24 October 2008

Indies show their true colours

24 October 2008 | johnboy

The Canberra Times reports that the desperately close race for the Molonglo seventh seat now has Elena Kirschbaum, Caroline le Couteur, and Giulia Jones locked ridiculously tight.

But with counting running to next week it’s all still speculative.

Of possibly more interest, and sure to be the subject of some degree of “I told you so” from Labor, is the new publicity alliance of The Australian Motorist Party, Mark Parton and the Community Alliance Party who are claiming that their combined 15% of the electorate (not that they managed to distribute preferences between themselves) are utterly opposed to Labor:

They are asking the Greens to take this factor into account when deciding whether to throw their support behind a Liberal or Labor government.

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jakez9:50 am 27 Oct 08

VicePope said :

Kitchen Man – hear hear. We’d get better people if it was a part time thing. As it is, most of the members since self-government have been hacks and hopefuls. Politics at this level should not be a career, much less one that requires the full swag of staff and cars and superannuation.

Personally I like New Hampshire’s state Government. A 1.2 million population is serviced by a 400 member House of Reps (third largest in the world). Members are paid $200 a year and receive petrol reimbursement for traveling to Concord (which is about a 30 minute to 1 hour drive from anywhere in the state).

There is something comforting about knowing that MPs need to have a real job and thus can’t focus all their time on screwing us over.

It’s not transferable to the ACT but the principle remains the same.

VicePope11:39 am 25 Oct 08

Kitchen Man – hear hear. We’d get better people if it was a part time thing. As it is, most of the members since self-government have been hacks and hopefuls. Politics at this level should not be a career, much less one that requires the full swag of staff and cars and superannuation.

Kitchen Man11:20 am 25 Oct 08

Ant, that is the most sensible comment made on this thread. We lose sight of the fact that this is essentially a 17 member council. If the members spent less time fighting each other and working on finding solutions to the problems facing this city, everyone would be a winner. Don’t spoze that will ever happen….maybe this hung parliament gives us the opportunity as a community to be bold and trial a different form of government. The ball is in the Greens court and to some extent the ALP and the Libs. Maybe it is time to think outside the box.

ant11:04 am 25 Oct 08

I wish they’d ALL form government, that way the ACT might get a bit of value for money out of them. Party politics is silly when you’re running a town.

Clown Killer6:48 am 25 Oct 08

…unless that voter chose not give further preferences

My understanding from what has been reported was that many people voting for the Motorists Party didn’t preference anyone else – meaning, in my mind at least that they deliberately voted in a way that meant neither Liberal or Labor would benefit from their preferences. For the Motorists Party candidates to argue after the fact that what their supporters really wanted was for Labor to be deposed is simply fanciful.

Methinks these people are simply suffering a form of relevance deficit disorder – last week it was all media interviews, TV appearances, door stops and meet & greets … this week they’re actually starting to wonder if their phone has been disconnected because nobody’s rung (well except for that guy from TAMS wanting to know when their signs are going to be pulled down).

Aeek9:05 pm 24 Oct 08

They’re showing that they are just like all the other pollies – talking crap that totally ignores how the voting system works. Since none of them made quota, that 15% is flowing, in full, onto Green/Labor/Liberal as each individual chose; unless that voter chose not give further preferences.

VicePope8:32 pm 24 Oct 08

Right. We had an election. The mob previously in government lost but the previous opposition didn’t win. There’s three or four in the middle being courted by both sides.

And the the losers – the ones who couldn’t run a good enough campaign to get anyone up in any electorate – try to have their say. I was told well before that the Motorists Party was a facade for some business interests and some truly weird extremists – but by calling themselves the Motorists Party, they got some of the bogan vote. The C(R)AP – obviously a mob of flaming egos who really wanted Labor out and the Libs in, to the extent that this would be compatible with their incoherent “policies”. And the bloke who used to be on the radio – did he flirt with Pangallos or the C(R)AP at some time?

All together now. The Assembly consists of the people who got elected. Those who wanted to be elected but failed don’t get a vote in the Assembly or a say about how others should vote. There is no magic in a widely scattered 15% – one could get it by running on a dozen platforms for free beer, prohibition, concentration camps, compulsory veganism, sacking the entire ACT public sector, etc etc. It’s called representative democracy. Sometimes it’s tough and sometimes a different system would get some different people in. The system we have is one under which the mad, bad and hopeful share one thing – they lost. The Libs, the ALP and the Greens got in.

harvyk15:13 pm 24 Oct 08

The other thing I’d like to point out is that the 15% have given their vote to these particular parties (and independent), not to the liberals. There will be those in the 15% that want a labor government. In-fact the only people who you could safely say wants Zed or Stanhope to form gov’t are the people who directly voted for these two people. Beyond that I’d say all bets are off on what people actually wanted in terms of whom they wanted as CM.

These guys need to realize that 15% voted for them, not voted for them in the hope of getting liberals in, if they wanted liberals they would have voted for them.

taco5:00 pm 24 Oct 08

I am one of those people who failed to distribute preferences to Labor, Liberals, Greens, AMP

I saw my vote for the independents as a protest vote – I didn’t expect them to win, but I didn’t want my vote to help any other the other politicians get in either

Hopefully they’ll notice that 15% of people in the ACT also thinks that they are a pack of lying, sniveling and barely competent bastards, who’s only interest is in cheap political points and getting re-elected next election

jakez5:00 pm 24 Oct 08

harvyk1 said :

What are you talking about jakez? Of course your vote counts, but it mean shit when the majority of people vote for someone else.

I hate to point this out to you but “15% of the voice” basically means nothing. 85% of the population didn’t want these particular guys having a voice, in a democracy the wishes of 85% of the population need to outweigh 15% every time.

I note caf’s earlier comments, however 15% seems to be the magic number for this conversation.

It’s not nearly as simple as that Harvyk1. In a straight single seat election, the 85% does outweigh the 15%.

However in this situation, what they are basically saying (and this assumes that 15% wanted a Lib Govt which I think is a tenuous proposition at best), is that that 15% should be acknowledged by the greens in determining overall support for Stanhope et al.

I didn’t say that their vote is overwhelming, just that it should be considered as a representation of 15% of the ‘collective will’.

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