Australian federal election: 7 September

[Vlad n U 2]

The Fishing and Lifestyle Party and the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party are going to be my choices.

[Axver]

Baahahahaha the Non-Custodial Parents Party still exists - alas only on the NSW ballot.

[Kieran McConville]

Ok, it's far from over but I guess I might have to start radically reevaluating my expectations here. About the only salvation I can see is the possibility that in the absence of a national campaign, there are a lot of local campaigns pulling some serious rabbits out of hats.

What the fuck is wrong with Rudd? Two years whiteanting his own party and, this, this is the best he's got? It's not as though there isn't a record - quite a good one, on the whole - to run on.

Well anyway, if he does go down to defeat, his reputation will be a bucket of shit for all time. No rehabilitation, no revision. The verdict on his predecessor will be considerably kinder.

A Keating would have eaten this opposition for breakfast. A leader of that calibre could, and did, pull victory out of considerably less promising material.

[Axver]

I am genuinely baffled how the wheels are falling off here, or why the hell the polls are swinging to the Liberals. Abbott's offering practically nothing except fear, extremism, vague nebulous hints at policy, an unwillingness to actually interact with the public, and an inability to articulate much of anything, and somehow this is working even when the ALP lurches to the right. I can only conclude that the Australian people are experiencing a serious bout of incredible fucking stupidity right now.

Frankly, I think what might help the ALP is if they stopped trying to encroach on Abbott's turf, stopped trying to beat the Libs at their own game of appealling to bigots and racists, and articulated a clear leftwing policy. Perhaps that's what's costing them - you can try to snare all the votes you can, but selling your soul and trying to be the lite version of another party is no recipe for popularity. If they articulated an alternative vision for Australia, something seriously opposed to the Libs' brand of fearmongering and greed, then perhaps they'd get more traction.

Or maybe it'd just kill them completely in this bogan country. I don't know.

[Vlad n U 2]

I don't think Labor have much of anything 'left wing' left in them these days. It's not too different from 'oh well they're supposed to be left but they aren't really' with UK Labour, is it?

[Kieran McConville]

Originally Posted by Axver

I am genuinely baffled how the wheels are falling off here, or why the hell the polls are swinging to the Liberals. Abbott's offering practically nothing except fear, extremism, vague nebulous hints at policy, an unwillingness to actually interact with the public, and an inability to articulate much of anything, and somehow this is working even when the ALP lurches to the right. I can only conclude that the Australian people are experiencing a serious bout of incredible fucking stupidity right now.

Frankly, I think what might help the ALP is if they stopped trying to encroach on Abbott's turf, stopped trying to beat the Libs at their own game of appealling to bigots and racists, and articulated a clear leftwing policy. Perhaps that's what's costing them - you can try to snare all the votes you can, but selling your soul and trying to be the lite version of another party is no recipe for popularity. If they articulated an alternative vision for Australia, something seriously opposed to the Libs' brand of fearmongering and greed, then perhaps they'd get more traction.

Or maybe it'd just kill them completely in this bogan country. I don't know.

It's a multitude of things, I suspect. But all I know is this: if a media-confected image of 'untrustworthy', 'big deficits', 'broken promises' etc were congealing about my government, I'd be pulling out the big guns. Look at the UK, I'd say. Look to Europe. That's austerity. A self-defeating cycle that will end in revolution, and that can't be good for anybody.

There but for the grace of god (and, admittedly, cough, ahem, just quietly, China's demand), go we.

People go on about Lindsay and the west of Sydney. Those marginals only matter because the game is stalemated. Shift the window and you change the game. Ah well.

...

It's not that the ALP is leftwing really, not now (although it has left leaning people still in and around it), as that it remains the biggest fish in the broad left front, to completely mix some metaphors.

[Axver]

Murdoch may own a shit-tonne of the press, but he doesn't own the TV networks. Rudd has a closer relationship with the camera than with his own wife. He should be setting his sights on every television network falling over themselves to support his campaign even while the Murdoch press tries to drive him into the ground.

Still, it's the last week of the campaign that matters.

[Kieran McConville]

The TV and radio take a lot of leads from the big newspapers in the daily cycle; that is unfortunately what has always given Murdoch's ownership of so much local press its bite, even when the likes of The Australian sell pitiful numbers of copies.

But it can't all be pinned on Murdoch. I'm no conspiracy monger. His influence is almost entirely for the worse, but it's not omnipotent. It takes two to tango.

[Axver]

He's certainly trying to exert every little bit of influence he can possibly get this election. It's depressing how homogenous the Aussie press is, given how vibrant and diverse it used to be.

The Group Voting Tickets are out and make fascinating reading. I know it is unrealistic to expect many people to vote below the line like I do, or even to fully read or truly understand the GVTs before voting above the line, but I'd like to just urge everybody to at least look at the GVTs for parties you support to make sure that when you do vote above the line, the preferences allocated to you actually reflect your interests and intentions. Go here and select your state from the Senate list and the file with the GVTs is at the top above the list of your state's Senate candidates. There are some very odd flows in some states; watch out, for instance, for the Bullet Train people preferencing far-right parties above the Greens, or the Animal Justice people preferencing nutters like Family First, No Carbon Tax, and the Citizens Electoral Council above the ALP or Greens. The Socialist Equality Party has the funniest Victorian GVT; as in previous elections, they offer three separate GVTs (which are each allocated to a third of their votes), all of which are donkey votes - one favours the ALP, one the Greens, and one the Liberals.

Oh, and the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party has the most bogan website ever. How about the chick draped in the Aussie flag in one of the images that rotates through the front page! Looks like something straight out of the Bogan Day Out/Cronulla riots playbook.

[Axver]

Fuck me, the Sex Party is preferencing ONE NATION ahead of the ALP, Greens, or Coalition. This could actually be significant in NSW, where Pauline Hanson will probably be in contention for the final Senate seat.

There are some really baffling preferences in the Group Voting Tickets, but this just might be the worst of them.

[Kieran McConville]

The microparties are out in full force this year, it would seem. Here in Queensland I see that Wake Up Australia or whatever the fuck it's called, Danny Nalia's outfit, around the fringes here and there. Odd that it has a presence, I thought he was Sydney or Melbourne based.

I don't think I will click on the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party website, thanks all the same.

I can't remember where I read it but someone memorably described the Senate elections as a sort of therapy exercise for many with a tangential connection with reality.

[Axver]

Rise Up Australia: the party for people who think Family First are too liberal.

Even though Nalia's based in southeastern Melbourne, I'm not surprised his mob is going for it in Queensland. Parts of the Gold Coast are real hotbeds of Christian fundamentalism, so I imagine there's a bit of a turf war between the fundie parties. I can just imagine what my old high school is like right now - people bickering about Rise Up vs Family First, with a couple of depressed socialists sitting on the sidelines shaking their heads.

(I still remember myself and the other socialist in my year just putting our heads in our hands when this really-nice-but-not-politically-engaged-at-all girl walked into school after the 2004 election - at which we were too young to vote but she was just old enough - and proudly told us that "I voted Family First because they have a nice name!")

[Kieran McConville]

Parts of Wide Bay and the Lockyer and Darling Downs have also their fair share of fundamentalism, so sure, it makes sense.

When Joh Bjelke-Petersen resigned in 1987, a La Rouchite won his old (state) seat (before defecting to the Nats). I mention that only because it is that part of the world, South Burnett. The area encompassing there through to the coast, Hervey Bay etc, is Wide Bay; the poorest seat in the country.

[Axver]

Holy shit, I just looked up Bjelke-Petersen's electorate. What an awful seat. It was first held by him, then by the CEC-cum-National guy, and finally by a woman who initially represented One Nation before becoming an independent. It was then mercifully abolished. Remind me to never visit that part of the world. How the blithering fuck did a CEC candidate win anything?!

[Kieran McConville]

Actually the One Nation member wasn't too bad, as a person, as far as these things go. Not really a fundie, more practically-minded (although I'm not sure all that effective). Joh's son (now with Katter's mob) had a go at the seat a number of times, but he's never had much luck. Just goes to show a family name doesn't count for everything.

I think Joh actively supported the CEC successor, in revenge against the Nationals ending his reign. His own party sacked him in conference. He held out in the Executive Building for a week.

[Axver]

Wikipedia's CEC article indicates that it was a far-right group based on social credit that sought voter-initiated referenda at the time of that 1988 by-election, and it was only after that chap's election that the LaRouche nutcases successfully infiltrated and took over the party in 1988-92. Haven't found anything else on it though. Seems the CEC still started from dubious foundations and have only got more dubious with the LaRouche takeover.

Bjelke-Petersen's downfall is absolutely hilarious. I've always been amused by just how successfully Hawke blindsided Bjelke-Petersen with the 1987 election announcement.

[Kieran McConville]

I'd say it was Bjelke-Petersen who blindsided Howard and Sinclair. Understandably.

Hawke probably would have won comfortably enough either way, his government was still relatively young then. This just helped that much more.

Yeah I'm a bit foggy on the CEC, but I gather it and the old League of Rights were in competition for a while, and obviously were fighting over much the same crowd.

What I wanna know is, will the John Birch Society field a candidate?

[cobl04]

What does voting above/below the line mean?

[Axver]

Originally Posted by Kieran McConville

What I wanna know is, will the John Birch Society field a candidate?

Or which micro-party will they infiltrate?

Speaking of micro-parties, I was looking at the 1999 NSW state election where some nutter registered about twenty parties and worked the preferences in a very clever way to get his mate from one of those Outdoor Recreation "let's shit on national parks" parties elected. Some of the micro-parties there are just absolutely hilarious. I don't know if these were all his, but there were parties such as Jobs For Everyone, the Four Wheel Drive Party, Against Promotion of Homosexuality, Three Day Weekend Party, People Against Paedophiles, and my personal favourite Make Billionaires Pay More Tax! (The exclamation mark being part of their name.) The bulk of the micro-parties outpolled the CEC too, haha. Voting below the line must've been exhausting at that election.

Originally Posted by cobl04

What does voting above/below the line mean?

Oh Cobbler Cobbler Cobbler!

Voting – The Senate - Australian Electoral Commission

Basically, if you vote above the line, you simply put 1 in the box of your preferred party. You are allocated preferences according to whatever Group Voting Ticket (or preference flow) the party has registered with the AEC for your state. If the party registers multiple GVTs, they are allocated evenly; i.e. if they register two GVTs, half their votes receive one of them and the other half receive the second.

If you vote below the line, then it's like how you vote for the House of Representatives: you number every single box. At normal elections, that tends to mean numbering about 40-60 candidates representing about 15-25 groups. These numbers vary by state; NSW always has the largest Senate ballot closely followed by Victoria; those in most other states and especially the territories tend to be more modest. This year the Senate ballots everywhere are at record lengths. The Victorian Senate ballot will run to 97 individual candidates standing for 40 separate groups (it's the second-largest federal Senate ballot ever, exceeded only by this year's NSW Senate ballot - 110 candidates in 45 groups).

So if you're a political junkie like me, you're going to take forever at the polling station while you number the Senate 1-97; I am, of course, preparing my vote beforehand to just copy out onto the official ballot paper in the booth. If you're not that keen, you owe it to yourself to at least check your favoured party's Group Voting Ticket to make sure that when you vote above the line, you are given preferences that accord with your interests and intent. Victorians who couldn't be bothered checking what they were voting for when they voted above the line were the fools that elected a Family First Senator in 2004 off the back of ALP and Democrat preferences. Now I'm worried that NSW voters who can't be arsed checking GVTs will vote for the Sex Party, not knowing that their preferences go to Pauline Hanson and One Nation ahead of the three major parties - and Pauline may well be in contention for the final NSW Senate place. We don't need that woman making a political comeback.

[Kieran McConville]

Disclosure: I've never voted below the line. Sometimes I think I should, but it seems an insurmountable task. In fairness though, I'm reasonably comfortable that the above-the-line tickets I've gone with aren't too dodgy, in most of the elections I recall.

It's hard enough trying to find a way to put the Coalition's candidate dead-last - or as near as - for the house of representatives (hard when you realise who else is on offer; League of Rights, Family First, CEC, Get It Up Ya Austraya etc).