Tag Archives: Australian Greens

A chance in Eden-Monaro to reject third-rate governance

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[Published at Independent Australia 14, June, but with the headline seriously neutered. See note at end*. May be the end of the line with IA, sad to say.]

The political class keeps acting as though the Government deserves to be taken seriously, but the Government is grossly incompetent, corrupt, deluded and, by any reasonable standard of truth, illegitimate. That the Opposition can’t beat them constitutes its own calamitous failure. Voters in the coming Eden-Monaro by-election have the choice of people who could actually represent, and govern.

There are some things the federal Government could be doing in response to the rapid-fire series of disasters still unfolding in Australia.

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Australia’s Political Culture Is Failing Us, So Elect Independents

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[Published at Independent Australia, 3 Nov.]

Helen Haines and Voices for Indi

Our entire mainstream political culture – the old parties, tribes and labels, the media, the commentariat, the adversarial process, the petty squabbling – fails comprehensively to serve our needs and insults our capabilities. Independents offer a glimmer of hope, and we need to get more of them into parliament.

The Coalition Government is with little doubt the most vacuous, incompetent, deluded, irresponsible and malicious of our short Federated history. This is the rabble Labor failed to defeat in the 2019 election. Labor still seems to have little idea what to do, and anyway they have been complicit in a great deal of the damage done to our society since 2001, and in the neglect of urgent issues.

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The Greens: Paddling Hard but Missing the Wave

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[Just published at Independent Australia]

article-9388-heroDisaffection with old parties and old politics continues to grow, here and abroad. Unlike the US and the UK, however, progressive politics in Australia is hardly progressing. The Greens are the obvious standard-bearer, but so far they are missing the wave. It matters because the destruction of the informed, fair-go society and the sell-out of our sovereignty continue apace.

In the recent election the Greens pulled only 10% of the 23% of primary votes that went to non-major parties in the House. For the Senate, they got 8.7% of around 35% of non-major primary votes.

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Approval voting: a non-distorting, non-gamable measure of voters’ will

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[Published 28 Feb 2016 at Independent Australia]

votersThe Coalition has been negotiating with the Greens to change the Senate voting system. Proposed changes reportedly would exclude most minor parties and some of the Greens, while benefiting mainly the Liberal Party.

It is claimed the Senate voting system results in an unrepresentative Senate, because the system has been gamed by minor parties to gather preferences and get one of them elected. There is some truth to the charge, in that quirks can determine which minor party is elected. On the other hand no minor party would be elected if the major parties were not so unpopular.

However the more fundamental problem is that no conventional preferential voting system can reliably reflect the voters’ will. Strangely enough, there is another voting system that would reliably reflect the voters’ will, and it is a widely used system. It’s just not used in politics. Would the Greens party please pay attention?

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