Australian 2013 Federal Election Megathread

[ShortBlackChick]

OMG funny story, I thought I'd be ambitious and vote below the line too except I thought there were 98 candidates so I put Nalliah and associate RUAP idiot as 98-97 then worked my way up from 1, but then I got to 96 and had no more boxes so I thought I skipped a vote somewhere. Then I asked the AEC people for another ballot paper and I was like 'This is my first time voting and I thought I'd be ambitious and vote below the line- Lesson learnt- never doing that again'

Was telling Pi about it a while back when he told me there was only 97 candidates. Facepalmed so much.

[ninwa]

It would certainly be nice to support a political endeavour and not be judged as a person for that decision.  I certainly don't judge anyone who votes differently to me, I support their choices because they're entitled to them.  I definitely don't treat them like idiots or terrible people just because they disagree with me.

The thing is that your political views reflect somewhat on you as a person. For example, if someone supports One Nation, it'll be hard not to argue that that person is at least a little bit racist/xenophobic. That political view reflects poorly on that person, and I think it's the same with any party and their respective policies. That's why I use political preferences to make a judgement about someone's character, at least to a degree.

[slothpomba]

hahahahahaha two Palmer United senators, one in Qld and one in Tasmania, of all places?!?

How the hell does that happen? I've seen almost none of his advertising and i haven't heard him talk about his policies once. Apparently PUP won't be friends of the liberals or ALP in a clear cut kind of way.

and Vic officially has an "Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party" senator

Now thats just bullshit. Democracy is over for me or at least this senate system. They never should have gotten elected, its a result of dodgy, dodgy preference deals. Some of the minors hired expensive top shot preference consultants according to the ABC to do all kind of deals so things like this happen. I dont want a "Motoring Enthusiast Party" having say over everything from budget, defense, health care and controversial issues.

Thank God they are only ~55% counted and hopefully this might change. It looks like we might pick up another liberal national senator if the motor party gets booted, i'd probably honestly prefer this...

Only joking!  I voted below the line too, I put anything with the words 'drug', 'Christian', 'Wiki' and 'rise' last.  My brother tried to vote below the line and said he skipped two boxes and only realised when he got to 95 and couldn't list 96 or 97...so he just gave up and sent in an informal vote...

The electoral act actually allows 10% error in your below the line senate vote (for obvious reasons) so his just might be valid yet.

OMG funny story, I thought I'd be ambitious and vote below the line too except I thought there were 98 candidates so I put Nalliah and associate RUAP idiot as 98-97 then worked my way up from 1, but then I got to 96 and had no more boxes so I thought I skipped a vote somewhere. Then I asked the AEC people for another ballot paper and I was like 'This is my first time voting and I thought I'd be ambitious and vote below the line- Lesson learnt- never doing that again'

Happened to me too :s. Got to the end and had 98, hopefully it fell within the allowable error though. I also voted both above and below the line, if your below the line vote is wrong, the above the line takes precedence. It's part of the electoral act but i dont know if its widely known, i heard it off anthony green @ ABC. Hopefully the people counting them know it...

[Art Vandelay]

[slothpomba]

Someone on the ABC pointed out that we're all still looking back...to why people won...to rudd..etc. They pointed out we should be looking forward instead.

What can we expect? Abbott promised that on his *first* day, he would: Repeal the carbon tax, Appoint a 3 star general to turn back the boats and instruct the clean energy finance corporation to stop offering any new loans.

Looks like we'll have a few palmer senators too. Heres their policy document - http://palmerunited.com/national-policy/

Lastly, we cant forget the new senators wont sit until July 2014. We'll have the current senate (including ALP+Greens holding the balance) until then. Should make Abbotts first year interesting..

[simpak]

The thing is that your political views reflect somewhat on you as a person. For example, if someone supports One Nation, it'll be hard not to argue that that person is at least a little bit racist/xenophobic. That political view reflects poorly on that person, and I think it's the same with any party and their respective policies. That's why I use political preferences to make a judgement about someone's character, at least to a degree.

The danger in doing that is that you can lump a persons views and a party's view together completely without consideration for how they may differ on multiple points. I don't agree with LNP asylum policies or with marriage inequality but if someone tried to anticipate my views based on who I vote for they'd probably think the opposite of me. I understand that sometimes party preference does indicate an opinion but it can't indicate every opinion in a black and white manner.  Just because you vote for someone doesn't mean you agree with everything they propose, there are good parts and bad parts of any party and we preference parties based on the one we think will be the best candidate in the mix, not the best period.

Even if you do judge somebody on their opinion or opinions you suppose they have but can't truly confirm, you shouldn't be able to talk down to them, swear at them or make them feel a lesser person for their opinion.

Edit for the iPhone typos

[JellyDonut]

The Australian motoring enthusiast party might be my fault. Looked so inoffensive I chucked them somewhere in the middle.

On an unrelated note, I'm starting a new party on electrical wiring standards

[appianway]

The danger in doing that is that you can lump a persons views and a party's view together completely without consideration for how they may differ on multiple points. I don't agree with LNP asylum policies or with marriage inequality but if someone tried to anticipate my views based on who I vote for they'd probably think the opposite of me. I understand that sometimes party preference does indicate an opinion but it can't indicate every opinion in a black and white manner.  Just because you vote for someone doesn't mean you agree with everything they propose, there are good parts and bad parts of any party and we preference parties based on the one we think will be the best candidate in the mix, not the best period.

Even if you do judge somebody on their opinion or opinions you suppose they have but can't truly confirm, you shouldn't be able to talk down to them, swear at them or make them feel a lesser person for their opinion.

Edit for the iPhone typos

This.

[slothpomba]

The danger in doing that is that you can lump a persons views and a party's view together completely without consideration for how they may differ on multiple points. I don't agree with LNP asylum policies or with marriage inequality but if someone tried to anticipate my views based on who I vote for they'd probably think the opposite of me. I understand that sometimes party preference does indicate an opinion but it can't indicate every opinion in a black and white manner.  Just because you vote for someone doesn't mean you agree with everything they propose, there are good parts and bad parts of any party and we preference parties based on the one we think will be the best candidate in the mix, not the best period.

Even if you do judge somebody on their opinion or opinions you suppose they have but can't truly confirm, you shouldn't be able to talk down to them, swear at them or make them feel a lesser person for their opinion.

Edit for the iPhone typos

I mostly agree, you can't judge someone wholesale on who they vote for. People are complex individuals with an array of views and unless you're a party apparatchik, rarely fit into a neat ideological box.

However, if by exercising your democratic right you do vote for a particular party, with full knowledge of their policies, i think you the chain of responsibility for what they do extends back to the voter. If you are in favour of gay marriage but vote liberals because you like their economic policy, the chain of moral responsibility falls back to you for holding back the progress of marriage equality. Even if you only care 99% about the economy and  1% about gay marriage and voted on that basis; even if you are opposed to their marriage equality policy, the moral and practical consequences of the policy and empowering the government to go ahead with that policy ultimately rest with the voter.

[ninwa]

I mostly agree, you can't judge someone wholesale on who they vote for. People are complex individuals with an array of views and unless you're a party apparatchik, rarely fit into a neat ideological box.

However, if by exercising your democratic right you do vote for a particular party, with full knowledge of their policies, i think you the chain of responsibility for what they do extends back to the voter. If you are in favour of gay marriage but vote liberals because you like their economic policy, the chain of moral responsibility falls back to you for holding back the progress of marriage equality. Even if you only care 99% about the economy and  1% about gay marriage and voted on that basis; even if you are opposed to their marriage equality policy, the moral and practical consequences of the policy and empowering the government to go ahead with that policy ultimately rest with the voter.

I agree.

And I never said it was justification for talking down to them or making them feel like a lesser person. All I said was that I will use your political opinion to judge you as a person until/unless I can get to know you better, and based on that initial judgement I will/will not like/have respect for you, etc. Obviously those impressions can change, and obviously I'm not going to make those impressions known to the person unless they truly did something to deserve it, but I will use it as a gauge.

[abeybaby]

The danger in doing that is that you can lump a persons views and a party's view together completely without consideration for how they may differ on multiple points. I don't agree with LNP asylum policies or with marriage inequality but if someone tried to anticipate my views based on who I vote for they'd probably think the opposite of me. I understand that sometimes party preference does indicate an opinion but it can't indicate every opinion in a black and white manner.  Just because you vote for someone doesn't mean you agree with everything they propose, there are good parts and bad parts of any party and we preference parties based on the one we think will be the best candidate in the mix, not the best period.

Even if you do judge somebody on their opinion or opinions you suppose they have but can't truly confirm, you shouldn't be able to talk down to them, swear at them or make them feel a lesser person for their opinion.

Edit for the iPhone typos

Totally agree

[appianway]

Also, if people actually want to catalyze change and already align with a political party reasonably strongly, joining the party might be something to consider. If you're involved, maybe you can have more involvement in discussing policies and activating change within the party. I don't know - I'm not involved in politics. But even within a political party there's variation in opinion.

[simpak]

I agree.

And I never said it was justification for talking down to them or making them feel like a lesser person. All I said was that I will use your political opinion to judge you as a person until/unless I can get to know you better, and based on that initial judgement I will/will not like/have respect for you, etc. Obviously those impressions can change, and obviously I'm not going to make those impressions known to the person unless they truly did something to deserve it, but I will use it as a gauge.

No I know you didn't say that, it was more just pointing out that judging someone is one thing and then acting inappropriately on that judgement like many do is another, more in reference to my original post and probably misplaced haha. I understand where you are coming from but I personally always make every effort not to judge people superficially, and I find judgement based on political preference alone (even if I don't know anything else about a person) a horrible reference to use, especially in our current political climate where most people find themselves agreeing with parts of a platform and disagreeing with others. It's important to me to separate discussions of philosophy and politics and social opinions from person. I guess my wishes not to be judged on issues like that reflect my attempts not to judge others in that way. I suppose not everybody will take the same approach. And it also probably depends on how much interaction you've had with that person about their political beliefs - if you have discussed multiple issues and particular policies like we all probably have here it might be more valid to make a judgement based on political beliefs than what it is to make a judgement of someone who says they 'voted Greens' or 'voted Liberal' but are yet to elaborate.

Kp I see what you're saying about marriage inequality and holding it back and etc. I would have loved to have seen marriage equality but as I have stated before I'm not a one issue voter. I guess there's a difference between conscious decision and consequence.  Someone on Facebook asked if this election shed light into support from Australians re: same sex marriage and my opinion is that it obviously does not because we have shown time and time again that there is a majority support for same sex marriage. It goes to show that you definitely cant lump opinions on every issue together based on our system.  In an ideal world we would be able to vote on issues separately I guess!  The way our system is set up now comes back to 'I want this...but at what cost' too many times I find. And by cost I don't necessarily mean money I just mean stuff I don't really support. It really shouldn't have to be that way and I hope to see social change sometime in the near future (even if I have to wait till next term).

[alondouek]

If there's a major positive that we can all take out of this election, it's that Bullet Train for Australia polled more than twice the number of votes than the CEC.

Happy days!

[slothpomba]

What lies ahead under Abbott and when.... http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-07/road-ahead-for-abbott-government/4942822


Tony Abbott's goals

On day one

    Instruct the public service to prepare legislation to repeal carbon tax
    Give direction needed to begin his border protection plan
    Halt changes to the fringe benefits tax on company cars
    Stop the Clean Energy Finance Corporation from making non-commercial loans


Within 100 days

    Have legislation to scrap carbon and mining taxes before Parliament
    Have the contentious Australian Building and Construction Commission running again
    Implement a new business plan for the Coalition's version of the NBN


By the end of first term

    Get the budget on track to surplus
    Have the NDIS operating in large parts of every state
    Have a "Green Army" working for the environment
    Work underway on major road projects such as Sydney's WestConnex, Melbourne's East West Link, Brisbane's Gateway upgrade, Adelaide's North South Road and the Swan Bypass in Perth