Freedom Socialist Bulletin • Number 36 • Summer/Autumn 2007DLP in parliament, voters kept in the dark: End the backroom preferences farce. With barely 2% of the primary vote, Family First Senator, Stephen Fielding, was elected to Federal Parliament courtesy of a deal where the Australian Labor Party (ALP) gave him its seventh preference. Voters only found out about the deal after the poll, and many ALP voters were pissed off. Now the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), an anti-communist relic of the Cold War, has a seat in the Victorian Upper House, after another secret ALP deal. This time, even John Cain, the rightwing former state Premier, was outraged. The DLP was responsible for keeping the ALP out of power for decades, both in Victoria and federally. This shows that ALP officials have so little political decency that they can't even hold the line against their party's number one historical enemy. Parliamentary democracy is a sham at the best of times, and we don't wish to sew illusions in it. But electors have a right to demand free, fair and transparent polls. Party machines effectively rigged both elections, with the results going against the clear intentions of the electorate. If preferences had flowed the way voters meant them to, then there would be at least two more Greens Senators and an extra Greens member of the Victorian upper chamber. It's a travesty that Fielding and the DLP were able to sneak into office with so few first votes. Above the line voting was promoted by the major parties to "make it easier for people to vote" where there are numerous candidates or tickets. Yet when voters ticked the ALP's ticket box, they were unaware that their preference flow had been hijacked by numbers crunchers. Added to this is the incomplete proportional voting system, which rewards such frauds. The Australian electorate is politically among the best informed in the world. We are quite able to make our own decisions and to mark our ballots! End the preferences rort! Demand that above the line voting be abolished. And while you're at it, demand that both State and Federal governments adopt a full proportional representation method for counting votes. Tell the backroom girls and boys that they only get one vote! |
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