Luke'z How 2 Vote Guide

So, it's come to this. After 34 days of campaigning, one debate, two strange "town hall" meetings, one aborted appearance on Hey Hey, four new episodes of The Chaser, 92 000 km of accumulated travel, ten increasingly despair filled blog posts (well for me), 34 hyperbolically anti-Labor front covers from The Australian, innumerable metres of print media supposition and innuendo and a bucket of voter apathy as big as a monster truck we have arrived at the moment of truth. The day when every man, woman and child (of voting age) is compelled by law to leave their house and queue up at the local school to receive their hot dog and voting card. For extra fun, wrap your voting card around the sausage. As long as it's legible, they still have to count it! Ah, democracy.

So, let's set aside the cynicism for a moment (well, most of it), and deal with what we've got.



I really don't think it can be overstated exactly how quickly things have gone tits-up for the Labor Party. Back in early December 2009, it seemed as if we were on the verge of a Hawke-esque political dynasty. The most popular Prime Minister in decades, an Opposition too busy shouting at each other to provide any actual opposition and a Liberal Party leader with all the charm and likability of your average fungal infection. I was certainly quite confident. But now, less than ten months later - or, to put it another way, in less time than it takes to bring a single child to term - the Labor Party is teetering on the edge of historic defeat. Single term Governments really aren't all that common in Australia. You have to mess up, real bad. Which, to be fair, they did. But to mess up to the point that Tony Abbott is looking like an almost palatable leader? Yikes.

Perhaps even more remarkable, though, has been how rapidly and comprehensively they squandered the goodwill that accompanied Gillard's elevation to the Prime Ministership. Of course, honeymoon periods are a well recognised and invariably temporary phenomenon in politics, but let's not beat around the bush here: the Labor Party has taken one of the most broadly liked and respected figures in the Australian Parliament and in less than two months has almost entirely destroyed her credibility. Win or lose, Labor should fire every single  strategist, pollster and lackey they have circulating through the party, because I have come up with more cohesive and respectable campaigns at the end of a two-day bender. For most of these five weeks Gillard, and the party behind her, have looked like veritable pretenders to the throne. They have been cautious, scattered, evasive, disjointed and wary. Obviously all qualities one looks for in prospective leaders.

But this all strikes me as symptomatic of a party riven by internal politics and lacking a central narrative around which to galvanise its base. They're not really sure what to fight for any more, so they just fight each other. And they'll know that if they do get in, it's merely because the Opposition chose a leader who is seen as even less worthy of support than they are. One only hopes it plants the seed of change before next time.

Why to vote for them: Because the prospect of Tony Abbott governing the nation keeps you awake at night.


And by another measure, the Liberals probably still can't believe their luck. I imagine most of the party were as cynical about their chances as I was even six months ago, but now they teeter on the edge of one of the most improbable political resurrections since Jesus hefted back a boulder, hitched a ride into town and berated the Apostles for burying him while he was still alive. And the best part about it all is that they didn't even have to do anything. They just sat back, made sure Tony knew his lines, tried to keep him out of as much trouble as they could and all of a sudden it's a battle between the lowest common denominators. It's like the happy ending to that story 'The Ugly, Crippled Duckling', where one day the duck wakes up and finds out that it's not crippled any more. Just ugly. But look! The pond is filled with ugliness! Home at last.

Why to vote for them: Because you still can't believe people voted out John Howard three years ago. I mean, that's just madness. The man was in his prime!


There's been plenty of talk this election about The Greens becoming the third force in Australian politics, and that's not simply because the Democrats have detonated so spectacularly over the last half a decade. With both parties abdicating their ideological heritage and spending their time squabbling over the crumbs of the political middle ground like two irate ducks (what is with these duck analogies?), The Greens have finally emerged from the fringe and stationed themselves as the only legitimate and proper alternative political voice in Australia. The split these days isn't so much Labor v Liberal, as it is Labor/Liberal v The Greens. And, of course, as both major parties will rush to assure you, there are numerous policy-based differences between them, but the point remains: if you are looking for a different vision of how Australia might be, then The Greens are the only prominent political party that currently offers it.

Why to vote for them: Because you retain some shred of faith in the idea that politics can be aspirational.



Why to vote for them: You're not going to vote for them


God, the poor Democrats just can't catch a break, can they? After spending the past six years rolling from embarrassing electoral rout to embarrassing electoral rout, they finally front up to the sort of election that once upon a time would have guaranteed them excellent returns in the Senate, only to discover the Greens have well and truly stepped in to pick up their slack, and that one of their SA candidates has just been sprung trying to procure a 15 year old boy for sex. Although, as too often seems to be the case, said 15 year old boy was actually a middle-aged policeman. One can never be too careful on the Internet.

Why to vote for them: To have a conversation starter at your election night party. "I voted for the Democrats. Did you even know they still existed? Crazy, huh. Let's make out".


This has not been an easy election to watch nor write about. The reasons are manifold, and the cynicism that comes with it has been elevated to the point of cliché. But looking at the decrepit shades that both parties have revealed themselves to be over the course of the past five weeks has reminded me far too much of the process I went through when renouncing my religion. Namely, that feeling of coming to the point where you find yourself presented with these monolithic entities and are told to accept them even though their value system clashes repeatedly and fundamentally with your own. Sooner or later the only possible option is departure.

So, minor parties. The claims against voting minor parties are familiar, if a little misguided. Most common is the idea that a vote for a minor party is a wasted vote. A notion with some grounding in countries like the UK or the US where the first-past-the-post system ensures that picking the wrong person means having no impact upon the final result, but of much lesser import here where both our preferential and proportional voting schemes mean you have quite a significant amount of control over how your vote is eventually allocated. The Greens explain the exact mechanics of it all quite well on their website.

Second, and more damning, is the idea that it's all very well and good for these parties to promise the world because they don't have to deal with the difficulties and minutiae of actually running the country. For an example, one perhaps only has to look at the hope-filled and now troubled Presidency of Barack Obama. And there is certainly some basis to this, and even if by some strange fluke of electoral math or cultural shift a minor party ended up in power, it is unlikely they would be able to follow through on everything that they dream of. Indeed, if they were put in control right now, almost assuredly unprepared, their credibility might well shred faster than Julia Gillard's did.

But even so, I personally don't see this as a valid reason to automatically refuse them a vote. Because much as we might like to think - and the major parties might like to suggest - that politics is a question of deciding between two systematic plans for the future, the entire electoral charade is actually in many ways quite simply a question of faith. It's a question of having faith in those we elect to act in a certain manner when the endless and innumerable vicissitudes of existing in the world are thrown against us, when the economy begins to collapse, when we are thrown into armed conflict or diplomatic strife, when natural disaster strikes, when new information comes to light, when social mores change. It's a question of having a worldview that you want acted upon when the bottom falls out of these well-laid plans. Three years is a long time, and the simple fact of pledging $220 million to help out with buying school uniforms is of such narrow application as to defy categorisation.

And that's what's galled about this election, really. That both major parties have run with the idea that by stacking funding pledge upon funding pledge the sum of these parts will in the end produce some greater meaning. But they haven't. One after the other they've just vanished into the froth, like discrete particles, shot out into the void, empty of meaning. A series of simple, transactional exchanges where you, the voter, get money in return for voting for them, the party. To me, it's felt like an election for the apathetic generation that we're always told we are. But I call bullshit on that. I think we do care, we are engaged, we still think there's something more to strive for. But in the sclerotic arena of contemporary Australian politics our apathy and cynicism is both asked for and demanded. It's the only way to make sense of things. Which, frankly, sucks.

In the end, though, I'm not telling you to vote Green, or Sex Party or to vote for any particular party. I'm just asking you to think seriously about who your vote goes to and why, and to not simply take the status quo for granted. In an election like this, it's all to easy to forget what a tremendous privilege it is to be able to exercise our vote freely and that taken together, these votes are capable of having a profound political impact. Throwing a vote behind a minor party, or the other party, might seem like a nothingness when you're standing there in the booth, but if we want to avoid repeats of this election echoing onwards into the future, then it will depend upon us taking full and proper advantage of this tiny speck of freedom that is our contribution to the future of Australia.

/pretension

And that's me out. Whew. I'll be back next week with a post that has absolutely nothing to do with the goddamn Federal election. I cannot wait.