THE FUTURE DIRECTION OF AUSTRALIA IN THE BALANCE

the least inspiring election we’ve ever witnessed

Yes it’s true. So this is what the pinnacle of Australian democracy looks like – an election without any inspiring movements, charismatic leaders or real interest from the population. The current ‘first past the post – winner takes all‘ system will, once again, deliver us either a Labor or Liberal government.

The best result currently would be if somehow they were forced into a minority government, which means the winner would have to actually collaborate with other voices and interests in Australia in order to function, something neither side wants to do.  Yet isn’t that the very basis of a functional and constructive democracy? 

Seriously..

ARTS OPTIONS FOR VOTERS

Funding for the Arts has disappeared down a rabbithole in terms of political party interest. Labor are offering some extra cash for the ABC/SBS. The Liberals really have nothing at all, other than a number of potential defence force jobs for arts workers otherwise facing poverty. The Greens, the most progressive of the three largest parties (though also with no chance of EVER forming government), also fails to reflect anything directly to do with Arts & Culture in their platform, though there is the scent of sympathy in their political platform stools. What an election.

ARTS PARTY / VOTE COMPASS

So as an experiment, we used the Arts Party’s key principles and policies to see where the ABC Vote Compass app would place us on the political spectrum. Here’s the results:

An interesting result and feels pretty accurate. We recommend you try out the ABC Vote Compass app to see how it sees you.

HOW TO VOTE THEN?

Well in the Aussie and general prosperous Western tradition, you are going to probably vote for ‘THE LEAST WORST OPTION’. The beauty of the Australian preferential voting system means that can literally be the last preference and still count if all your higher preferences do not succeed in getting elected (very likely). The important part of this is that your preferences are analysed by the major parties and do make a difference. However they will not be interested in any preferences given ‘AFTER’ them. You must put the smaller issue parties first.

So let’s say you choose 5 parties. This is a good starting point:

1. xxxxxx
2. yyyyyy
3. zzzzzzz
4. Greens
5. Labor

BUT WHICH PARTIES?

Well for both houses, the federal system means your vote is carried on a state level and therefore you will have different choices depending on where you live. So of the options below, some will not be available to you depending on where you live. Anyway, these are the ones we like the look of after filtering out all the the small minded, self-interest-driven right wing and unprincipled parties.

The links will take you to Wikipedia for more info. This list is sorted alphabetically, we are not recommending any first, make your own decisions:

WHAT ABOUT THE ARTS PARTY?

Well this whole farcical state of political affairs does make us wonder whether we should now re-register as a federal party. Perhaps we should do a poll of everyone on our mailing list. They have increased the number or electoral registered members to 1500 but we have 15000 supporters. This is a conversation for our Facebook page.