Jul 10
24
Vote 1 – "None Of The Above"
In Australia we are in the early stages of a federal election.
The interesting thing about this election is that it was preceded first by a “palace coup” in which the deputy Prime Minister essentially ousted the existing and elected PM. This took place, it appears, as the result of the party apparatchiks determining that the polls indicated a fast decline in support for Kevin Rudd.
That dwindling support came in sync with a massive TV campaign funded by the mining industry in response to his announcement of a significant increase in resources taxes that they would be required to pay. However, tended to be forgotten was that it also took place against a background of Rudd's failure to move on his core election promise to address climate change – as he said, “the greatest moral challenge of our times”.
So that saw Julia Gillard become PM and that immediately meant that she had to move to ensure that there was a real mandate to operate – hence the move to a general election.
Julia Gillard has now re-engaged with the mining industry and their ad campaign has gone away. And she has announced that she will convene a panel from the public constituted from a broad cross section of the community to recommend on climate change policy. Talk about a failure to address the situation! As the leader of the opposition, and hence the alternate prime minister says, we already have a panel constituted from the public to determine policy – its called parliament.
In Australia we have a rather unique electoral system. First we have compulsory voting. That means that everyone over 18 years old is required to vote. Second we have a preference system. That means that when you vote, you don't just vote for your first choice. You also vote for your 2nd, 3rd etc choices. As a result what happens is that the votes are deployed in such a way as to ultimately bring about a two contender race where the first past the post in terms of primary votes may not necessarily be the winner.
In the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday there was a letter by the Professor of Economics at the University of Sydney, Tony, Aspromourgos. In it he talks about the way that the preferential voting system actually drives a race to the bottom in terms of policy, with both of the major parties vying to be as centrist as possible.
It also creates an impossible choice for a lot of voters.
I saw this first hand yesterday in the main street of Berry, where I live. Ben van der Wijngaart, the Greens candidate was doing a stint on the street, shaking hands and meeting local people. He had a few other Greens people around who were handing out literature to people who might be interested.
While I was standing nearby and talking to a few of the people involved (full disclosure: I am a member of The Greens) I was amazed by the number of people who specifically asked how the Greens preferences would flow on election day. There had been an announcement during the week that the Greens had done a deal with the ALP (The Labour Party), but the Greens continue to encourage voters to make their own choices when it comes to the way their preferences flow to the candidates representing the major parties.
The people who asked the question made it clear that they would not vote Green if it meant that preferences would flow to Labour – and to a party that was not committed to actively addressing climate change by the implementation of a carbon tax or trading scheme.
Of course the problem here is that the opposition changed leaders as well because of the fact that their previous leader (Malcolm Turnbull) was prepared to adopt a trading scheme in conjunction with the previous PM (Kevin Rudd). The current opposition leader has been on record as saying that he doesn't believe in climate change.
So this is the dilemma: Whichever way that people vote, ultimately their votes get tallied in such a way as to lead to a choice of two. Its kind of like the way that bidding for Google ad words works. The winner just has to make the highest bid. The price is determined from the second highest bid. So democracy in Australia now gets down to us all having to vote but ultimately having no choice, because neither party actually wants to do what the public wants.
I happen to believe that a majority of the Australian public want a number of things. They want action on climate change for sure. They believe that it is happening and they believe that it needs to be addressed immediately. They base that on the scientific community's reports and recommendations. (Exclude from here those recalcitrant scientists who don't believe in climate change, but are not climate scientists and do not not have sufficient citations to their names to be taken seriously, notwithstanding the fact that some of them have the letters P, H and D after their names).
The public also want leadership. They want decisions to be made by the people that are elected based on their best judgments and their ability to access expert opinion. They don't want to be asked every couple of months to have to make assessments themselves.
But they also want to be able to require their elected representatives to be accountable. And those representatives are now more exposed to the vagaries of public opinion than ever before as a result of twitter, blogs, and social media.
The problem is that the politicians appear to have totally misread what they need to do. They don't need to take a poll before they go to the bathroom. They do need to listen to what the people are really saying. The people are saying that they want the politicians to make serious and weighty decisions and to provide leadership. This is a case of needing to be bold and to be prepared to wear the consequences. This is a time when politicians need to think of the importance of their decision making for the country and not just about whether they are going to be re-elected.
The irony of this is that each of the leading figures in politics in this country is sitting on a knife edge. Not only are their decisions going to impact on every one of us, but also on the system itself. If they don't make the right decisions they are going to lead us to the edge of chaos, and possibly beyond.
The system that we have appears to now have been gamed by the players sufficiently as to ensure that it is broken. Just like increasing the rigidity of copyright laws has brought chaos to the recorded music industry, so too is the system that we currently have leading to the ultimate destruction of the system itself.
We need to now have a new category on the ballot papers in Australia. It should be “None Of The Above”.