The Liberals were scared

While Labor seemed to turn a blind eye to the impending Greenswing, the Liberals were out there courting our second preferences.  I’ve never felt more politically powerful than knowing that they wanted my cast offs.  It just proved how desperate the election was getting… a bunch of suits wanted to my worn out hippy tie-dye.  Considering they don’t believe in climate change, I was very surprised to see the Libs believed in Greens, and even more surprised to see they thought we were a force to be reckoned with.

I was leaning Green...

I had ads down the side of my facebook asking if I was leaning Green.  The click through went straight to Lib HQ and a video that asked me to give them second preference.  Because “Labor didn’t bother with me.”  And it is true – Labor didn’t bother with me – which is why I chose to screw them by voting Green.  But I’m not stupid enough to screw myself over by preferencing the Libs.

Dear Tony, just because I'm voting Green doesn't mean you're in with a chance.

There was also the debacle involving fake Green how-to-vote cards.  For a young Lib to dress up in a green shirt and go to all the trouble to bother making Green looking HTV seems a little outlandish, unless they thought it could give them the edge.  This  scam was in Bennelong, where Maxine McKew got canned for Labor.  Given how much this election has come down to preferences, it’s possible it did give them the edge they needed, at least in this electorate.

People keep saying that surely Labor lost more votes to Green than Libs, and it’s true, I reckon Labor did lose more votes.  But the fact that the Libs were looking for preferences makes me think it wasn’t just a Labor issue.  I worked at a booth where the Lib how-to-vote chick confessed she hated Tony Abbott and says she is what is apparently called a “wet Liberal.”  I’d never heard of this before.  Essentially what it seems to mean is a lefty-Liberal with ethical values and a sense of humanity.  I’m not sure how those can fit in the same sentence as the word Liberal, but apparently they can.

When I was looking for more information on these “wet Liberals” I came across this quote on Wikipedias page about the Australian Democrats:

“… the party's progressive politics also remained attractive to a sizeable section of mainly middle class ("wet") Liberal supporters - often female, and often disparagingly described on the right of the Liberal Party as "Soccer Mums" or "Doctor's Wives" - who were turned off by the Liberal party's social conservatism and "Reagonomic/Thatcherite" economic policies.”

To me, that sounds exactly like the kind of people who would hate Tony Abbott.  Not only that, but I felt this years Green swing would be a result of them gaining support of people who’d previously been Democrat voters – myself included.  Given the number of women who are resolutely anti-Abbott, and the sensational result for the Greens, I can only think that these “wet Liberals” came into play this year.  I’m sure the Liberals knew this and campaigned for preferences accordingly. 

If red and blue were both conservatively identical this election, it makes sense that they both lost some lefties from their lower edges.  And while Labor probably has taken the bigger hit, the Liberals would have lost voters too.  They’re just trying to keep it quiet, in the same way they try to keep their gay sons and daughters firmly in the closet.

PS.

Wanna see the Liberals asking for Green preferences?

Leaning Green with the Liberals

Wanna see a shifty young Liberal in action?

Fake Green How To Vote Cards In Bennelong

the lesser of two evils

So now the fallout has started with Labor voters blaming the Greensliders for their failure to form government it’s worth looking at this concept.  A few people have even said to me that my vote didn’t count, that the only way it would have counted is if I used it to vote for “the lesser of two evils.”  I don’t know if the irony has dawned on them yet that they consider their party evil.  A “lesser evil” to be sure, but still evil.

Apart from the year I voted Democrat because I thought they were absolutely brilliant, I’ve previously always voted Labor.  Do you know why?  I was a Labor voter because I hate Liberals.  Not on a personal level, I have a number of friends who will have voted for Tony Abbott whether I let them or not.  But on a policy level I hate Liberals.  Snide rich getting richer, big business in their pockets, poor get poorer, if you can’t afford it sucks to be you policies.  Policies that reinforce the class divides that only those enrolled in private schools before birth can imagine as a good thing.

So I clearly knew who I didn’t want to vote for.  Labor seemed the natural enemy of the Liberals, so it followed that the enemy of my enemy must be my friend.  Originally they didn’t seem to be screwing anything up, no doubt because they were constantly in opposition to a Howard government, so they maintained a sense of hope.  They probably wouldn’t have been perfect, but they certainly always seemed “the lesser of two evils.”  The day K.Rudd came to power was the sweetest election result I’d ever had.  Finally my guys were in and things were going to get better.

Only they didn’t.

Well some things got better.  I mean Howard went away somewhere, and that was great, and for a while Malcolm was in opposition, and he actually seems like a pretty good guy with some sound ideas – not enough to make me vote Lib, but he kept the Labs on their toes.  He respected climate change science, which is no doubt why the Libs did away with him and let Boatphoney Tony have a go.  But Kevin Rudd was a great speaker, he seemed to have a vision, but things didn’t really happen.  Not the things I was really interested in.

Enter this election where I really couldn’t tell the two parties apart.  Both would stop boats, prevent same-sex marriage, do something with the economy and refuse to tackle climate change in the way it needs to be done.  The only difference anyone could see was that one was a male “wingnut” and the other was a female “ranga.”  A lot of people shrugged and did what they always do, and voted “for the lesser of two evils.”  They were both evil people!  Surely there is more to life than electing E1 or E2 to government every three years?

That’s the mindframe I was in when I discovered the Green option.  I read their policies.  Humane, progressive, ethical, environmental with a nice serving of good old common sense.  The Greens weren’t the lesser of the evils, they were actually on the side of GOOD!  You can make all the jokes you want about how I’ve “swallowed the Coolaid” but I’m happy in the knowledge that my first preference went to the party I think is best for Australia.  Maybe my vote didn’t elect the government, but I’d rather be a loser on the side of good than a winner on the side of evil, be it the greater or lesser evil of the two.

A large chunk of Labor voters gave their first preference to the party they thought would screw them over slightly less.  In my best John Jarrat Wolf Creek voice "winnaaah."

Friends don't let friends vote for Tony Abbott. Or do they?

For those of us who followed the election campaign with a handy serving of “wtf” on facebook, this page was one of our great hopes.  I don’t know who created the page, but it got some pretty cool media coverage and ended up with over 110000 “likes.”  Of course we all got schooled in the fact that clicking “like” is nothing like true democracy.  And for those of you still commiserating on the page, NO the AEC won’t pay any attention to the fact that FDLFVFTA has so many “likes” because they did a more extensive survey on the “likes” of the Australian people on Saturday.  They even asked the people who don’t have facebook.

We did all get kind of cocky about how many hits this site had, and the fact that Tony’s own facebook was lagging so far behind with only around 10 000 “likes.”  Julia ended up with 60 000 or so, and neither of them bothered to update their pages for pretty much the whole campaign.  Actually, that’s not entirely true, Julia did put up a plea for Twibbons on election day, but of course by then we were all wearing “This Saturday, I’m voting Greens.”  When I say “all,” I mean those of us who’d chosen to flee the major parties sinking ships with our dignity intact.  Not those who presumably wanted to vote for Labor.  For some reason a lot of Labor voters chose a picture of Tony to profile.  I thought this was a little “wtf” quite frankly, and I do mean “why THAT face?”

He doesn't look that bad...

I still swear a Liberal troll planted that red, white and blue “NOPE” image of Tony on FDLFVFTA.  Patriotic colours, fairly flattering shot, and everytime it thumbnailed the “NOPE” disappeared completely.  All these rabid anti-Tony folk were left with profile pictures that may as well have come from Liberal HQ.  Ditto all the poorly thought out profile photos of Tony looking silly, or faintly crossed out.  All anyone saw was Tony, Tony, Tony.  And much as I hate to admit it, passionately hating one candidate is not actually a valid reason to vote for someone else.  I think this has all become rather apparent from the result of the negatively run election campaign.  Policies may have helped us tell them apart.

If you didn’t want Tony in power what you really needed to do was propose your alternative and give valid reasons why they were better.  For sure, democracy is based on a secret ballot, and if you don’t ever want to tell anyone that is your right.  But if you really want someone running the country, it might help if you tell your “friends” who you’re voting for.  This is where the Greens kicked arse.  The Australian Greens facebook was on the cause early with the tiny green triangle Twibbon.  As the polls kept flip-flopping and the Green vibe increased they brought out the “This Saturday, I’m voting Green.”  It was big, it was bold and it made it really hard for us to tell our posts apart.  But it got the point across.  There were people out there voting Green.  We were visible.

Those of us who’d made the decision to swing could feel it was going to be big.  We plugged GetUp and AYCC endlessly.  We discussed how we felt about the issues and watched The Chaser and Gruen Nation like hawks.  I flogged The Age’s vote-a-matic like a dead horse, because even if people didn’t lean Green, I wanted them to vote on something resembling policy.  Ironic that the most policy we saw this election was embedded in an online quiz.

Of course as it gained momentum, FDLFVFTA became more and more Labor dominated.  Red team supporters spent a lot of time whinging about the Greens, thus dividing any united front the page may have originally had.  There are still some doing it there now, playing the blame game with the Greens.  At the end of the day I didn’t see much support for Labor on facebook.  All I saw was Labor voters whinging about Tony, and Liberal trolls returning equally stupid fire about Julia.  Not one person on my friends list changed their photo or status to show support for either Labor or the Liberals.  Two friends went all out with “This Saturday, I’m voting Greens” and probably about five others posted their intentions to vote Green and encouraged their friends to do the same.  As I pointed out to mine, I thought it was important to tell people what was going down, because otherwise they’d feel like they’d missed the invite to the party.  Still more of my friends are coming out about their Green vote after the fact, no doubt thankful they’ve dodged the Lib-Lab bullet, more or less.

So I guess the morals of this story is that “Most Friends on Facebook Don’t Actually Care Who Their Friends Vote For” and they’d rather click “like” than have a political discussion.  It’s also now apparent that facebook users would rather post their Farmville cows than their political ideals.  “I don’t care about your farm*, your fish or your mafia” but strangely, I do care who gets to run our country and why.

*I do care if you have an actual real life farm, especially if it’s located in the electorate of Bob Katter, Tony Windsor or Rob Oakeshot.

All the gays on boats are getting married.

“Look at me, I’m on a horse, I’m on a high horse.” 

I will never be able to fathom how it came to pass that the Lib-Labs thought they were going to get this one by us.  I mean it takes the very ideals of equality, of a fair go, of an inclusive world view and basically shoves them in a closet, locks it and throws away the key.  The only thing I can think is that they thought this was a “gay issue,” and that gay people are a minority who keep to themselves and don’t have much voting power.  Could they have been more wrong?

When a Liberal voting Vietnam veteran gets up on Q&A and asks Tony what he should do about his gay son, you know it’s just the beginning of an uncomfortable discussion.  Because if a Liberal voting Vietnam vet can accept homosexuality as okay, you can safely assume most people can.  But neither Tony nor Julia thought gay marriage was an issue.  Apparently it would have been an issue to let same-sex couples get married.  I’m not sure how it would have torn the fabric of society asunder, but clearly they thought it would.  Welcome to the fallout.

Gay and lesbian people don’t just live in “Gayland.”  They don’t just know other gays, they actually walk amongst us.  “Some of my best friends are gay” is not just a stupid cliché, it’s a fact.  Not only that, but some of my other best friends are probably gay, and if and when they come out I want them to have the option of getting married if they so choose.  

Because we live in the year 2010 and ultimately, that is what is right.

So once you get past the blatant homophobia it’s time to dissect the “civil union” bullcrap.  I mean seriously, what is that?  “We both take gay people very seriously and we believe they have every right to live together in a recognised civil union, but it’s just not marriage?”  Well then what the hell is it?  I mean sure, a lot of hetro-folk don’t like to take the risk of getting married (not naming names, Julia) but if people want to give it a shot, that’s surely their business.

Besides, the big unspoken issue is what are our same-sex friends going to put on their "non-wedding" invitations?  “Tony and Barnaby are getting civil unionised!”  Or would it be more like “Julia and Penny are getting married!  Please don’t tell the PM!” 

If my friends, gay or straight, want to get married then I want to go to their weddings.  

I cannot fathom a future that denies me this right.

PS.

"Look at me, I'm on a horse, I'm on a high horse."

I’m still not absolutely sure what The Chaser was saying and I think that’s because I didn’t undertake an arts degree.  I think the gist of it is “red and blue think that if they allow gay people to get married it will turn out that all the “straight” husbands will run away to marry their gay lovers on boats, thus destabilising the very fabric of society.  And we like horses.”

Never ignore the elephants.

A lot of people are scratching their heads wondering what happened in the Australian 2010 Federal Election.  Some of them are even asking “wtf?”  But it’s really not that hard, it went down something like this.

An elephant was sent to tell Labor that they weren't listening to their voters. Julia laughed and said "always nice to meet an elephant.”  The elephant went to see Tony, but he wouldn’t listen to it either.  Everyone on telly kept asking Julia about the elephant, but she didn’t seem too concerned.  No one was super interested in what Tony had to say, because everyone knows he thinks elephants are “absolute crap.”  There were a lot of other things people were worried about, like equal rights for same sex marriage, healthcare, education and the environment.  These were all raised clearly, but Labor shrugged and said they might be red team, but they wanted the blue voters.

Then there were an awful lot of particularly stupid ads on telly.  The best of them had a catchy jingle and featured people “getting whacked” by an imaginary object that was never ever seen.  Ironically, this was not made by either party.  Red team had broadband, but blue team would stop the boats.  Not to be outdone, Julia said she’d stop the boats too.  She said she’d “move forward” for red and Tony said he’d get “real action” for blue.  But under no circumstances would either of them allow a man to marry a man, or a woman to marry a woman.  Especially not on a boat.

So in the murky purple that followed, everyone got so confused they couldn't remember which party was Labor, Liberal, in power, in opposition, lesser of two evils, or in fact, red or blue. A lot of people didn't understand how the voting and preferencing system worked, and a whole bunch of idiots listened to Mark when he said "donkey vote."

The monkeys locked away in the big room are still counting, and they may have to decide the winner based on who was placed last the least, but that would all come down to preferences, which no-one bothered to learn about.  It would be done quicker, but the monkeys keep getting distracted trying to figure out if a vote should go on the "donkey" or "horse" pile.

"Your vote is a valuable thing."

So thus far the result for red and blue: DEAD HEAT.

I think this means slightly more people "hate boats" than "love broadband," but it depends which channel you were watching or what time you last checked the web.

The people that didn't get get so confused, didn't like the colour purple and wanted good things for Australia like country services, dental in medicare, no bank fees, ... (there is a big list) swung to the Greens or voted in independents. 

As a result of that, one of the two major parties is gonna have to give in to all the Greens and Independents wildest dreams, or be unable to govern.  

And all of them have enormous herds of elephants that need to be fed.


Pre-PS.
Seeings as Hitler is down, maybe you'd like to meet the AYCC Climate Change Elephant.  As occasionally seen in budgie smugglers.
Never doubt that a small, thoughtful, committed elephant can change the world.


PS.
I was particularly surprised at Hitler's response to the election outcome.  The sad thing is that I might have preferenced him over Labor if he'd been running - he seemed to have a good idea as to how the campaign should have been run:
Hitler responds - "it's a colossal farce." - I hope you saw it while you could, it was brilliant, and now:
"This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Constantin Film."