Simon Rumble’s blog

When you live in a safe Labor seat the porky treats don't seem to flow so fast. The best local Labor ubergruppenfuhrer could muster was insulating the local high school against aircraft noise and cleaning up some stormwater. Hell, the "Recent News" on the front page of his site lists water projects in WA, Tasmania and Western NSW. Given the staggering quantities of porcine delights being bandied around, it doesn't amount to much.

Couple that with the fact that I haven't seen Albo at all in the year I've lived here, especially not during the campaign. Great to have a local member who doesn't need to give a shit about his electorate.

If, like me, you live in Grayndler, make it a closer two-way fight by voting Greens. Hopefully that way we'll at least get some attention from our local member.

It's always dangerous picking the winner of an election, but it should be pretty clear to just about everyone now who's going to win. The question remains, by how much.

So going out on a limb somewhat, I'm going to call it for a Labor landslide. It might not translate into a landslide of seats though, but the two-party preferred vote will have a margin of at least 12%. They'll scrape over the line in the Senate with either an outright majority or have to rely on The Greens in the Senate, but will at least extinguish the Tory majority there and hopefully silence the religious nutjobs.

Tasmania will be a clean Labor sweep, and the pulp mill will thus be canned shortly after the election, though Gunns will get mightily compensated in some way for it.

What's your prediction?

Howard is categorically stating that there's no Workchoices sequel in the wings, should they be re-elected. I can't believe the opposition hasn't come out asking if that's a core or non-core promise. In fact, they should be asking that question after every promise.

Some of the Greens volunteers

Voting started last week at the busiest polling place in Australian elections, Australia House situated on The Strand in London. The embassy is open all this week, including until 20:00 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Queues at the 2004 election

Australia House saw more than 20,000 voters pass through last time, with queues wrapped around the block on the busiest evenings. Working hard to get as many Green votes as possible, while standing out in the cold, is a small team of Greens volunteers organized by the resourceful Michelle Wauchope (first on the left in the first photo) from South Australia.

"Many ex-pats do see the Greens has having an important role to play in Australia's future," booth coordinator Michelle said. "With the recent statistics about Australia being the worst Co2 polluters per capita, the refusal of Kyoto, our role in the Iraq war, and our treatment of refugees, Australia, and therefore Australians, are often poorly perceived by the people we brush up against every day."

Last election we were inside the Embassy itself, but this time party volunteers have been forced into the harsh London winter. Michelle has found relief from "a set of thermal pants under the trousers, a scarf and a decent jacket and jumper. Still wish we were in 32 degree days doing this though!"

So if you're over in London, get yourself down to the embassy and vote. If you're keen, help out the Greens at the booth.

The full timetable and details of voting are available on the Australian High Commission site. To get involved in the campaign in London and help out, get in touch with Michelle by email at london@greens.org.au.

Greens volunteers from 2004 election

The Greens have done a great short video explaining how parliament works, and why voting Green in the upper house is so important, regardless of how you vote in the lower house.

This election I've spent some time making fun of the tax-dodging gun nuts, but they make an excellent point about Howard's campaign launch yesterday. While promising $4 million a second, the Liberals really put the lie to their self description as "fiscal conservatives". The elephant in the room is that their tax and spend culture has contributed enormously to inflation, which has forced up interest rates.

A risky but potentially knockout option for Labor would be to promise less and attempt to force the narrative in the direction Lindsay Tanner's description of Costello's 2007 Budget: "a budget built on preaching abstinence and practising incontinence". I suspect the Labor hard heads will look at the polls and decide not to take the risk.

So on election day, just remember that it's your money they're buying your vote with! Of course, the difference between me and the libertarians is that I don't mind governments taxing and spending, provided the money is spent on something more useful than another Olympic sized swimming pool for a ridiculously rich private school.

Easily Confused pointed me at this great article (via Danny) about floating libertarian microstates. It's a remarkably common theme amongst the tax-dodging no-such-thing-as-society fear-the-black-UN-helicopters-who-want-your-guns set. I remember reading, with interest, about The Atlantis Project back in my early days on the Net.

It seems the most common factor amongst all these state opt-out projects is their continuing non-existence. The article is hysterical! I particularly love the closing line.

I was in Stanmore this morning handing out flyers for The Greens and yet again I had to explain our preferential voting system to a number of people. These aren't stupid, uneducated people, just people who have never learnt how voting in Australia works.

Australia's lower house runs the voting system knows as instant runoff, or more commonly in Australia known as preferential. It works like this:

1. The voter puts a number in every box, against every candidate, showing their preference from 1 (candidate the voter would most like) until all the boxes are filled in.
2. When voting, the first preference (the ones) are sorted out for each candidate and counted.
3. If any candidate has a clear majority (>50%) they are declared the winner, otherwise:
4. The candidate with the least votes is removed from the running, and his second preferences (2) are sorted out and added to the other candidates' piles.
5. This continues through all the preferences until there is a clear winner.

Now if you hear the nonsense that "a vote for a minor party is a wasted vote", what you're hearing about is other voting systems. In much of Europe and the US, they use a single box vote -- you tick one box and that's it. In that case, unless you vote for one of the top two candidates, your vote is indeed wasted. However in Australia, your vote continues until it ends up on one of the piles of the top two candidates.

So let's say you live in an ordinary electorate, you can register your true preference for the candidates of minor parties, but still ensure that your preference between Labor and Coalition candidates is expressed. So you can still vote for The Greens while still contributing to getting rid of Howard. The candidate you put as your first preference, assuming they get 4 percent of first preferences, will receive funding from the Electoral Commission, so it's worth giving the first vote to the party you really want.

Update: Raz writes in to point out that the rounds of preference distribution only continue until a candidate gets an absolute majority. That's correct, and I've amended my description.

Raz also argues that the reason I gave to give your "1" vote is a pretty bad reason. He suggests it puts voters' preferences on the table and therefore:

• allows major parties (those who have a shot of ending up in government) to adjust their policies to suit a wider range of Australians

and/or

• allows momentum to build behind a new party when there's a sea-change in voter sentiment.

The Senate group ticket preferencing deals are out. These are the preferences that apply for the majority of voters who vote above-the-line. Some interesting things have popped up -- I'm looking at the NSW tickets, you can see the full list on the AEC site.

• The Liberal Party are preferencing the religious fascists (Fred Nile, then Family First), but they aren't returning the favour.
• A vote for LaRouche nutjobs Citzens Electoral Council is essentially a vote for the Coalition, with preferences going straight there and likely to stay.
• Family First are pretty keen on the Liberty & Democracy Party, with preferences going there straight after Carers Alliance. Have they actually read and understood the LDP's policies? Not really compatible with the heavily-regulated sexuality state they're keen on.
• As I suspected, Climate Change Coalition are doing dodgy things. They've preferences The Fishing Party ahead of The Greens! Family First are well ahead in their list too.
• What Women Want have tried to screw Labor by giving their first preference flowing to the party to the third person on the Labor ticket. Not sure if this works though. Any amateur psephologists care to comment?

So lots of interesting deals in there, some extremely grubby. It's hilarious hearing Family First talk about the (open and honestly discussed) preference deal between Labor and The Greens as "grubby" given their filthy deals with LDP and Non-Custodial Parents (surely they'd be encouraging the parents to stay together?).

So my previous post about the Liberty & Democracy Party got some responses. I had a long conversation with one Terje Petersen and he seemed pretty rational, a nice guy really. We disagree on a number of issues, of course, especially gun control.

Just now I received another one which appears somewhat less rational, from a harry1233 at excite.com (perhaps that should be overexcite.com). Rather than actually read my blog post, he's immediately jumped to the conclusion that I'm dissing the party. Far from it, though of course I did point out the overlap between libertarians and the tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy theorizing anti-semites. While it may have nothing to do with the LDP, they inhabit the same part of the intellectual spectrum as these nutjobs. Just as those of us on the Green side of politics have our tree-hugging, gaia consciousness, deep ecologist hippy nutjobs that we're all embarrassed of, like a nutty old uncle who only gets rolled out for Christmas and birthdays.

Anyway, for your amusement: