a funny kangaroo video...

this one made me laugh...
They are such great creatures.

Cat and a box... gorgeous little cartoon by "Simon's cat"

I love the way cat's love boxes....

Voting Below the Line, and Making Your Vote Count! Why Preferences Matter.

 Some years ago the Democrats put forward a bill to commit ongoing funding to educate Australians about the electoral system.Given that voting in Australia is compulsory, and a full federal election these days costs taxpayers in excess of $100million, it would seem this was a sensible idea.

The Bill was defeated by the Liberal and Labor parties joining ranks against it.

So why might an ignorant population be in the interests of the major parties?

For the same reasons, perhaps, that ‘how to vote’ cards for the major parties usually just tell you in which order to put the candidates, without giving any information about their party affiliations.

On the one hand, they would rather you believe that minor parties are irrelevant and preferences don’t matter (‘Just Vote 1’).  

On the other hand -- precisely because preferences do matter, and some pretty dirty and hypocritical backroom deals can go on in the weeks before an election -- they would rather you not know enough to even want to know.

 (“Trust us, we’re politicians!”)

The most notorious and consequential backroom preference deal in recent times, was a last minute deal in 2004 where the ALP preferenced right wing Family First over the Greens, in return for Family First preferences -- knowing that they already had Greens’ preferences. This act saw Stephen Fielding elected to the Senate, where he has had a deciding vote on a large amount of important legislation for six years, on less than 2% of the Victorian primary vote.

Most certainly, the major parties do not want you to have sufficient information to tempt you to make your own choice about where to direct your preferences by voting ‘below the line’ (for the Senate) and numbering all the boxes (on both ballots). Voting in this way takes both power and money away from them.

An ignorant electorate also means the major parties can run full page advertisements the day before an election to frighten people from giving a primary vote to an alternative party. ‘Don’t waste your vote’ is one tactic. Or ‘Don’t take the risk’ is another.

Is there a risk in putting an alternative party first and placing the party with more chance of actually winning the election, or forming government, second?

Theoretically it is possible that in exceptional and very precise circumstances your vote could assist the ‘wrong party’ (neither your first nor your second, but your last choice) to win.

What would need to happen is for more people to vote for minor party B than for major party A, so that A is knocked out of the contest first and its preferences redistributed, and what would also need to happen – and this is key -- is that A had allocated its preferences not to B (the party with a similar political flavour) but to its enemy, major party C.

Which is to say that any risk exists only in the event of dirty dealing by the major parties, not because of your democratic right to vote for an alternative. And it’s a risk they could prevent completely and in an instant by being more principled. 

Even so, the chances of this kind of upset happening are miniscule. Whereas the benefits of voting first for an alternative party are much more certain, and quite significant.

Indeed far from ‘wasting’ your vote, by putting an alternative party first you can, in a sense, double your vote’s value.

If the alternative candidate doesn’t make the count for the final showdown, the full value of your vote is automatically redistributed to your second choice. So you still get to vote to decide on which party forms the government; but you also get to send a message that the concerns, policies and approaches of the alternative party are important to you. A message that can have a powerful resonating effect throughout the next three years.

Furthermore, on a practical level, alternative parties need funding to grow, develop policy, and to have an influence. For every member elected they get a parliamentary office and an electoral officer. If they get five members, they get parliamentary party status, which provides a raft of resources, including offices in regional areas.

Even if they don’t get elected, as long as they get more than 4% of the overall primary vote, each of your votes is worth around $2 to them in public funding to put towards their campaign costs.

But, all of this only happens if you put them first. If you put them second, and put a major party first, the effect is zero. And no-one will ever know.

(An earlier version of this piece was first published in the Age Online on November 20th 2007)


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"It's not a crime to ask for help. But it is a disgrace not to even listen."

I wonder how many of the people creating refugee policy have even met any Asylum seekers?

Tony Abbott auctioned off a surfing lesson for charity a little while back, and Get Up members raised $16,000 to win the auction so they could give the prize to some young refugees, so they would have a chance to talk to Abbott in person and explain their situation. Apparently his office said they would arrange this to happen before the election, but they kept postponing setting a date. They've stopped returning Get Up's calls.

As Bartlett says here, "It's not a crime to ask for help. But it is a disgrace not to even listen."

Please watch this video and listen to this young boy.