Sportingbet PM Watch Howard $1.40 (was $1.72) Costello $3.75 ( $2.10) Abbott $26.00 ($9.00) Turnbull $26.00 ( $13.00) Nelson $8.00 ($17.00) Any Others $51.00 ($26.00) (Odds on PM before next election) |
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Wednesday, 19 July 2006
CONTACT Richard Farmer PO Box 613 Tanunda SA 5352 Phone: 0422 083 285
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• The scandals of pre-selections in Labor and Liberal are bringing forward the day when American style primary elections are introduced to choose candidates for Australian elections.
Students Behaving Badly It was a long time ago so my memories are fortunately hazy but I vaguely recollect a few actions during my university student days that I am pleased were not recorded on video by amateur documentary makers. Hence the scenes of supposedly Young Liberals being boorish and bad mannered shown on Lateline last night did little for me. Young drunks will be young drunks and just as most of the leftie radicals of my day who shouted down opponents changed in to respectable adults and not the Stalin they worshipped, the tasteless crew shown last night are unlikely to grow up to be some kind of fascists. Which is not condoning the chanting of anti-Aboriginal slogans - just accepting that people regularly do unpleasant and thoughtless things which in the end rarely amount to much. Lateline would have served us better not to follow up the aspect of the previous night's Four Corners program that dwelt on Young Liberals being the foot soldiers of Liberal Party branch stackers but to concentrate instead on the depressing evidence that the very method of choosing our members of parliament leaves much to be desired. This week it has been the turn of the Liberal Party to have its pre-selection weaknesses exposed. Earlier in the year the internal machinations of the Labor Party in Victoria were under examination. In the future it could be any party in any state where it is shown that candidates are chosen by a small clique of self interested partisans. Time for the American Way ? In broad terms, each of Liberal/National and Labor will win 40% of the seats on offer whichever way most overall elections go. How people in these safe electorates vote is not the real election. The real and important election was earlier when the party chose its candidate. In the 20% of seats that are marginal, the people do have a small say. They can influence a decision between two people chosen for them by the parties but have no say in who those two people are. Monday night's Four Corners revealed the depressing truth that not even joining a political party as an active member gives a person a role. Factional chiefs rig the system to make voting by rank-and-file members irrelevant. Perhaps the answer lies in the introduction of the United States system of primary elections where any members of the electorate who wish to – not just members of the actual party - can vote to decide who represents a party. I recall that years ago a Minister in a Victorian State Labor Government, for the life of me I cannot remember who, made just this suggestion. Nothing came of it then and it will probably take a continuation of the swing away from major parties for the idea to be revived. Maybe that time is not that far away for the drip, drip, drip of revelations about branch stacking and factional politics in both Liberal and Labor will surely see record numbers of Australians declaring a pox on both their parties. |
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