they held on to Melbourne and Prahran. So basically, they broke even in the Lower House. It may not have been the result they wanted, but it was better than they had feared.
We gained a new Independent in the Lower House, joining the two who were there already (Suzanna Sheed in Shepparton, and Russell Northe in Morwell, who was a member of the National Party until August 2017). Ali Cupper, a young, female, left-leaning Independent won the seat of Mildura from the Peter Crisp, the National Party incumbent.
Labor won 55 of the 88 seats, the Liberals won 21, and the Nationals 6. Essentially, Labor doesn’t need anyone in the Lower House. The Upper House, however is a different story.

The Legislative Council

Oh, lordy, what a mess. So, there are 40 seats in the Legislative Council, and alert readers will be aware that after the last election, Labor held 14 of them, the Coalition held 16, the Greens held 5, the Shooters and Fishers held 2, and the Sex Party, the DLP, and Vote 1 Local Jobs held one each. Then the DLP senator resigned and became an Independent, but basically, Labor needed to get the Greens and Fiona Patten on side to have 50% of the vote, and then had to convince one of the tiny parties to support them in order to get a majority.

After the 2018 election, Labor now has 18 of the 40 seats in the Legislative Council, which means they only need three more votes to pass legislation. This should theoretically be easier, except for the fact that they don’t really have any blocs that they can negotiate with, because we now have 11 Coalition Senators, 2 Liberal Democrat Senators, 2 Senators from Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party, a third Senator, Catherine Cumming, who ran as a Hinch Senator, but quit the party to become an independent, and then one senator each from Sustainable Australia, the Animal Justice Party, Transport Matters, Fiona Patten’s Reason Party, the Greens, and the Shooters and Fishers.

So once again, Labor needs to get the Green (Samantha Ratnam) and Fiona Patten on side, and then convince one of the tiny parties to support them to get a majority. I suspect that this is good news for those of us who enjoyed the previous Andrews Government, since neither the Greens nor Patten have changed their priorities much, they did both vote with the Government on most legislation in the last government, and they do still look like the easiest parties for Andrews and co to negotiate with for the kind of legislation Andrews likes to put through. (Also… I’m a bit excited here, because Patten and Ratnam are located in Northern Metropolitan. Is it too much to hope that they might be able to squeeze some better infrastructure for us northsiders out of the deal? I mean, we know Andrews likes infrastructure, how hard can it be…?)

But let’s look at this a bit more closely anyway. First, the Coalition. With only eleven votes, they really have to get all but one of the non-Labor Senators on side to block legislation, and I don’t think they are going to be able to do that unless Andrews goes completely off the rails. Their natural allies are the Liberal Democrats and the Shooters and Fishers, and possibly Transport Matters, who really seemed to *hate* Daniel Andrews on a personal level. Hinch’s Justice Party, while left-leaning, might be susceptible to a tough-on-crime approach, but I don’t like their chances with the other parties. If anything, Animal Justice are likely to view Labor Party legislation as not going far enough to the left, and we already know that the Greens and Patten’s Reason Party are unlikely to vote with the Coalition.

Having dealt with the Coalition, let’s have a closer look at some of the votes the Labor Party might be wooing.

Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party

We have two Senators here, Stuart Grimley and Tania Maxwell.

Stuart Grimley is a former school principal and police detective, who has worked as a teacher in remote Aboriginal communities, and as a police officer has worked with victims of abuse and sexual offenses. He is deeply concerned about the rights of crime victims, and wants tougher sentencing and a better support system for victims of crime, particularly those dealing with the justice system, who are often forced to relive the trauma of the event in court. He is in favour of a register for child sex offenders, but this shouldn’t include teenagers sexting each other.

Tania Maxwell is a youth support worker and an anti-violence campaigner, and co-founder of the Enough is Enough campaign. She is passionate about community safety and early intervention, and wants bail and parole reform, but also to find ways to manage our youth justice system more effectively to reduce reoffending.

Both of these senators seem, frankly, to be quite lovely people. They seem likely to be supportive of any legislation around better ways to prevent domestic violence, but are also likely to be swayed by ‘tough on crime’ rhetoric from the Coalition. Still, Andrews is not without hope here.

Shooters, Fishers and Farmers

Note: I wrote this bit before the Christchurch shootings. I have to say, my sympathy for the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers has dried up a bit since then. But if I go back and re-write this, I will never, ever get this posted.

Jeff Bourman is a former police officer and IT contractor who grew up in the country, shooting rabbits and foxes. He’s really into recreational shooting – which, you know, that is what the party says it is for, and while I completely disagree with basically everything on his page, you can’t fault his transparency. He feels strongly that law-abiding gun afficionados are being unfairly attacked and punished for the crimes of others. His Facebook page suggests that he wants tougher policing, but less of a nanny state when it comes to speed limits. He is concerned about farmers and bushfires, and against vegan extremists. (I’m not quite sure how broadly he is defining the latter, to be honest – he shares a lot of articles about vegans kidnapping livestock and sabotaging farms, which I’d agree is quite extreme, but he also seems to have left the chamber for the AJP senator’s opening speech, which is a little petty, and perhaps a missed opportunity.)

I reckon he will vote with the government on legislation involving better infrastructure for regional Victoria, but other than that, I don’t like their chances of getting him on board.

Sustainable Australia

Clifford Hayes has a background in film and television (including editing Mad Max), but got into local council politics in 2005, with the goal of opposing high rise developments. He feels that population growth is the biggest environmental issue Australia faces, and one can’t address global warming without it. And he has a point, but reducing immigration by 50% doesn’t actually fix that, because it doesn’t reduce the number of people in the world, just in Australia. It’s hard to say where he might vote with the Andrews government, but he might be good news for people wanting legislation that gives councils more power to stop developers…

Transport Matters

Rodney Barton is the President of the Commercial Passenger Vehicle Association of Australia, which sounds a lot like a lobby group for the taxi and hire car industry, and operates a chauffeur hire car business. He is very angry about the deregulation of the taxi industry, which evidently caused him personal harm, and he wants to hold the government accountable.

Barton is a big believer in public transport, which he feels is the only solution for easing congestion – but Andrews shouldn’t count on his support there, because his Twitter Account also suggests that he thinks Labor is doing a rubbish job of running our trains. (Which… were privatised by a Liberal government, so I’m not entirely sure the government can be said to be running them.) Other than his personal animus against Andrews, his Twitter account indicates fairly left-wing leanings, particularly in the area of industrial relations, and one of his concerns about Uber is that the gig economy treats people poorly. So… my feeling is that Andrews might be able to win him over on some legislation, but only if he does something about airport parking first.

(Whether the train line to the airport will soften him is an interesting question.)

Independent Catherine Cumming

Catherine Cumming ran and was elected as a member of Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party, but was disendorsed by the party after losing a leadership vote, and is now sitting as an independent. (Interestingly, her website says that she ran as an Independent). She is an acupuncturist and a former medic in the Army Reserve, and she feels that the West of Melbourne has been neglected, which is true. Her policies look reasonably centrist – she wants to lower taxes, but she also wants more funding for education. She wants tougher laws for drug dealers, but a medical model for addicts. She wants more jobs, more infrastructure, and a better health system. And she is in favour of renewable energy. Her priorities are reasonably well-aligned with those of the Andrews government, and if Andrews is willing to give a bit more infrastructure to the Western suburbs, he might have a pretty reliable vote here.

Liberal Democrats

Ugh, I can’t believe the LDP got two members into the legislative council. OK, one thing I’ll say for them is that on their Facebook pages each week, they are telling you what they have done and how they voted, so you don’t have to rely on my (negative) opinion to know what they are up to. You can form your own negative opinions all by yourselves! It’s probably unfair to note that the week before Christchurch they voted against reclassification of lever action shotguns and against ‘a new offense of “intimidation” which would require no intent or anyone actually feeling intimidated’. I very much doubt that this is what the legislation actually said. They are, however, very much against collection of DNA without a warrant, so I’ll give them credit for that.

David Limbrick seems to have decriminalisation of drugs as a priority, so that’s a step in the right direction. But in the wake of Christchurch he felt the need to post on Facebook about how he rejects identity politics and is ‘saddened by the recent rise of authoritarians on both the left and right’, which is a form of both-sides-ism that I find unpleasant in the current climate. He is weird on renewables – he’s very into nuclear energy, but against wind turbines and wants to raise questions about toxic e-waste from solar panels (implying at the same time that expanding access to solar panels is a bad idea), and he thinks the Greens are the enemy when it comes to renewable energy.

Tim Quilty just posted about the LDP alternative budget, which is mostly about cutting taxes by reducing spending on health and education, but also about abolishing commonwealth assistance for renewable energy, the arts, etc. I’ve talked about LDP budgets and dog-eat-dog libertarianism before, you don’t need to hear me do it again. Also from last week: “What does Australia have in common with North Korea, Yemen, Syria, Honduras and Turkmenistan… banned Airsoft.” Airsoft, for those of you who didn’t know, is a competitive team shooting sport where people shoot their opponents with plastic projectiles launched by airguns. So that’s his priority, less than a week after the Christchurch shootings.

Look, I’m very much in favour of gun control, and the LDP annoys me at the best of times, so maybe I’m not being fair here, but as a matter of good taste one might wait just a few weeks after the biggest gun massacre our region of the world has ever experienced before going on about how we need to make it easier for people to play with guns that might technically be toys but can still injure people?

Anyway, I can’t see this lot voting with the Andrews government on anything except possibly legalising medical marijuana. And that’s OK, because why would anyone want to be beholden to them?

Animal Justice Party

Andy Meddick was elected by the Western Victorian region, which is interesting – I would have thought the AJP vote would be stronger in more urban areas, where there are fewer farmers to become exasperated by their views on dairy farming. His background is in the construction industry, and he is pro-union. Looking at his page on the AJP site, he seems to be campaigning on the less contentious of their policies (live exports, factory farming, puppy factories), and also on social issues such as refugees, single-parent benefits, etc. In fact, judging by his Facebook page, he’s looking pretty close to the Greens on a lot of issues. If Andrews needs more backing for renewable energy projects, Meddick’s vote should be pretty safe. Roads that potentially go through wildlife corridors will be more of a problem.

Overall? It looks to me as though Daniel Andrews will not have much more trouble getting his legislation through this Legislative Council than he did through the previous one, though he might have to pay a little more attention to the Northern and Western suburbs to do so. From my point of view, that’s a pretty good outcome. We’ll see how it goes.

Scott Morrison and the racist in the dark alley

March 18, 2019 / Catherine / 2 Comments

So here’s something I’ve been thinking.

Scott Morrison has been saying all the right things in the last few days, both about the terrorist attack in Christchurch and about Anning’s disgusting remarks. He is clearly trying to distance himself from the overt racism of the far right. And this is heartening, as far as it goes. Frankly, if ScoMo has decided that trying to be unifying and bring Australians together is a better election strategy than racism and divisiveness, then I’m all for it. Words matter, and I’m in favour of anything that keeps our multicultural society safer.

Hell, perhaps this is ScoMo’s ‘come to Jesus’ moment – the moment when he sees where the kind of rhetoric he has been permitting leads, and decides to change. Even if it isn’t, I believe that he is quite sincere in his horror and revulsion at this event.

But here’s the thing.

This entire conversation is reminding me of the sorts of conversations we have after a woman is attacked and murdered when walking home at night, or by day, or wherever, by the stranger who comes from nowhere. And we are all shocked and we are horrified and we hold vigils and have conversations about how dangerous it is for a woman to walk alone at night. Because it is so much easier to think of rape and assault as something that is perpetrated by strangers in the dark than the fact that women are more likely to be attacked in their own homes and by people they know.

Fraser Anning is helping ScoMo and his mates quite a bit right now. He is giving them something truly despicable to point at, so that they can say ‘this is racism, and we reject it utterly’. And it is, and they should.

The thing is, though, Anning is that stranger in the dark alley. He and people like him are terrible, terrible people, and we absolutely need to stand against their overt racism – but we must not forget that for every attack by a stranger in the dark alley, there are dozens, hundreds, even, of attacks that we don’t see or don’t recognise, because they happen in private, or because they don’t fit our idea of what an attack looks like.

I think it’s important that we don’t let the government, or the media, or anyone else fool us into thinking that they are fighting against racism because they reject Anning and the acts of terrorists. That is the lowest of all possible bars (and I can’t help but noting that there are those still doing their best to limbo under it).

Pay attention to what else they say. Pay attention to the dog whistles about economic migrants and immigrants who don’t want to fit in. Pay attention to what sort of free speech is protected, and what sort is condemned. Pay attention to who is allowed to be angry, to be outraged, to react in self-defense, to have their feelings hurt.

There are so many microagressions, so many everyday acts of racism, so many things that we ask people just to ignore to keep the peace, because ‘he doesn’t really mean it’, or ‘she was only joking’ or ‘it wasn’t that bad’.

And it’s true that these things aren’t as bad as murdering 51 people because of their religion, or even as bad as blaming those people for their own murder. But, you know, something can be not as bad as the worst thing you can think of and still be not, actually, good. It can, in fact, still be bloody terrible.

You can be less racist than Anning, and still be racist.

I think we ought to be demanding that our politicians do better than ‘not the actual worst’. We’ve become accustomed to some pretty terrible rhetoric, and I think that’s dangerous – our standards have become so low that we feel faintly relieved that ‘at least’ Morrison referred to the killer as a terrorist.

(And I wasn’t even all that surprised when Dutton tried to claim that the Greens were just as bad as Anning. Surely that ought to merit more than an eyeroll?)

We need to do better than this. We need to demand that our leaders take responsibility for the racism and xenophobia that they have been enabling (or at best, turning a blind eye to, for the sake of votes).

But most of all we need to understand that racism doesn’t start with a man murdering people at prayer because he is a white supremacist. It starts with words, with small cruelties, with tiny acts of exclusion. It starts with all the little things our society does to signal that it’s OK to be a little bit racist, it’s OK to think that people who come from somewhere else, or who worship differently from us might be a bit funny or a bit dangerous or a bit inferior.

And, after all, don’t we care about freedom of speech?

Fraser Anning has said terrible, racist things. This is indisputable. But we can’t afford to be distracted by him, or by arguments about the proper use of eggs vis-a-vis politicians of any stripe.

I would love to believe that this is the moment when our society and our politicians look inside themselves and reject racism once and for all. But I’ll need more than a denunciation of Anning to be convinced.

~~~~~

Disclaimer: I’m white. I have no direct experience of racism, nor have I devoted significant time to studying it. So this analogy might be terribly flawed. I welcome comments from those who are more knowledgeable. (But bear in mind that all comments are screened, and I’m not always online and available to unscreen them.)

2019 Federal Election Virtual Drinking Game

February 16, 2019 / Catherine / 15 Comments

I had so many good intentions for this blog in 2019. For example, I intended to do a proper write up of who wound up in the Victorian Legislative Council, and indeed, I have started that post, and even continued that post… I just haven’t finished that post. It’s been that sort of year. I hope that I will do so soon, but I think I’d better not make any more promises on that score.

Anyway, with the Federal Election looming, it looks likely that we will be seeing some really ugly and stupid politics playing out over the next few months. Which… will make the next few months not all that different from the last few months.

I was going to create a bingo game to solace us all in the toxic lead-up to this election, but when I shared some of my ideas for a bingo card with a friend he said “That’s not bingo, because all of those things are guaranteed to happen.”

And, while I don’t think he is *quite* right, there is a seed of truth in his remark.

(Certainly, at least one thing I planned to put on the bingo card has happened in the two days between me coming up with this idea and today. So while I originally planned not to write this silly post until I had been good and finished my Victorian Election post, I’m putting this up now regardless, before every single thing on it has a chance to happen.)

Which is why I’m turning this into a drinking game. Or rather, a virtual drinking game, because I don’t want to encourage irresponsible drinking and I think we will all be thoroughly potted if we follow the game plan below. Mix up the virtual cocktail of your choice and start playing!

Alternatively, if you’d like this game to have some more meaning than our politics currently does, pick a charity – or indeed, a political party – that stands for something you hold dear, and pick a dollar or cent amount for sips, swigs and sculls. Every time one of the items on the list comes up, put the appropriate amount into a piggy bank, and when the time is right, donate the amount you have raised. Everyone wins!

(Well, except the Coalition, I hope. And yes, this drinking game is just as partisan as everything else I write.)

National Holiday

January 26, 2019 / Catherine / 2 Comments

I was born and live on Wurundjeri land.

That probably tells you everything you need to know about my views on Australia Day and whether we should change the date, but when did that ever stop me from writing a blog post?

I don’t actually know a lot about the history of this country before European settlers arrived (which was not, incidentally, on January 26, 1788. Though apparently that *was* the date the French arrived at Botany Bay, so we should probably be putting snails, not snags, on the barbie, if barbecues are our thing…).

Another year over, and an announcement

December 31, 2018 / Catherine / 8 Comments

Let’s start with the big announcement – Cate Speaks now has its own web address! I have registered www.catespeaks.net as a domain, and have also bought a WordPress Plan which should make the ads on this website disappear. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and it has been made possible by your support through my Ko-fi.com account, so thank you for that. You might want to update your bookmarks, but don’t worry too much if you don’t remember to do so – the domain maps from the WordPress site, so going to the old site should bring you straight here.

I’ll be making one other change to this website, and that is to start adding book reviews, mostly retrospectively, but you can expect to hear a lot from me on this score in the months leading up to the Hugo Awards. The reason for this addition is that I’ve been reviewing books in a number of different locations for a while, and felt like it would be a good idea to consolidate everything in the one spot. (Nobody needs five separate blogs, a Facebook account, a Twitter account, and a Goodreads account. It’s ridiculous.) You might get a bit more silly poetry around here, too. I seem to be in that sort of mood. I’ll keep tagging everything as appropriate, so if you are just here for the politics, you can easily avoid the frivolity and lowbrow literary choices.

And that’s enough of that – let’s take a look at 2018.

Victorian State Election 2018: Post-mortem Part 1

November 26, 2018 / Catherine / 2 Comments

So it looks like Labor won that one, then. Which is good, because the main narrative I’ve seen floating around the place has been that Victorians rejected the politics of fear and racism, and that Andrews won by being strong on policy and infrastructure (and, it must be said, on the back of four years of actually achieving a fair bit of what he set out to do).

Is this narrative true? Well, partially, at least. I’m sure the mess in Canberra didn’t help Matthew Guy any, though amusingly neither side of politics really wants to admit that – Labor, because it takes away from their victory, and the Liberals because then they’d have to admit to getting that wrong (which Mary Wooldridge very nearly did, in fact). But, while I’d love to think that my fellow Victorians are all highly-evolved individuals who are too intelligent to fall for a fear campaign and too kind to be motivated by racism, I suspect that this is not wholly the case.

Still, true or not, it’s a good narrative, and one that I hope will take root. “Fear campaigns don’t win in this country” is an idea that I would like to become true. I mean, wouldn’t it be lovely if everyone in politics went, right, OK, fear campaigns don’t work, let’s make the Federal election about policy instead of about racism and being mean to LGBTQI people.

Victorian State Election 2018: Election Eve

November 23, 2018 / Catherine / 5 Comments

And so, here we are. Tomorrow, millions of Victorians will get up, locate their nearest polling booth, and vote. We will collect (or reject) How to Vote cards from the major parties and whatever random sprinkling of minor parties come our way; we will investigate the cake stall and secretly regret that we are too old and too heavy for the jumping castle; we will complain about the length of the lines and the ridiculous size of the ballot paper; and on the way out, we will probably succumb to the lure of the Democracy Sausage, or at least the veggie sausage or the egg and bacon roll. (And woe betide the rebel who puts the onion on top of his sausage!)

And then we will go home, secure in the knowledge that we have voted and that our vote will be counted.

Here are three things I want you to remember tomorrow.

Victorian State Election 2018: Worth a thousand words?

November 23, 2018 / Catherine / 2 Comments

Well, if I actually go back and count up everything I’ve written over the last few weeks, this election is clearly worth more like 83,000 words to me…

Which is a lot of writing – and also a lot of reading.

If you have been following me on this long, and sometimes disturbing, journey through Victoria’s political psyche, with its egos, ids, and superegos, I think you deserve a reward.

I’ve commented a few times over the course of these posts that it would be interesting to create wordclouds for some of these political parties. Well, it turns out that www.wordclouds.com lets me do just that – and it even lets me choose the colours and shapes so that they can be themed with the parties in question! So, herewith, for your delectation and delight, the political parties contesting the Victorian State Election – in pictorial form!

Victorian State Election 2018: Some useful links and resources

November 22, 2018 / Catherine / 5 Comments

We’re getting to the pointy end of the election, and if you are just joining the fun, you probably don’t have time to read every single one of my posts!

So here are some other resources that should take you less time to read, and might entertain you.

Official Resources

VEC list of Group Voting Tickets
VEC list of How to Vote cards
VEC tool to find your nearest polling place – you can type in your address and it will show you a map of nearby polling places.

Other resources on small parties

Antony Green tells you how to vote, provides some fairly scary senate calculators based on the group voting tickets and recommends voting below the line.
Jill Stark on Twitter gives a brief rundown of political parties with misleading or confusing names
André Brett on Twitter has a tweet for every party on the ballot.
André also has an excellent Tumblr Blog called Blatantly Partisan Party Reviews (close inspection will reveal that he and I have something of a mutual admiration society happening – the world of tiny political party bloggers is small…), which gives you a paragraph or two on each party if you want more detail than Twitter can provide, but don’t have all day. He also researched the independents for Brunswick.
Matt Hrkac has nice, concise summaries of each party contesting the election. (I’d recommend this as an article to take into the polling booth, because it’s brief and covers the basics enough to remind you who everyone is)
Daniel Bowen has a useful article about the election, with information on voting, small parties, energy and the environment, and local Bentleigh issues.
The New Daily have put up a post on microparties. It’s interesting to see what stands out for them.
If climate change is your priority, then Precarious Climate has analysed all the parties from a climate change policy perspective.
If homelessness is your chief concern, Everybody’s Home has profiled Labor, the Coalition, the Greens and Fiona Patten’s Reason Party on this issue.
If racism is something you are worried about, Colour Code has rated a number of major and minor parties, and provided short profiles on their policies in this area.
First Dog on the Moon doesn’t talk about minor parties, but as usual, he is on the money with the majors.

Democracy Sausage

Democracysausage.org is an interactive map that tells you which of your local polling booths are having sausage sizzles, which are having cake stalls, and so forth. I have not yet figured out what all the icons mean, but they are numerous and varied. For booths which have not yet been filled in, the site predicts the likeliness of a sausage sizzle based on past elections. This is probably your most important link on election day…

And that’s about it! Don’t forget to vote, and make sure your friends vote, too – and for heaven’s sake, vote below the line. Your vote is too important to leave to other people to decide.

If you have spotted a useful round up of tiny political parties that I haven’t included here, please let me know! I’m aware that those linked above are largely as left-leaning as I am, which is mostly because those are the blogs that link to me or that Google offers me, despite my now extremely dubious search history. (On the bright side, Googling so many political candidates has apparently made Facebook’s and Twitter’s algorithms start sending me recruiting ads for ASIO, which I find hilarious. I’m pretty sure ASIO would not take me as a gift.) (But then, that’s probably what I would be saying if I *was* working for ASIO, isn’t it…?)

The One and Only Cate Speaks Endorsed How to Vote Card!

November 21, 2018 / Catherine / 6 Comments

So, we have reached the end of my explorations into the psyches of our various tiny political parties, and it is time to answer the all-important question: who should I vote for?

I must admit, I’m having a harder time with this than usual. In most previous elections, there has been at least one party or independent who I have been truly excited about. And this makes all the other parties more palatable – essentially, I still know, deep down, that I’m compromising, but I don’t actually have to admit it out loud because the person who is number one on my ticket is genuinely awesome.

This time… well, I’m excited by Chawla and Lee, but they aren’t actually on the ballot in my region, so I’m out of luck.

Beyond that… I like the Socialists, but they are a bit flaky (which is not unexpected, but there were a couple of elections where they were looking unexpectedly sane and I enjoyed that); I want to like Reason, but I’m not entirely sold on it; both the Greens and Labor are fine, but let’s face it, having just spent two weeks analysing all the minor parties it feels like a bit of cop-out if I then vote for one of the majors. I mean, I will if that’s how it pans out, but it’s a bit depressing!

So I’m going to start at the bottom of the ticket, where things may be ugly, but at least they are clear, and work my way up from there. Who knows where this journey will end? (Truly – not me. I’m hoping that inspiration will strike in the course of writing this.) I’ve divided parties into categories. Much like Cyclones, you really want to avoid a Category 4 or 5, but a Category 2 or 3 is basically survivable. (My metaphor breaks down at Category 1, unless you really, really like storms or are really not fully delighted by any of these political parties. Hmm… maybe it’s not such a bad metaphor after all…)

Incidentally, I’m using the numbers and names appropriate to Northern Metropolitan Region. Since we do, in fact, have representatives from every party except the Nationals, this is pretty easily adapted to your are.

Having said that… while this is approximately how I intend to vote (I invariably change my mind about *someone* between here and the ballot box), and I’m including it because I know some people find it useful, my true How to Vote card is simply this: Vote below the line, numbering at least five squares, but ideally all of them (there is much satisfaction to be had in putting terrible people at the bottom of your ticket).

Who you vote for is important, don’t get me wrong, and I ABSOLUTELY have opinions on that (you may have noticed this…). But I truly believe that the best thing you can do as a citizen is inform yourself about who is on the ballot and vote for the things you care about. Vote with your brain, vote with your heart, and don’t let anyone else decide where your vote should go – not your party, not Glenn Druery, and not me.