Not since the People for Nuclear Disarmament party (led by Peter Garrett) were done over by the Socialist Workers in the mid 1980s, has there been a war of such intensity among left-leaning and progressive minor parties as there is now.
Sensing a lack of support prior to the latest federal election, and desperate to hold on to their seats, the Greens developed a strategy to rope in as many votes as they could that were floating around just outside their reach on the progressive spectrum. They adopted a “take no prisoners” approach and attacked parties that up until now were considered “friendly” and “feeders” in terms of preference flows.
Knowing that Wikileaks, the Sex Party, Animal Justice, the Democrats and HEMP were all to some degree a part of the “Minor Party Alliance”, the Greens developed an online strategy to target these parties based on the fact that that some of them would preference right wing parties higher than they might usually do, just to stay a part of this group.
Formed in Sydney by the man now known as “the preference whisperer”, Glenn Druery, the Minor Party Alliance allowed minor and micro parties the chance to win a Senate seat off the back of a small primary vote, as long as all the parties in the Alliance preferenced themselves above the three major parties. It was a plan that most small parties wanted to be in on but then it also required them to place some parties above others, which may not have reflected their own core values.
Would your party’s stated policies and philosophies be more advanced by getting you elected, even though that may come at the risk of supporting another small party with an opposing political outlook? That was the question.
The Pirate Party and the Secular Party did not join the group. Animal Justice, Australian Independents, HEMP and the Democrats were all committed. Wikileaks were players who made a couple of genuine administrative errors in their final preferences.
The Sex Party were open about having one foot in the Alliance and one foot out. This hokey-pokey, each way bet approach, was the one that I supported. The Sex Party refused to preference the religious right anywhere but at the very bottom of our ticket. For this we were penalised within the Alliance and yet still allowed to stay, because we preferenced mostly progressive small parties at the top and were considered to be one of the major minor parties that delivered a substantial primary vote.
In the middle of the ticket was a large group of mostly right wing/socially conservative parties. The Greens targeted the Alliance “lefties” with an aggressive online campaign based on their preferences going to this conservative bloc. In so doing they may have established an anti-Green backlash among fellow travellers that will come back to haunt them at future elections.
It is important to note that much of the “trolling” that became the hallmark of their attack plan, came out of the Greens in Victoria. As soon as the Group Voting Tickets became public following the draw for positions on the ballot paper, Greens organisers identified certain preference flows from progressive minor parties and then through a systematic and planned attack, they arranged for supporters to insinuate that these minor parties would actually get right wing parties like One Nation, the Nationals and Australia First elected.
They worked in teams of people to post on rival candidate’s Facebook pages, official party websites and on Twitter. At one stage, a young and inexperienced staffer who had mistakenly allocated a high preference vote to Australia First thinking it was Australian Voice, was so bombarded with hate mail by Greens supporters, that she went into hiding. The messages were the same: “Your preferences could get right wing ‘nutjobs’ up in the Senate; you will be personally responsible for this; all your friends are watching you” etc.
Because we had preferenced One Nation at #39 in NSW, the Greens supporters went ballistic. Even though the Sex Party preferences team had used Antony Green’s analysis of the fact that One Nation could never be elected with minor party preferences from that position, the attack raged night and day on Facebook and Twitter. A vote for the Sex Party was akin to voting for the Hitler Youth, they implied.
It was disingenuous, dishonest and hurtful to many candidates who were young and inexperienced in politics but very impressionable on social media. Many of these were actually Greens supporters who were curious and “playing” in other parties. I don’t believe any of them will go back to the Greens after what they witnessed.
As it turned out, none of the scenarios that the Greens supporters raged about came to pass. In fact the reverse happened. The Greens did a preference deal with the mining magnate’s party and a separate preference deal with Labor – the architects of the PNG gulags. In the final wash up, Greens preferences in South Australia directly led to Family First being elected there. None of the Wikileaks or Sex Party preferences went anywhere near electing right wing parties. To say that the Greens were hypocritical is now a major understatement. But don’t let that get in the way of an attack plan that seriously wounded some of their best potential vote feeders.
Most of the progressive minor parties that ran in this election now have a very different view of the Greens, and preference alliances that might have been building over the last few years have been damaged.
In the ACT Senate election, Green’s candidate Simon Sheik failed to win the second ACT seat because the Animal Justice party sent their preferences to the Liberal candidate. The Sex Party polled the fourth highest primary vote (3.5 per cent) and sent it straight to the Greens. Personally I thought this was a major tactical error for Animal Justice but they were flexing their muscle with the Greens as payback for the local ACT Greens agreeing to a kangaroo cull earlier this year. Liberals are much more likely to shoot kangaroos than Greens in the grand scheme of things but Animal Justice felt they had been betrayed by their old allies. So they decided to show them that there was a price to be paid for this.
The real lesson for the Greens was that 1.21 per cent of the vote from a former ally can make the difference between winning and losing.
The Greens may well regret their tactics now. The focus for progressive parties is beginning to shift from the environment to civil liberties. The environment has in the past been the rallying point for dissatisfied and politically disenfranchised youth since Bob Brown led the Franklin Dam campaign in the early 1980s and launched the Greens. A move away from this focus at a time when environmental issues have global, rather than more localised, significance is not a good sign. But the Greens have only themselves to blame. Their new and aggressive style of personalised campaigning was never a part of Bob Brown’s Gandhi-esque approach.
Changes to the preferential voting system that will come about before the next federal election — and as early as the next South Australian state election — could well see the end of many small parties on the left/progressive spectrum. Any suggestion that a party must have 4 or 5 per cent of the primary vote before being eligible to be elected would mean the end for 95 per cent of minor parties.
Optional preferential voting above the line could solve most of the problems that people have with a large voting ticket. This would allow voters to simply number the parties above the line that they like, in order of preference, with no need to go more than five or six parties. Psephologists like Antony Green have cited the size of the ballot paper as a separate problem and that the only way for this to be corrected is to raise the bar so high for minor parties that they can’t get over it.
Huge hikes in deposit fees for candidates, even bigger fees to register parties and substantially increased numbers of demonstrated party members (over the 500 already required — 750 in NSW) have all been mooted. Antony Green has suggested to me privately that this will force small parties with similar ideologies to coalesce and become medium sized parties which can then afford the extra fees.
The problem with this is that these parties are being forced by an economic imperative to band together and not via a natural alignment of policy and philosophy. There is also the problem that psephologists will never mention: too many micro parties makes their job of predicting election outcomes much more difficult.
The last federal election saw a record number of minor parties contesting. The next one could see the end of minor parties altogether except for those that are bankrolled by millionaires. The Greens entered politics in Australia under an optional preferential style of voting and it is in their interests to protect other small progressive parties when changes to the current system come under the microscope. The progressive side of politics in Australia is in urgent need of a group hug.
New Matilda has sought a response from the Greens to the allegations made in this article.
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jcleeland
Posted Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 13:46
It's simple. Vote below the line.
Chris Curtis
Posted Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 13:54
The Greens, yet again, are getting away with pretending to be more principled than other parties, this time by claiming that they want to put the power of preferences back into the hands of the voters when above-the-line preferences do no such thing.
We have a developing media narrative on Senate voting “reform” because the “wrong guys” won. Suggestions are being made that in effect would make the voting system less democratic. The Greens, having helped destroy two Labor prime ministers and two Labor governments and having lost votes as a result, now want to distort the Senate voting system for their own advantage, and commentators are unwittingly assisting them in this aim. To adapt Henry Ford’s saying, “You can have any third party you like, as long as it’s Green.”
The Greens cloak their demand for above-the-line preferences in principle, but astute observers know they advocate this change from self-interest: they remain angry that the Victorian branch of the ALP dared to use preferences to put Family First into the Senate in 2004 and the DLP into the Victorian Legislative Council in 2006 instead of yet another Green and they think they will get preferences from Labor voters deluded into thinking that the Greens are Labor’s friends. They believe, with their insufferable sense of entitlement, that this change will prevent Labor effectively preferencing other third parties.
It is inconceivable that Labor or the Coalition would support a voting system designed to give the Greens a lock on the balance of power in the Senate, whether it be above-the-line preferences or a threshold to prevent third party candidates other than the Greens from even staying in the count.
I have expanded on these thoughts in my post at http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2013/09/25/senate-call-of-the-board/?comment_page=6/#comments.
Timmuh
Posted Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 14:23
As much as I like Antony Green, I can't support anything that increases the financial cost of participating in democracy.
Above the line preferential, whether full or partial, puts power back in the hand of the voter. The party still hspower of order of candidates, but only within their own group. Any stooge parties that exist purely for siphening preferences disappear.
Banning how to vote cards would be good too. In some state/territory elections they can't be given out within a certain distance of a polling booth (I think 400 metres in Tasmanian elections). As a result, nobody bothers with them. And, people still manage to cast a valid vote.
markz
Posted Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 14:43
Not being the world's greatest use of social media I am not sure what Robbins is on about. It would make a bit more sense if he could actually provide some details of what he calls the Greens "attack plan". It seems all innuendo and that we are supposed to automatically agree with his assessment, without him having to justify such accusations.
Also although he may be pissed off with the Greens the order of events would also be important. If there was such an "attack plan", was it formed after he used Glen Druery to stitch up a deal? Given that this was always going to shaft the Greens did he expect no reaction to such consequences?!?
And given his deal with Glen Druery, I find it a bit hard to swallow his later sanctimonious statement on smaller parties being forced to coalesce: "being forced by an economic imperative to band together and not via a natural alignment of policy and philosophy".
If the Greens stopped to doing deals with Druery I would quickly lose respect for them, as I have lost respect for those that did do such deals.
markfletcher
Posted Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 14:47
Golf clap.
Simon Hunt
Posted Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 15:08
It is deeply disengenous for the Sex Party to be calling for a "group hug" on the "progressive" side of politics while, at the same time, continuing the divisive tactics, selective blaming and self-centred half-truths that they practiced throughout the election campaign.
Firstly, it's been long determined that the Sex Party will never come fully clean about their placement of Pauline Hanson's One Nation way above many other progressive parties, including the Greens, on their Group Voting Tickets. As in this article, their PR rhetoric in the election trumpeted their low placement of the christian right as a direct 'replacement' for explaining their relatively high preferencing of racist and culturally bigoted parties.
It was also clear from several tweets, press releases and blog posts that they also employed a tactic of portraying One Nation as being "not as bad as some people think", buying into the same tactics that the One Nation party itself used to 'mainstream' itself while retaining the same old policies of cultural bigotry and racism. This is perhaps the worst legacy that the Sex Party has left behind in the 2013 election. Let's get this straight - the Sex Party sold out on race and bigotry, and doesn't seem to understand that these are major issues in the so-called progressive shift to "civil liberties" that Robbie Swan points to within the article.
More than a month after the election, the Sex Party continues to misuse Antony Green's name to back up its internal analysis of self-justification. As soon as the GVTs were released, Green published an alarming video about the consequences of minor party dealings, and distinctly raised the possibility of Pauline Hanson (or the Shooters) being elected, calling out the Sex Party by name for their high preferencing of Hanson. After this, the Sex Party continued to refer to a PRE-GVT article of Green's that doubted Hanson's chances, ignoring his more informed update even to this day. This is purposefully misleading. As it was, both Hanson and the Shooters missed out due to the LDP donkey vote in NSW, and their election was averted, but this does not excuse the way that the Sex Party and others danced with the fascists in their preferencing.
It was extremely clear from social media that it was the Sex Party, not the Greens, who lost hordes of voters in the blowback about their separation of treatment for different types of bigotry : punishment for the christian right, and deals with parties who didn't foreground a religious aspect to their bigotry. The Sex Party should understand that people who hate bigotry actually hate bigotry, and do not trust parties who split the politics of hate to serve their own needs.
Finally, please do not define changing focuses in progressive politics by the limitations of focus of your own party platform. People are not moving "away" from environmental issues towards your selected "civil liberties" just because the Sex Party has no environmental or climate change policies at all. Look outside your own narrow worldview. This is not to say that as a minor party the Sex Party needs to cover all issues, but neither should it define the world or progressive politics by a perspective that has been narrowed for these practical party-driven reasons : otherwise you're just splitting people apart, and hugging yourself.
Simon Hunt / Pauline Pantsdown.
Greg O
Posted Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 15:12
I agree with some of the underlying proposition of this article, but the analysis of the SA Senate result is pretty silly. Yes, technically after Hanson-Young was elected the surplus of 64,000 vote went to Family First and elected Bob Day, but 2/3 of that were not originally Green votes and almost every other candidate had been excluded. There were no progressive alternatives left at that point. (I am not counting the Nick Xenophon party as progressive, but if you do, then perhaps you could blame Xenophon for preferencing the pro-pokie major parties above the Greens and destroying that preference deal).
But really, the truth is that when candidates are a long way below quota, any number of counting good luck runs are needed to get elected, and there were lots of other decisions that meant Bob Day got elected. But if Labor had polled better, and left their #2 Don Farrell (whose policies on many issues would not be dissimilar to Family First!) in the race, the result would have been different. But since Labor's vote collapsed because Xenophon captured such a swathe of primary vote, perhaps it was Nick's fault Family First got elected rather than his running mate!
The argument clearly gets silly criticising parties for where there bottom preferences go - it is simply impossible to preferences for all possible permutations. I am happy to criticise all parties when their preference deals dishonour their policies and philosophies, but do it on the basis of policy, not on basis of the Senate lottery outcomes.
And finally, perhaps Bob Day is not such a bad fella after all. Ok, so he does not really believe in the minimum wage, wants to open up the hills and plains to suburban development, and does not believe in human caused climate change (he thinks that carbon is really just plant food). But since the environment movement in SA said nothing in the lead up to the election about that, maybe his election is their fault!
Greg O
Posted Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 15:16
PS. Anthony Green was also wrong about the SA Senate. He said Sarah H-Y had no chance. He is not the messiah, he is just a very major-party boy.
Disgruntled Loner
Posted Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 15:34
So, was another person who just happened to also be called ¨Robbie Swan¨ responsible for all those interviews during the election where he threatened legal action against ¨Alliance¨ members? Your evil twin perhaps?
Why would it be surprising that Party Members would also have problems accepting a deal that someone calling himself ¨Robbie Swan¨ was telling anyone who would listen that he intended to take legal action against?
And, speaking of Party Members, I notice in your entire piece above you never mention what actual Sex Party Members wanted.
Also, how exactly did this ¨conspiracy¨ backfire? You didn´t get elected. No one from your Party got elected. The big winner was Palmer, who isn´t Green and wasn´t part of your Alliance.
zeroxcliche
Posted Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 16:04
I'd just add that the Wikileaks preferencing was not a mistake and this has quite clearly come out and I'm going to be doing my bit to get the knowledge of this "preference whisperer" Glenn Druery out to disaffected wikileaks supporters who left the party in droves over preferencing. I also think the Sex Party has exposed (ha) itself as being a libertarian party more than a progressive just like the wikileaks party. I don't see a hug on the horizon I see your potential end. There is pragmatism and then there is the undermining of the democratic process.
I think we should forget above the line voting and just have all the parties listed and people can just preference as much as they like, either one or more and the diehards and the deals will only be relevant to hardcore supporters willing to fill out more of the form.
zeroxcliche
Posted Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 16:25
I should probably make clear - it would be an effective end to the preferential voting system - preferencing deals would only have relevance on how to vote cards,it would still be relevant but would be pushed away from the centre of the process to the margins where it should be. And the bar for entry should not be raised.
zeroxcliche
Posted Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 18:59
And another thing while I'm completely altering the architecture of the electoral system, if people number boxes in a below the line only system we should move to a card system that can be read by a machine - not an antiquated punch card US system but something modern a bit like what they use in University/TEE multiple choice questions only smaller. People like Malcolm Turnbull suggest going to a computer system but it is good to have a hard copy, but a machine reading system would streamline the process and we should use pens not pencils just as the big Pup himself has suggested. What the probable result would be is most people numbering their top half dozen and then the numbers would drop off substantially. As parties with low primary vote fall by the wayside the votes move to their next preference and on. No more deals except for how to vote cards. Major parties who get pref votes should be given info on minor party voter trends that preferenced them and as a result they can become a second tier constituency - so a Sex Party whose preferences tended to go to a particular political party, in a sense the SP would have the right to go to that Major party and derive some policy position commersurate with the level of preference support. The combining of minor parties looked for by Antony Green would be achieved in a more nuanced way, minor partys would become outlier voting blocs in major partys? I think that makes sense.
kevinbonham
Posted Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 22:27
Just to clarify on South Australia - as Greg O hints it was in fact the ALP's preferencing decisions, not the Greens, that were the determining factor in Family First's Bob Day getting elected instead of Xenophon's running mate. Day would have won whatever the Greens did - however this is not for want of trying to cause his election instead of Griff's on the Greens' part.
Also, Labor and the Greens went within 822 votes of causing the election of another FF candidate, Peter Madden, in Tasmania. Madden is extremely anti-gay and anti-abortion and yet the Greens- Bob Brown's old party, for crying out loud - unfathomably preferenced someone they should have put last or nearly so 18th out of 54. Madden was only stopped by a combination of a high PUP vote sucking oxygen from potential preference feeders, and by the Sex Party polling just well enough to eliminate him.
The Sex Party was one of only two parties on the Tasmanian ballot not to preference Madden ahead of at least one of Labor, the Liberals or the Greens, the other being the Pirate Party. Had Madden been elected, which he very nearly was, there would have been very few remotely clean hands to be seen and the damage to the Greens brand in Tasmania would have been substantial (as if they don't have enough troubles already).
Every preferencing decision, even towards the tail end of the ballot paper matters. It's no good saying that the party you put ahead of another was at number 80 and therefore it's alright, because the reality of the Senate system is that papers don't stop influencing the count the way they do in, say, last-bundle Hare-Clark. Votes frequently do stay live (even if at reduced value) most of the way down the ticket. Every choice might make a difference. If you put party A ahead of party B and this causes party A to be elected instead of party B then you are responsible for that, wherever on your ticket that occurs.
Oh, and as a psephologist I'm very happy to say that the abundance of micro parties makes predicting outcomes much more difficult! But if outcomes were hard to predict because the system was excellent, I would be very happy about that. That's not the case; the system's glaring faults and the unpredictability of outcomes are closely entwined.
I do want a system that gives minor parties a chance - but one that gives them a fair chance based on genuine voter intention (when they deserve election based on it), not an arbitrary one based on backroom deals and Senate demolottery. One of the biggest impedement to proportional representation for minor parties is the entrenched division into states.
robbieswan
Posted Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 23:52
Disgruntled Loner...I never threatened to sue anyone from the Minor Party Alliance....why would I do that? I certainly called for a parliamentary or Australian Electoral Commission enquiry into the circumstances surrounding the broken preference deal between the Liberal Democratic Party and the Sex Party in Victoria but the LDP was not part of the Minor Party Alliance. Had the LDP kept to its deal, Fiona Patten from the Sex Party would in all liklihood be a Senator-elect for Victoria now instead of the Motorist's Party. When a major preference agreement is abrogated to the extent that the makeup of the parliament is potentially altered by that abrogation, I believe that it is reasonable that the parliament investigate the circumtsances around the broken promise. But that is a far cry from threatening to sue someone. What you are saying is completly untrue.
Arvel Crynyd
Posted Friday, October 18, 2013 - 01:16
Robbieswan, shouldn't you come clean on ALL the deals done by the Sex Party in the lead up to the election before you attack others for attacking you on the deals you did?
What was the deal with One Nation? What did you get in return?
What was the deal with the LDP that they failed to honour?
If you want sympathy, you need to come with clean hands.
robbieswan
Posted Friday, October 18, 2013 - 09:41
Arvel...thank you for your question but there is no need to 'come clean' on any of our preferences. They are there for all to see on the GVTs that we, along with all parties, lodged with the Electoral Commission. There was no 'deal' with One Nation. They put us near last on all their GVTs! We did have an agreement with the LDP which they failed to honour and which may be the subject of a parliamentary enquiry. And we spoke to most of the smaller parties about where they would preference us and where we would preference them. The exception for us was the religious right parties, of which there were five. We did not talk to any of them about preferences. The arrangements we had with the Greens and the ALP I will not diviluge without the agreement of those parties because that was part of the deal. But as I said above, I can say that in the ACT our preferences went close to getting Simon Sheik elected and it was only the Animal Justice party voting away from the Greens which probably lost them the 2nd Senate seat in the ACT. The Greens national preference coordinator was perfectly happy with the arrangements we had although that was not reciprocated by us in a few jurisdictions where we felt we got the rough end of the pineapple.
Simon Hunt/Pauline Pantsdown's comments on our placement of One Nation in NSW at #39 are all about the fact that we put them above the Greens. This says nothing about the Sex Party's attitudes to asylum seekers or racism. One Nation's immigration policies are almost the same as Labor's and the same as the current government's for god's sake. The Greens did a national preference deal with Labor who proposed the PNG solution to asylum seekers. How can he in all honesty, continue this confected faux outrage?
Arvel Crynyd
Posted Friday, October 18, 2013 - 12:18
Robbieswan, your assertion that there was "no deal" with One Nation in NSW seems to be an extraordinary admission to make. They placed you "near last" yet in NSW you placed Pauline Hanson (no less!) ahead of Socialist Alliance, the Greens and the ALP (amongst others).
As you had "no deal" with One Nation, I can only assume you placed them ahead of all these other parties on merit.
Is it the anti-immigration policies of One Nation you find most attractive or do you like their anti-Aboriginal policies most? As the Registered Officer of the ASP, what attracted you most to Pauline Hanson?
Disgruntled Loner
Posted Friday, October 18, 2013 - 13:18
Damn, Robbie, it must have been your evil twin. Just look at what he said to the ABC:
¨In Victoria, there are threats of legal action over what has been called a preference deal gone wrong.
"We did a preference swap with the Liberal Democratic Party and four other parties that were controlled by them," the Australian Sex Party's Robbie Swan said.¨ Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-19/party-leaders-call-for-overhaul-of-senate-preferencing-system/4897040
The crafty bastard even managed to post it on the Official Sex Party Website: http://www.sexparty.org.au/news/1631-minor-party-leaders-call-for-overhaul-of-corrupt-senate-preferencing-system.html
Look, I found even more postings from your evil twin on the official Sex Party Website: ¨The Sex Party then rang its lawyers, hoping to argue that failing technology at the AEC was unfair and the late lodgement of a card should be allowed.¨ Source: http://www.sexparty.org.au/news/1649-faulty-fax-machine-blamed-in-sex-party-spat-over-senate-seat.html
Robbie, have you considered that the conspiracy may be even worse than you suspect? The Greens aren´t just conspiring against you, they have your evil twin working for the Sex Party as their ¨inside man¨!
Arvel Crynyd
Posted Friday, October 18, 2013 - 13:31
Robbieswan, you need to explain why you preferenced Pauline Hanson of One Nation ahead of the Greens and the ALP. It must be one of the following:
Only once you come clean can you be judged on your assertion that you were unfairly targeted by the Greens.
fightmumma
Posted Friday, October 18, 2013 - 17:00
see this is exactly the problem - parties saying they would disclose preference deals because of the other groups' desires/wants etc. This is antidemocratic and the way that political actors appear to believe this is no issue for the integrity of democratic processes ie THE PEOPLE having the say in who comes to power - is a very big concern! Same as abuses of spending privileges - framed as entitlements by political actors - SORRY guys - if it isn't ok for needy people to believ in entitlement for their below-poverty-line welfare payment YOU ALSO are NOT entitled. A democracy functioning according to its principles requires an openness for citizens to be empowered to make informed intelligent considered decisions. This preferencing bullshit is SO ANTIDEMOCRACY and political actors who are attached to and benefit from it (especially who end up with the power) are not actually interested in or engaging with democratic ideals. These people are a threat to everything democracy stands for, a threat to everyday people's interests, voices, decisions etc. Proper voting that eliminates secret preferencing deals is the best way to protect democracy and to also condition citizens back into a more active participatory role in their governance...and also political actors would be forced to have to prove and advocate for their values, interests, policies etc.
fightmumma
Posted Friday, October 18, 2013 - 17:01
whoops - I meant to say "parties that WOULDN'T disclose preference deals"
robbieswan
Posted Monday, October 21, 2013 - 10:52
disgruntled loner....you alleged that I was "threatening legal action against Alliance members". Firstly,the LDP was NOT an Alliance member! Secondly, I was not threatening them with legal action - there are no grounds to sue someone or a party for failing to lodge a GVT. There should be because a broken promise in this regard has the capacity to fraudulently alter the makeup of the federal parliament! But currently that's not the case. I was calling for the Parliament or the AEC or even the Priviliges Commitee to take legal action over the issue - not me! This was pretty plain to see and you are being completely disingenuous here.
Tony Backhouse
Posted Thursday, October 31, 2013 - 17:20
The Australian Greens have been promoting the "Above the Line, Across the Page" voting system which is in practice effectivly the First Past The Post List system that elected Hitler and the Nazi's due to vote splitting. The only NSW Legislative Councillor to have been elected by "Above The Line" preferences is NSW Greens Jeremy Buckingham who benefitted from a covert Preference Deal within the Uniting Church where 6000 supporters of the Family First MLC Gordon Moyes gave their second preference to the Greens as payback to the Australian Democrats who directed all of their ACT Group Ticket votes to Gary Humphries of the Liberal Party to prevent the Australian Green's Candidate Lin Hatfield Dodd's from reaching her Election Quota - We should Elect our Six State Senators using the Optional Preferential Hair Clark Voting System with Robson Rotation similar to as used to Elect the Wards of the ACT Assembly -http://www.elections.act.gov.au/publications/act_electoral_commission_fact_sheets/elections_act_factsheet_hare-clark_electoral_system