Policies – no party is 100% perfect.

Do you agree with all of Labor's policies?  How about all of the Liberal's policies?

No?

Interesting, because roughly nine times out of ten people have voted for one of those two parties, despite not believing in every policy they have.

I bring this up because it’s the biggest reason I’m given not to vote Green.  “I could never vote Green – I don’t agree with their policy on free tooth extraction of rotten molars in the under 50s*…” you know, that sort of thing.  People are hung up on some small time policy that they’ve been scaremongered into believing will cause the downfall of all society as we know it.

The thing is that I doubt anyone believes in all the policies of any one party.  I’m pretty sure Penny Wong isn’t completely down with Labor’s stance on same-sex marriage, and I sure as hell know Malcolm Turnbull isn’t down with the Liberal’s lack of “real action” on climate change.  If even the party faithful aren’t true believers, then it’s going to be pretty rare for the average punter to find a party with a 100% policy match.  That is of course, if you could figure out exactly what each party’s policies actually are – and if you could find points of difference between the Lib-Labs.

I repeat what I’ve said before – I saw more policy on The Age’s “vote-a-matic” than in any other piece of campaign paraphernalia.  The Age didn’t oversimplify, and it let us play “three party preferred” games.  Instead of giving a red or blue answer, it showed us a breakdown of how our ideals matched those of the three major parties.

81.3% - on most tests that would be an "A."

This was a little revolutionary – choosing a party based on policies!  I had friends emailing me to reveal their results and their resulting confusion.  People who’d always voted Labor who now found they were actually in more agreement with the Libs.  Liberals who were actually Green at heart.  People who were split in perfect thirds.  Just like politics, voters are complicated.

All relationships, even those between voters and political parties, come with deal breakers.  Dr Phil and Oprah would be proud of me for internalising this.  You have to decide what your deal breakers are first, and if your party isn’t giving you what you need, you have to “kick them to the kerb.”  Maybe you don’t agree 100% with the exact boundaries of the Green’s marine parks, but as a lesbian fisherwoman in Bob Katter’s electorate, can you really vote for the man who doesn’t believe there are any homosexuals in North Queensland?  Maybe you’re a unionised teacher from inner Sydney who doesn’t agree with the Greens acceptance of refugees who come by boat, but did you really agree with Labor’s myschool website?  Maybe you’re a selfish merchant banker who’s rich uncle is about to die, and the Green’s death duty tax might shave a bit off your preposterously large inheritance, but you’re making your own fortune trading renewable energy and carbon offsetting shares… so do you really want to keep voting for the Liberal’s lack of action?

Find your dealbreakers.  Analyse the policies.  Kick someone to the kerb.  I thought I was a Labor voter, but it turned out 80% of me wanted the Greens – how red or blue were you?

*As far as I’m aware, not an actual or specific Green policy.  But it does sound like a good idea to me.

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.