Tag: double dissolution (Page 4 of 4)

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)…

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…

Tag: double dissolution (Page 4 of 4)

Meet the Small Parties: The Arts Party

Meet the Small Parties: VoteFlux – Upgrade Democracy

Meet the Small Parties: Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party

It’s on!

Impending election, registering to vote, and an announcement

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