Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Daniel, did you catch my letter in the Tiser last week (quite different to my interview in this month's SA Life)  advocating blank voting as an electoral weapon to eliminate dodgy SA Labor marginal encumbents?  My theory was that instead of eventually casting a preferential vote for folk you'd rather not have around, take a vote that would've been in their favour and hold it far away from them... I figure that if parties are going to utilise Hawker-Britten style marginal campaign tactics, thereby showing total disdain and disrespect for the votes of many, I can't see any harm in showing them that a vote is still powerful.

"Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone?  I don't think democracy can't work in Australia, but that maybe it requires a little remodelling.

Abbot and Gillard have both basically been saying that if we had a different accounting system they'd have won.  It's a bullshit argument if neither of them proposes first-past-the post on primaries or somesuch.

If you're treated with contempt, why not respond in kind?  For some people it's easier than for others, twould seem.  

I've a feeling that future election campaigns will need to court blank voters instead of rubbishing them, and that this indeed will be a warning shot of a possible future democratic evolution.. or is that revolution?

Fiona, it is indeed good to see you round the place again. 

It looks to me as if the independents are doing some good, demanding accountability from the two majors. There are some local bribes in there, but much of their demands seem to be about open and transparent government. Tony's refusals have really made him look as if he is too used to hiding things.

To vote informal is something yours truly has done – often, but this time Pumpkin and I conspired to stuff them up – at least in our family nobodie won, and nobodie lost.

You see, Pumpkin voted Labor and I voted Liberal – second preference to rob them of the $1.73 or whatever.

This is what we called: asymmetric co-dependant democratic neutralism – good fun and we all lose, er win – who gives a shit anyway.

As it turned out not only did nobodie win in our family, nobody won in our greater family – our Nation. It would appear in a dialectical sort of way we were collectively united when casting our votes (f*ck em we said) – makes you all warm and fuzzy don't it?

Anyway a bloody fantastic result don't you think? And while they negotiate (lie and deceive) they can do us little harm.

One hopes this negotiating thingy goes on for two or three years, besides we don't need them – we have Malcolm to look after us, B Duncan that is, not Turnbull.

Anyway, not much use worrying about who gets in; either mob will slowly continue to push us down an invasive track (for our "welfare", our "security") – a track that will eventually turn into a super highway full of corporate cameras and statutory fines, all for one purpose and one purpose only: to pay off public debt and fatten private profits, profits to be used to further lobby, intimidate and bribe our governments. And that's just for starters.

Today governments outsource more and more of their (our) services (insurance companies, road toll companies, Macquarie Group, Redflex etc), and along with it our privacy. Prepare for the user pays toll booth society. If you don't pay the (corporate) toll collector our democratically elected debt collectors will clobber you – guilty until proven innocent, and only innocent if they allow you to go to court and face your accuser?

Think about it.

And if you do think about it; that is, the current relationships between our democratically elected debt collectors and corporations, then it could be argued we have fascism lite.

I wonder how long it will take before it becomes a statutory requirement to have GPS tracking devices on all vehicles in the interests of the consumer. This would be fantastic if the vehicle was stolen, or involved in an accident etc. Such a law could be introduced for our "security" and "welfare", enabled by corporate computing power and enforced by the bureaucracy.

However, such a tracking device could also track the speed of the vehicle and if it obeyed all rules of the road etc.etc.etc. A trip to the relos could cost a few thousand bucks in instant penalties (for careless drivers) – such penalties could ruin the disadvantaged – corporate bludgers need not worry, the company pays.

When too many punters refuse, or can't afford, to pay then a new law will be introduced in the interests of the common wealth: your bank will be directed to deduct the fine (and their management fee, even better if it puts you into O/D) from your account and pay the sum into consolidated revenue – try getting the money back then! If you go into O/D then the bank gets the interest (now around 30%) or the bailiffs will come and collect your assets on behalf of your creditor – the bank.

Think about it because that is the type of thing we can expect down the track, simply because we can see it happening now – bit by bit, byte by byte.

Not too long ago one could survive without a bank account – try doing it now. Not too long ago we didn't need a tax file number, a medicare number, a social security number – nor did we need 4,051 passwords, plastic cards and customer IDs etc etc – all of which have a heap of your personal data attached – all trackable.

Think about what your life was like in 1990; the stuff you had and how you did things (before anybody heard of the internet or email).

Now think where we will be in twenty years time?

Think about it, then think about what "moving forward" really means.

Maybe all of the above is nothing more than the fears and anxieties this old wombat has in relation to a globe that is changing rapidily, maybe our democratically elected governments will protect us as they always promise to do.

PS. You'd being doing yourself a favour to read the PDF file at the end of the above link, a quick example on where we are headed (globably) – think about it, please.

Dunno if any of you heard me flunking out on Tony Delroy's "Challenge" the other night, unable to answer "Who wrote Julia Gillard's electtion campaing\gn"  I tried Terry Britton (of Hawker-Britton) and Bill Shorten, to no avail. In the conversation it turned out he'd read the above piecel  I can't find a lot of stuff written by people who've done what I did that have the guts to say so.

If preferences have become a form of Crowleyesque sciience, a "Black Art" that the populace doesn't comprehend but with which elections are fought and won, why not use this tactic's anarchic counter to make sure your vote nullifies your opponent without you inadvertantly empowering somebody you don't like.  Labourites whose preferences seated Steven Fieding take note. 

My thought is to target, in the next SA election, those cabinet incumbents who (last round)  took fiftteen per cent looses, calculated successses in Terry Britton's election campaign.  

Blank votes will eradicate those who need to be gone. Great way to truly make your vote count.

Richard, I completely understand your need to send a message of one's extreme pissedoffedness to both major political parties. Voting informal would do this if informal votes were sorted by catagegory and the numbers in various categories released but this is not the case. Instead of knowing the numbers of blank ballots, ballots with preferences incompletely allocated, ballots with comments added we just get a total number of informal votes and there is know way of knowing whether a higher total rate of informals reflects disillusionment with both parties or a mere statistical blip in the normal processes creating informal votes when people misunderstand the voting system.

I am in the electorate of Bennelong and would have liked to fill in my vote incompletely leaving no numbers against candidates for four parties, namely Labour, Liberal, poofter bashers for Christ and the red haired xenephobes one fatherland party. However that would have just added one to the total number of informal votes and my message would not have gone beyond a ballet counter or two and a few scrutineers. Eventually I chose the option of making a protest vote for the only party I actually like, the Greens with the choice between electable parties with the Liberals as a lesser evi to Labour in positions 8 and 9. Positions 10 went to the sex mad Christfoascists and 11 to One Fatherland.

Australia really needs to modify the voting system so that a voter may give the political parties a more nuanced message. Political parties regularly misinterpret a change of government as the opposition winning when what actually happens is that a government loses. In 2007 we threw the government led John Winston Eyebrows out, but the new Rudd government thought it had a bloody mandate, when it was just the lesser of two evils.

I would ike to see optional preferential voting with none of the above being listed on every ballot paper. Selecting this as a last preference would indicate that that none of the unselected canidates was acceptable for the voter. It would be even better if after allocation of preferences on candidate had more than 50% of the vote cast or even better of the registered voters at the time of election then the seat would remain vacant until the next full election. This would allow voters to punish both major parties by depriving them of a profitable sinecure for one of their candidates. Maybe some unfilled seats would slam the message home , "A plague on both your parties".

No, sorry Richard, I think you are over-egging the pudding as to Brown.

The road to government or representation in government is not the same as the road to power, which sounds so terribly Nietzschean.

The major parties seek power for the goodies, or out of ego, or sometimes out of ability and self-respect, but it's a wide spectrum. My acquaintance with the Greens programs suggests to me that the Greens address the issues that concern me most in a more comprehensive way; the other big parties are increasingly compromised, loss of values. Dislocated from reality and deeply ideologicised. They are inwards and backwards looking and "cling".

The Greens offer some sense of what the future is going to be about and what can or need be done. The others are on a reactionary modernist kick, particularly Abbott. Anti-imagination, anti-science, pro superstition, tending to represent vested interests rather than the priority of the public good, humanity and common sense. And the authoritarian streak you see in sections of the ALP right.

The big parties are crooks. The Greens show some light into this darker world, maybe can put a brake on and save something for future generations.

Some stats, courtesy of today's Australian:

In all of the seats the Coalition managed to wrangle from the government, the percentage of informal votes cast exceeded 5 per cent.

In the Queensland seats of Forde and Longman, which both fell to the Coalition, the informal vote was above 7 per cent.

The number of people lodging informal votes in Queensland, deposed prime minister Kevin Rudd's home state, increased more than 2 per cent.

But nowhere was the trend more apparent than in Mr Latham's stomping ground of NSW. In the former Labor Party leader's former electorate of Werriwa, in Sydney's southwest, more than 10 per cent of voters did not fill out their ballot papers.

In Paul Keating's old electorate of Blaxland, west of Sydney, which recorded an almost 4 per cent swing to the Coalition, 14.2 per cent of voters -- 10,276 people -- voted informally.

Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania recorded the lowest levels of informal voting.

But in the Victorian seats of La Trobe and McEwen, which were picked up by Labor, the informal vote still hovered above 4 per cent.

Across the country, there was a 1.69 per cent increase in the number of people who lodged blank or illegible ballot papers.

Fiona, such distrubition suggests more strongly that informal voting was indeed used as a weapon. Still, there's lots votes to be counted yet, including a rechecking and recounting of the informals. And we'll only really know if this was a momentary political deviation or an increasing trend until we have the results of the election after this one.

My personal feeling is that has been demonstrated is that if an incumbent political party neglects many of its own ilk, the disaffected are capable of pulling a government down. That's a powerful lesson for an electorate to learn. No future Australian Government, I hope, will fail to address widespread community issues in an election campaign.

Michael, wake up and smell the coffee ... even if Sussex St drove the dagger into Rudd then put Julia's hand on it, her fingerprints are clearly on the handle. Enough people it would seem, were annoyed enough with the deed to cost many ALPollies their jobs. And it's not just Sussex St that should be worried about an overhaul either - the folks at Hawker Britton (and yes unelected too) who also managed the South Oz campaign that ran the risk of ignoring a disaffected Labor heartland to concentrate on the marginals should be pondering their future in Labor campaigning. Come to think of it, the major SALPollies who took huge hits in March should be watchful that blank voting here next time round doesn't unseat half of their Cabinet.

I hope Australian politics has learned its lesson, and that people aren't driven to act this way again. Doing it leaves a bitter taste.

Are you implying that a simpler voting structure would lead to a dumbed-down democracy? Maybe ... but let's face it, how many people vote only for the prima face candidate and not for their preference plan? Which leads to..

Marilyn, it still mystifies me that Labor ever gave Fielding the preferences on which he won in the first place! How many fewer people would've voted for Labor if they realised that their precious ballot would end up in the hands of Family First? A bloody lot less, I'd reckon!

Alan, from what I'm reading this morning, it Brown's dismissing the possibility of a Green/Liberal Coalition is only extreme speculation. Then again ... when Bob did a gig at our pub a few years back (we've had a few intesting pollies put a show on, including Keating), he seemed quite enamoured with what Green-power influence was achieving in coalition with consevatives abroad. My gut feeling has been that the Greens will take any road to political power that's paved in front of them.

Paul, methinks the cheers if Southcott falls at Boothby won't be only from the ranks of Labor. He's been known to put knives in people's backs too, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear a few Liberal hurrahs in the mix.

John, yes, money speaks louder than democracy. Maybe this is something that will now be brought back to the table for reconsideration?

Just reading an interesting theory or idea elsewhere that suggests there is a large delayed postal vote from Get Up etc.

 Katz at LP suggested the renfranchised might to be slightly more favourable to the government and with several seats still hair-line, a final resolution could take even more time.

Time for people to think.

Wilson Tuckey is gone, McGauran is gone, Russell Trood is gone, Guy Barnett is gone, the liberals will be down to 34 senators with the ALP and Greens making up 40 with Xenophon who mostly votes ALP/Greens and one DLP in Victoria.

No matter who is the PM in the end it will be a very interesing session indeed.

Fielding the flake is gone, gone, gone.

Would have gone blank because it made no difference but I like the Greens girl in the senate along with Sarah Hanson-Young who is a good friend and great human being.

 I think the verdict is that we the people rejected both major parties and both back stabbing leaders quite succinctly.

Richard Tonkin writes: "As much as my political leanings have mostly been towards Labor(though of the opinion that if you want a job done properly, ask aright-wing Liberal to do it) I wouldn't be able to look myself in theeye in the mirror each day if I voted for a party run not just by thisback-stabbing Brutus-ette, but by the unelected factional leaders whohanded her the blade.  Like him (and what he has or hasn't done) ornot, Rudd was our democratically mandated Prime Minister, and the rightplace to decide his future would have been at this election.  The party we put into political power denied us that opportunity.  To me this is unjust and undemocratic."

I entirely failed to understand this outrage, or why it was so widespread.

How, exactly, was she a backstabbing Brutus-ette?  Had she been plotting, cultivating the numbers, a week earlier?

There is no democratically mandated Prime Minister.  We don't elect a President. The ALP announced to us that they had voted Kevin Rudd their leader, after he, plotting more thoroughly, cultivating the numbers sedulously (whatever that means), far more something aforethought, pulled a Brutus on Beazley.

And then the same parliamentary ALP lost confidence in Rudd, and announced to us that they'd elected Joolya their leader.

What's the diff?  We're talking about their leader, whom they will support in Parliament.  It's that parliamentary support that makes a prime minister.

This election was about electing your local member, not throwing out a prime minister.  Legally, at least.

If the electorate had the power to demote a prime minister and appoint another without throwing out the government, it would be valid to complain that the parliamentary party had taken that step when it was our decision to make.

I don't criticise the blank vote, I'm just interested in the strange, to me puzzling, social phenomenon.

Must have stuffed up mailing last post. Probably just as well. What a culmination to such a strange nine months of politics.

Another Arthur Dent moment. What a triumph of imagination, Leibnitz is verified.

Looks like a couple more days before it's sorted, but its a bit gridlocked. 

What a conceptual leap.

Now, will it descend further into farce or is the country finally going to collectively sit down and try to sort itself out. What twists, red herrrings and turns await the Leunig Australian.

Richard, if the informal vote is significantly higher (which might - but only might - suggest a deliberate lodging of a null vote - what do you suggest is the next step?