Green Vote Is Up. Wall Street is Down.

There has been a lot of talk of historic third party highs and the potential for the Greens vote to crash out before the next election.  It seems to me they’ve been around for 20 years federally and pretty much only gone from strength to strength.  Nothing represents this better than a graph.

Green Votes on the Up.  (data from Wiki)

Unless this years Green vote can be considered as their third party peak, having already exceeded the best results of both the Democrats and the mysterious DLP, then it looks pretty certain that their vote will continue to grow.  Since 1996 the Green vote has only increased – in net terms they have never lost a voter.  So for all the Liberal nay-sayers trying to rain on the parade, I have to pull you up.  If you saw a graph for the economy looking like this, you’d be stoked.  In fact, if you were an astute investor, you’d probably be rushing out to buy shares.

PS.

Read the Greens blurbs on the Greenslide.  In brief, in three seats the Greens have beaten the Liberals to become the two party preferred vote with Labor.  Also worth noting that rural and regional seats had an average Green swing of 3%.

Greens election results.

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."