Morgan’s latest polling release covers 955 respondents from last weekend’s face-to-face surveys, and shows Labor’s two-party lead down from 61.5-38.5 to 60.5-39.5. Labor’s primary vote is down a point to 50.5 per cent, and the Coalition’s is up 1.5 per cent to 34.5 per cent. On top of which:
• Silly Steve Fielding joined with the Coalition on Wednesday to vote down government electoral reforms that would tie public funding for election candidates to their electoral expenditure, lower the threshold for disclosure of donations to $1000 from $10,000 (which the Howard government used its Senate majority to jack it up to), ban foreign donations and anonymous donations of over $50, and require parties to disclose donations every six months rather than annually. The sticking point is Fielding’s insistence that the government also arbitrarily cap public funding to political parties at $10 million. The bill was reintroduced to the House yesterday.
• Submissions have been published in response to the federal government’s green paper on donations, funding and expenditure.
• Responding to mounting speculation she will take on Don Randall in Canning at the next federal election, senior Gallop/Carpenter government minister Alannah MacTiernan tells The West Australian: “It’s something that I’d consider but it’s far too early. The election is a long way away and it’s not something a decision can be made on until early next year.”
• The South Australian Liberals have picked a new candidate for the state seat of Mawson to replace former Kingston MHR Kym Richardson, who was charged in December with attempting to pervert the course of justice by impersonating a police officer. Matthew Donovan, described by the local Southern Times Messenger newspaper as a “self-employed importer and property developer”, won preselection ahead of Heidi Harris, adviser to Shadow Transport Minister Duncan McFetridge and unsuccessful candidate for federal preselection in Mayo; Heidi Greaves, public servant, former Onkaparinga councillor and unsuccessful candidate for Elder; and Alana Sparrow, Housing Industry Association lawyer and former media adviser to Richardson.
• The Daily Telegraph reports that NSW Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell “will hire a team of constitutional lawyers to explore recall provisions to end fixed four-year terms for incompetent governments”. This would involve provisions for the Governor to “sack a corrupt or useless government” if called on to do so by public petitions, presumably in a fashion similar to that which brought Arnold Schwarzenegger to power in California. UPDATE: More from a skeptical Imre Salusinszky at The Australian.
• Chris Back this week took his place in the Senate, filling the vacancy created by the departure of Western Australian Liberal Chris Ellison.
1,149 Comments
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Nope elections would be decided by the group that cared enough to vote, extreme groups. You can bream up hypothetical like fundamental USA Christians voting in a complete moron for president for no less than to terms because the center didn’t care to put in the effort
Glen @ 968 – First Past the Post has got to be about the worst electoral system ever devised: you can win even when an absolute majority think you are the least desirable candidate on the ballot.
Does that actually happen?
Boerwar, did you check out Brian’s latest posting on Larvatus Prodeo today? The Pine Bark Beetles may start becoming slightly anxious, just simply because it’s so, so, really bad. And what do we have in the MSM? Rubbish about Pauline Hanson. You’ve got to wonder whether human beings ought to survive.
Glen, if a socialist candidate receives 20% of the vote, and eight conservative candidates each receive 10% of the vote, should the socialist candidate win even though 80% of voters don’t want a socialist candidate?
No, that is assisted suicide. Euthanasia is the killing of a person who is unable to give consent, such as a newborn baby or a person in a coma.
But you can go to a booth, write nothing on it, and then stick it in the box. Noone knows. Same result.
The proposed ETS is a very sensible first step, especially given all the anti-environmental rhetoric from the Liberals given the economic circumstances we are in.
Think of it this way. If the economic circumstances of the next couple of years make it easy for us to hit a 5% target by 2020, then there will be ENORMOUS pressure on a Labor government to increase the target, and thus lower the cap at a faster rate.
If we don’t get the CPRS implemented, then we have NOTHING, no mechanism to hit any target.
Student neither system is perfect but at least with 1ptp each vote is equal.
You get one vote so you should get 1 pick not 10.
It also means minor parties dont effect election results which is a good thing.
If it is such a bad system why has NZ, Canada and the UK and USA have it as their system of voting?
I think worstchoices was the first step towards economic feudalism.
We were heading toward the abyss and luckily howard broke the spell he had put on the electorate.
Or you could write “i’m not voting for capitalist pigdogs” and place it in the box. Choice is yours really.
Bob yes because each voter had one vote and that is democratic.
Also it would serve the 8 tories right for all running in the same seat
I don’t know of such a case, but that is the law.
Adam I’m sure you have scrutineered enough times to accept that Australians are bright enough to follow the act and not vote if that is their desire.
And they’re all worse off for it.
Euthanasia can also refer to voluntary suicide.
Technically, informal voting is illegal, since it is not a “vote” within the meaning of the Act. But since the ballot is secret, it is an undetectable crime, perhaps the only one…
Killing someone without their consent is involuntary euthanasia.
Killing someone with their consent is voluntary euthanasia.
The term covers both circumstances.
Exactly. The fact we have secret ballots trumps the part of the electoral act that says you need to mark the ballot paper in a way that is formal.
Only for intellectually lazy people.
fredn, i’m just telling you what the law is. It is NOT the case that it is legal to get your name crossed off and leave without casting a vote, as was asserted above. If you do that, you will be recorded as not having voted.
Glen @ 109 – NZ has a Mixed Member Proportional System, not FPTP (though with a FPTP element in the choice of divisional representatives). As for the US, the UK and Canada, the answer is most probably inertia – politicians don’t usually want to change the system that elected them – rather than a decision on the intrinsic merits of different systems. Complicated in the US by the fact that voting systems for federal elections are not determined federally.
If you think that under FPTP, minor parties don’t affect election results, you should check that with Al Gore and Ralph Nader and Ross Perot.
Quick! Contact all the voluntary euthanasia societies in every state, and tell them they are using the word incorrectly.
Dunno how many people you’ve had to do with, Adam who’ve topped themselves. I’ve had to do with a few. Call it a rationalisation if you will, but at least two close, very high functioning people who were close enough for me to know what was happening, killed themselves, because they knew what lay in front of them. O.K. Not euthanasia in terms of others involved, but maybe the term itself is limited, because both suicide and euthansia are defined in the criminal code.
Glen in our system we have preferential vote, and that is our democracy. I put a lot of thought into who I’m going to put last.
student
True but look
Bush broke his promise not to raise new taxes…he lied and got booted and rightfully so.
Gore couldnt win his Home State if he’d done that he’d have been President…
I don’t think euthanasia is defined explicitly in the criminal code, if someone helps someone suicide then they can be charged with murder; like the lady on tonight’s episode of Australian story.
I think some archaic pieces of legislation still consider suicide a crime, but it isn’t a crime that can ever be enforced.
So have I. What’s that got to do with anything? I think there is an important distinction between euthanasia and assisted suicide which ought to be preserved in the language.
We didn’t always use preferential voting. I wish we had optional preferential, I have no idea why I should have to give Family First, One Nation, or The Citizens Electoral Council a preference, just to make my vote formal when I don’t want to.
But the word just means “good death”, it doesn’t imply an explanation of how that death comes about.
Actually Adam I asserted that if you really care just pay the fine.
Why should there be a fine?
Hear Hear
Adam @ 1017 – It is not at all clear that your assertion that “technically, informal voting is illegal” is correct. The Victorian Supreme Court, in Lubcke v. Little, and Chief Justice Barwick, in Faderson v. Bridger, explicitly took the opposite view. This is discussed in detail in Anne Twomey’s The Constitution of New South Wales, pp. 335-6.
ShowOn
But don’t you get some pleasure out of trying to decide if Family First, One Nation or Citizens Electoral Council has put up the biggest wanker.
Glen @1025 – Noted. My point, however, remains – minor parties can be exceedingly influential on the outcome of FPTP elections, if they split the vote of one side of politics so that a candidate from the other side can come through the pack and win.
BTW, if you really like FPTP, look at some election results from Papua New Guinea, where the system produced what Sir Michael Somare himself called “a Parliament of rejects”.
Not at all. I just wish I didn’t have to put a number next to them at all.
Student, the Commonwealth Electoral Act, which I cited, is not within the jurisidiction of the Victorian Supreme Court. Maybe the Victiorian Act says something different. The Commonwealth Act says that electors must vote, and the word “vote” means “to fill out out the ballot in the manner prescribed.”
I didn’t say you didn’t. It was bob1234 who said that you only have to attend a polling place.
To pay for the ballot paper that was printed, delivered and lovingly looked after just for you, and you didn’t have the’ decency to use.
It would be so much easier of voting was voluntary. Remember Nick Minchin say that this is one thing the Coalition would legislate whent hey got control in 2005? It never happened, I wonder why?
My speculation is this, the Liberals saw how effective the Your Rights @ Work campaign was, and started to feel that Labor would have a natural grassroots advantage in elections where people didn’t have to vote if they didn’t want to.
Adam, I wouldn’t argue against that, i.e,the distinction being preserved in the language, however, the point I was trying to make, perhaps badly, is that immediate exposure to both suicide and euthanasia tends to colour one’s responses to these things. Probably bleeding obvious, really. So I’ll just exit stage left again.
In fact why have an elction,a government or even laws, just let those who have the ‘intellectual’ highground rule us.
Obviously they know better
SO
They didn’t help him commit suicide, they just murdered him.
Suicide isn’t illegal anymore, at least in SA.
Actually student PNG now uses a Limited Preferential Voting…
And my flippant response gives me a third reason for compulsory voting I hadn’t thought of before, it’s easier for the electorial commission to organize if they have some idea of how many are going to show.
I have been very intimately exposed to both euthanasia and assisted suicide, as most gay men who lived through the 1980s have been. That’s why I have an acute awareness of the difference between them. The ethical issues involved are quite different. But I don’t think this is a productive argument to pursue here.
I’m really sorry, Adam, I truly am. It was a stupid thing for me to do.
I understand why we have these things. I don’t understand why people get fined for – shock horror – not attending a polling place on election day.
I can’t think of any other day where the state compels people to go somewhere, why should election day be any different?
Why can’t they just organise the same as they organise now?
Any surplus ballots can be turned into toilet paper.
because thru the process of electing our representatives we are intimately involved in our gvt and its laws
sort of quid pro quo if you like
Adam @ 1037 – Barwick CJ in Faderson v Bridger [1971] HCA 46:
“Section 128A places a duty on every elector to record his vote. This is done by attending at a polling booth, accepting a ballot paper, and, as s. 119 provides, marking it and depositing it in the ballot box. A failure to vote therefore involves a failure to attend, accept the ballot paper and having marked it, to put it in the ballot box. Of course there is no offence committed by not marking the ballot paper in such a fashion that the elector’s vote is in law a valid vote.”
McTiernan J agreed explicitly with Barwick CJ’s reasoning.
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