Spreading the power base
This election campaign is the most profligate, shallow and desperate and I’m already starting to beige out from pork-o-meters, promises and infantile antics.
I’m no psephologist and I told you last week I would do some research on Independents. These individuals and smaller parties can play a major role in federal politics and can keep megalomaniacal parties in their place by sharing or holding the balance of power in the Senate and thus offering an important check on unfettered executive power.
Pauline Hanson’s head in a bucket of 19th century Kurnell sand party is in the running, as are a plethora of Christian righters, shooters and other frighteners. The Secular Party should give Family First the fist as they try to remove the torch song, Hillsong Brethren from our politics. At times, it’s like adding too much water to cordial; it’s diluting our voting punch.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – vote for the Greens. This is an opinion piece so I have no qualms about being partisan. Read last week’s column with my list of reasons why I think the Greens are the only party with excellent policy credentials for all Australians.
A Green vote in the Senate will ensure important legislation pertaining to GLBTI gets a sympathetic hearing. Could you really be bothered ticking every box on your 3km-long ballot paper? And what about the notion, going right back to the Magna Carta, of no taxation without representation? The Greens want the vote extended to 16-year-olds, who are deemed old enough to work and pay tax, but not to vote.
Voting Green in the House of Representatives is a great way of still allowing your vote to trickle down to the ALP and, if you want Rudd in, a Green vote will eventually swing that way. It also sends a clear message to the major parties about our disenchantment: what about gay marriage, families, and GLBTI voters, Kevin?
And I sadly hear that many thousands of people aged between 18 and 21 have not registered to vote. I suggest that with compulsory voting we could have compulsory registration with not fines, but civic education, as a form of punishment/ education.
In the future I would love to see the whole population (indigenous Australians particularly) more interested, informed and involved; otherwise it’s a shambles of venal vested interests and pork-barrelling at the public trough.
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