Hi Alistair,
I was using One Nation as a hypothetical but no matter what it's policies or
organisational problems are it is not irrelevant if it has votes. According to a
Morgan
poll 23/11 One nation had 3.5% (directed 53.5 LNP, 46.5 Lab).
Certainly it's small minors that have no stake in preference exchanges simply because
they have no chance of success anyway. Unfortunately small parties betray their
consistuency regardless. The Greens castrate themselves by naturally directing their
preferences to labor. What incentive does labor have to have more green oriented
policies. None because the Greens form a nice little safety valve for green voters and
labor gets their votes anyway. Maybe Greens would have more affect if they threatened
to be feral.
I am just a guy off the street when it comes down to it without any political
experience
and I don't know how things work. Naive is an appropriate adjective. Certainly change
will not happen from the laberials willingly.
Without wishing to descend into a homily and make irrelevant analogies my job is tuning
computers and making changes. The question to ask is always what change will have the
greatest beneficial effect with least effort?
A change with a lot of potential with a lot of effort is worth attempting no matter how
hard it is. Maybe its the only change you've got left - all you can do. A change with
small benefit even though it takes almost no effort is not worth doing because the
result is neglible. And if I tell myself I can't make changes ... well thats the end
of
my job, so I just can't do that ... ever.
In this case we're talking about strategies for making change happen. I'm all for any
strategy that will produce change and when it comes down to it there is no reason why
several strategies for change can't be persued in parallel so long as they don't
degrade
effort and aren't contradictory. Several irons in the fire is goodness.
I know I've come into this email list dumping. But can I ask what strategies for
change
do we have?
Cheers
Ric
alister air wrote:
> At 00:11 24/11/99 +1100, rtechow wrote:
>
> >Technically it is possible for 5% of the Australian Electors to kick out
> >of office 84 labor and liberal MHRs (based on the last election
> >results). That is a high degree of vulnerability. It is a lot of
> >leverage for 5% of the votes. It is a lot of power for 5% - forget the
> >Senate. Sure they would be replaced with a new batch of 84 labor and
> >liberal MPs and the liberal/labor parties would still be supreme but the
> >laberals would be badly hurt and destabilished.
>
> It's certainly possible, however, it does not resolve the structural
> problems in the electoral system, nor does it resolve control over
> government by one of two parties.
>
> >As a for instance take One Nation. You may not like One Nation's ideas
> >but the liberal and labor parties declared war on One Nation so it
> >possibly does not feel kindly disposed to either of them. Perhaps One
> >Nation could be persuaded to direct the preferences of its votes against
> >the sitting labor/liberal member in order to deliberately unseat them and
> >damage it's enemies.
>
> One Nation is a political irrelevance. It is gleefully ripping itself
> apart in a Stalinesque series of purges and show-trials of party
> members. It was registered as a party fraudulently, and its members got
> tired of being drones. It has one largely ignored Senator, one largely
> ignored NSW Upper House representative, and a handful of Queensland
> parliamentarians - most of whom won't survive the next election. It
> certainly does not retain 4-5% (leaving aside the fact that the ALP and
> Coalition will preference each other before they preference One Nation).
>
> Your idea has some merit, in that it would cause some degree of instability
> in the lower house, and governments would be changing every
> election. However, the minor parties could be betraying their constituency
> by doing this. As an example, the Greens almost always preference the ALP,
> because it's obvious the ALP have a better series of environmental policies
> than the Coalition. Note I didn't say good policies - merely better. If
> the Greens were to mix their preferences like this, the ALP won't
> preference the Greens and so they might lose their NSW Upper House seats.
>
> Preference deals benefit the minors. The Democrats are a great example of
> this - they hold the balance of power because they enter into preference
> deals. They very nearly took Alexander Downer's seat due to a deal with
> the ALP.
>
> Personally, I don't think electoral reform will come from Parliament in
> this or any other way. They've too much at stake in the present system,
> with the possible exception of the smaller minors, such as the Greens, but
> also One Nation (who, based on their primary vote, should have more federal
> representation than they do).
>
> Alister
> --
>
> "Let us not fool ourselves, half a century after the adoption
> of this Declaration (of Human Rights) and supposedly under its
> protection, millions of people have died in the world without
> reaching the age of 50 and without even knowing that there was
> a universal document that should have protected them."
> Roberto Robaina, Cuba's Foreign Minister
>
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