Preaching to the Converted.

The problem with environmentalists is that, for the most part, they preach* to a receptive audience.  In many ways it is similar to a religious minister preaching hellfire and damnation from within the safe confines of his own church.  Presumably only religious people attend church, which would suggest they already know and understand the theology.  That is not to say that such Sunday morning gatherings are not useful in maintaining the flock – by all means environmentalists need to keep networking with other like-minded folk.  If it helps to keep the faith, then so be it.

Environmental Bogan - a rare breed.

What interests me more is the need for “environmental missionaries” to get out there and create converts.  We need to see the hardcore faithful taking extended leave to doorknock bogan** heartlands, to attend schoolies week and hand out green lolly frogs in the name of the planet, to hold stalls at V8 car races and get the climate change elephant on the scene of any Cronulla-style race riots as they unfold.  The “save the planet” message needs to move beyond the pseudo-educated masses and head on down to drop out land.  Because that is where the real change needs to happen.

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC – UK) has had a look at who says what when it comes to the environment – I’m assuming Australian studies would say the same thing.  They found “people fall into four categories of environmentalist  - committed, mainstream, occasional or non-committed.”  If we consider it as an environmental continuum, we can assume that the first three groups are somewhere along the way to doing the right things already.  The last group, also called the “non-environmentalists” are the ones who really need a kick in the pants to get started.  In brief, what did the ESRC find out about these environmental heathens?

Non – Environmentalists:

·      younger (lower mean ages than other groups)

·      male (more-so than other groups which were roughly sex balanced)

·      renters, either private or housing commission equivalent

·      low income earners

·      uneducated (large proportion with no qualifications)

·      non-voting (in the UK –  so probably our donkey kings)

The gist of it is that these aren’t the people out there buying books on “green living” or borrowing them from local libraries.  These are the edge of society that many of us prefer not to think about.  While committed environmentalists are already acting and voting Green, these non-environmentalists could really benefit.  The policies of the Greens that relate to taxing the rich and providing more extensive free health and dental-care would appeal to these bogans, if they could be interested in politics.  I’m sure that “affordable housing is a human right” would also interest them – if they could ever afford their own small piece of land to care for, maybe it would give them an insight into caring for the earth as a whole.

I don’t know how big the bogan voting population is.  But I do know they are currently the perfect fodder for the fear mongering of both major parties on a variety of irrelevant issues.  What the Green movement needs is dedicated missionaries heading into deepest darkest bogan-land to convert the natives.  Because preaching to the converted can only ever maintain the status quo. 

*I’m not saying that environmentalism is a spurious belief or a “church” of any kind.  But a church is a common social construct representative of a group of people, and as such, an appropriate analogy.

**I use the term “bogan” in the most loving sense possible.  Coming from a bogan district myself, I understand that there are “bogan environmentalists,” but nothing sums up this stereotypical group of people better than the word “bogan.”

PS. 

Read the ESRC report into Environmental Action - Linking Attitudes and Behaviour

$2.6 million of votes for sale

Of course now that we can see the sheer size of the donkey vote, now we know that roughly one in twenty people don’t care at all.  Which makes me wonder what kind of commodity donkey voters will become.  Will the major parties try to buy these votes with actual money next time around? 

Maybe websites will spring up where disillusioned voters register their trip to the ballot for sale.   They could sell their [1] on ebay amidst furious bidding from J.Gill and T.Abb, and turn a tidy profit on their complete disinterest.  After all, if voters are already “being bought” by election promises, does it really matter if politicians switch to direct marketing?  I’d warrant $5 in the pocket would be more motivation for a lot of people than any of the millions of dollars of televised nonsense we’ve just been privy to.  

I’ve had a hard time tracking down the cost of the Lib-Labs campaigns, but I’d be really interested to see what they spent per head of the voting population.  For some people, voting is such a chore that if a Lib-Lab stepped up and volunteered to take the trip to the polling booth for them, I’m pretty sure they’d say yes.  We all know it’s not hard to front up at multiple booths and vote multiple times, either under the same name or different ones.  I’m actually wondering at what stage of our non-result election we’ll get around to uncovering the extent of this years rorting.

Rorting and ebay aside, we do know is how much each vote would have been worth.  The Australian Electoral Commission gives funding to parties based on their number of first preferences.  This year each [1] was worth close enough to $2.31.  So if you voted Greens, they got your $2.31 to help fund their campaign next time.  If you voted for them in the House of Reps and the Senate, they received $4.62 – essentially a gift from you to them.  So I headed over to the  AEC Virtual Tally Room to find out just how much all this donkeying was costing.

According to their results, 507 481 Senate votes and 654 981 House Of Reps votes were informal, bringing us to a grand total of 1 162 462 informal votes.  That's over one million votes that didn’t get across the line.  If we cost these at the $2.31 funding rate for a proper vote, we get the staggering figure of $2 685 287.22.  While I consider the 22c important, it’s the $2.6 million that really gets me.  So much money that should have been reinvested in the Lab-Libs, the Greens, the Socialist Alliance, the Hunters and Fishers or the Sex Party, and now it’s just sitting around earning interest for the AEC.  Do you reckon they’ll be having a donkey themed xmas party this year?

There is a price on everything, on everyone and every vote.  I know we all struggled finding interested buyers, but the real question is did we sell ourselves too cheaply this year?

PS.

People definitely tried to sell their 2007 votes. So why haven’t we hear about it this year?

Ebay - 2007 votes for sale

Will the real donkeys please stand up?

Originally I was angry about the donkey voting fever that swept the nation.  The only silver lining I could see in the indecisive chaos was that the bumper stickers were going to be really simple: 

“Don’t blame me, I VOTED!”  

Or for those of us keen to name and shame

 “Don’t blame me, blame Mark Latham.”  

I do find it interesting that a lacklustre politician has now put himself in a position where he will be remembered forever after as the “donkey king.”  If the only political voice these poor lost souls heard was Mark Latham, then Australia pretty much got what was coming to it.

Because it’s our fault too.  We, the dutiful voting public, have failed to convince our donkey voting friends and acquaintances that it was worth doing, and we should cop some of the blame.  We don’t like to talk politics in Australia.  I mean we do now, now that we’re stuck in this idiot position.  Now we’re keen to tell people how preferences worked and why they are a complete dickhead for voting Liberal.  Now we’re openly telling the Labor voters they missed the memo and the Green voters they’re a pack of pretentious wankers.  But before the election we were all deathly quiet and a real political discussion was hard to come by. 

At the end of the day it’s our own fault that so many donkeyed out.

Maybe not the most convincing reason...

PS.  

Please visit Compulsory Voting, NOT and see if you find them convincing...Compulsory Voting, Not

Swinging - that's not my team

It’s been funny watching people get worked up about “idiot swinging voters.”  It seems that the concept that our democracy is based on has been evading them.  If a core group of swinging voters didn’t exist, the result of every single election would be the same.  If voters hadn’t have swung from Labor to Liberal in 1996, John Howard wouldn’t have been our PM.  If voters hadn’t swung from Liberal to Labor in 07 we wouldn’t have had Kevin.  We only really have elections to see which way the population has swung.

I guess what was different this year was that they swing wasn’t just between red and blue.  Lets not kid ourselves, there was still movement between the Lib-Labs, and probably more people changed sides than the “net” swings will ever show us.  But this year the movement favoured the Greens and the Donkeys.  This upset the status quo and has now left both red and blue scratching their heads.

To explore this idea further, we’d best have a look at why the concept of “swinging” is so strange to so many.  A lot of voters probably have a footy team and see their politics as an extension of this.  There are those people who exist under the umbrella of a certain socio-economic lifestyle, and see their vote as reflecting that.  There are people in dangerous jobs who are paid up unionists and use this to determine their allegiance.  But no one factor ever pins an individual to a team.  We all have to make trade offs of conscience and consequence to decide who is really better for us on the day.

Going into the election there were electorates where it is reported that 40% of voters remained undecided.  Apparently how-to-vote cards have been shown to significantly increase primary votes – if you have a representative at the booth you’ll gain ground.  Just a simple smile at a lost punter can make the difference.  So while those of us who’ve been loyal to one party for years might like to think it’s clear cut, for a lot of our fellow voters it isn’t.

So keeping in mind the results only represent the overall swings, and don’t show us exactly how many people fled screaming from somewhere to somewhere else, how did we end up?

Well Labor was down 5.4%, the informal votes were up 1.7%, Liberals were up 1.9% and the Greens win the most improved player award for an increase of 3.7%.  I don’t know how we read the fact that the increases add up to 7.3% and the loss from Labor is only 5.4%.  I consider it a mystery of politics.  (All numbers from ABC and correct on day of reading.)

At the end of the day I guess it’s safe to say people change.  Not only that, but parties change too.  Hopefully the way government runs will change.  And all this change will be good for Australia.  Because we may have gone off swinging this election, but our hearts still lie with Oz.

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.