Thinking of voting for the Greens but don’t want any preferences flowing to pro-cenosrship minister Senator Stephen Conroy? As part of its ongoing Fight The Filter campaign, Gizmodo has a comprehensive explanation of why voting for the Greens above the line in the Victorian senate won’t see any of your preferences directed his way in practice. I’m personally still planning to fill out all the numbers on my own Senate voting form — that’s the only way to balance my views on a lot of issues — but if that seems too much hassle, it’s well worth a read. [Gizmodo]
Making Your Senate Vote Count Against The Filter
Comments
8 responses to “Making Your Senate Vote Count Against The Filter”
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David S.
It’s not Conroy we have to worry about. He’s just a loyal water-carrying politician doing what’s he’s been told – i.e. do whatever it takes in your portfolio to get the government’s legislation through the Senate.
That means “make Senator Fielding happy”. Fielding wants an internet filter, so as long as he has a deciding Senate vote he gets an internet filter (it doesn’t have to be a good one though, Fielding wouldn’t know the difference. That’s why it has so many holes in it).
Fielding is the main game, get rid of him and the filter is dead. Get rid of Conroy but keep Fielding and a new Comms Minister will be pushing the filter next year just as hard as Conroy.
The government and the Greens seem to have done a preferences deal for the Senate that should see Fielding get the heave ho and ensure the Greens hold the balance of power in the Senate from July 1 next year. If that comes to pass the filter’s history.
Though it will be amusing to hear Conroy back-peddle on it and make excuses when it’s dropped (assuming he’s still Comms Minister then), it won’t be his call. He’ll have done his job and be rewarded for having copped all the flack over it.
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cbp
Thanks for running these articles on preferences – it is incredible the lack of knowledge people have about how preferences work in Australia. Don’t they teach this stuff in school?!
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James Ponting
No, they don’t anymore.
I was taught, but I notice a lot of my friends (aged 22+) do not understand that you are not in fact voting “FOR RUDD!!” but rather voting for the Labour Party who in turn vote for Rudd.
People seem to think we live in the US :\
What is Australia coming to 🙁
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Dan
We were never taught anything about the Australian political system at any of the 4 high schools I went to (graduated in Qld. in 1990). Mind you, the fascist National Party under Bjelke-Petersen was still at the helm so it was probably banned anyway (I remember the word “sex” and any of its morphological derivates eg “homosexuality”, “sexism” were all banned in HIV ed classes LOL), but still, it wasn’t until I did Political Science at Uni (in Tas.) that the preferential/proportional representation systems were covered in depth, or at all for that matter.
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Na Yeo
So if we think for ourselves and conclude we don’t want to go with the ‘within the box’ group-think, we should just invert the recommendations in the article?
OK.
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Gill
Actually I think it stinks that a plainly english pamphlet isn’t distributed at Election time – explaining how preferences work & how ensure that your personal 2nd preference gets voted for rather than allowing minor parties to do deals with the two major parties.
If we wanted to vote Gillard / Abbot we would – some of us would like to see the Greens and our Independents get in and remain exactly what they stand for – Greens for the Greens and Independents to be just that – Independents and not extensions of the two major parties.
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John Kirkham
The reason Labor made a deal with the Greens so Fielding doesn’t have a say in the senate in 2011 onwards.
The top 3 ISP may use the filter but what will force the rest of the industry to fall into line ? Realise that the filter hasn’t been tested in the high court & it will when ‘other’ ISP’s won’t take part.
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