Donkey above the line

On my cycle to work, and ahead of an upcoming state election, there are billboards plastered everywhere for the Australia Cyclist Party.

Tempting as it is to ‘Vote 1’ above the line for this mob so that we, the down trodden warriors of the asphalt have a democratic voice, I suspect some due diligence is required.

Many of the single purpose ‘protest’ parties seem to be fronts with the express purpose of funnelling preferences along to some shady candidate that does get voted into the dregs of the cross benches of the senate (or legislative council in the confusing case of the NSW state parliament).

Whereas the original protest party candidates are usually young and enthusiastic, the character that gets the seat is usually an old bloke in a bad suit with a square head and a countenance more suited to being chair of the local rotary club or a standards body, a COMET advisor, or a local councillor. You know the type.

And why would the old bloke do this? Money is the main reason. A seat in the parliament, especially one with a senate in the balance opens up all sorts of financial opportunities.

I read somewhere about this bloke who organises all this. He sets up all the protest parties, arranges their preference flows, and then must take a cut in the profits with the old bloke. Sounds like corruption right? Not if it’s within the law.

As I say to my Chinese customers, the only difference between corruption in Australia and China is that here in Australia we have figured out how to be corrupt within the law. They could learn a lot from us, the Chinese. I am sure they will – they are quick students of self interest, that is for sure.

You would think that the major parties would gang up and fix the protest party preference flow issue by getting rid of ‘above the line’ voting, where the recipient of the vote – the protest party – gets to decide where the voting preferences flow. But the major parties are the ones that introduced the ‘above the line’ voting in the first place. It’s also in their interests.

Sometimes I wonder if our duopolistic power-mad leaders even want control of the senate. Maybe they are happy to have a good reason to do fuck-all since this then allows them to focus on the main game of pork barrelling and reliving their uni review wars. Pork barrelling becomes much easier when there is some dickhead protest senator to blame for it.

When it comes to electoral reform I am not asking for the removal of preferential voting or the abandonment of compulsory voting; that would be too much.

All I ask is that they put in a formal donkey vote box on the voting form so that my genuine protest vote is counted and reported. There is absolutely nothing informal about my voting intentions.