Hey, Tasmanians? The two (currently) biggest political parties in your state aren’t big fans of representative democracy they don’t control. They don’t respect your wishes. They’re not even willing to talk to the representatives of 20% of you:
Mr McKim said he wrote to both leaders yesterday offering talks on a deal to provide the best framework for stable government and good governance. Mr Bartlett’s office acknowledged receipt of the letter, and it was rejected outright by Mr Hodgman.
Mr McKim said his office contacted Government House before Easter asking for a meeting. ”Shortly afterwards, the Governor’s office replied to us saying that if His Excellency wished to meet with me or the Greens he would let us know.”
Such a pity the ALP and Liberal MPs put themselves up for election in a representative democracy, when what really they wanted was a winner-takes-all autocracy with minimal public involvement (or choice). Such a pity for their voters, that they’ve got no-one actually representing them any more.
You know what I’d do if my party refused to represent me in parliament? Vote for someone else next time.
Moved On 
Strangely enough the Green social policies don’t impress me, but I still voted for them. First time ever. I suppose I should clarify – some of their social policies are excellent, but others leave me very cold.
I’d like to see them become a major player, and I don’t just mean gaining ‘balance of power’ every few years. They have the current crop of majors very scared, but without the confluence of policies the Nationals have with the Liberals, they need a lot more people like me – fed up with the stupidity, incompetence, and corruption of Lab/Lib.
Just out of interest, which Green social policies leave you cold?
The most important one is the emphasis on income, as opposed to support. I think decent support is a good goal, but decent income is removing too much incentive for the less advantaged to improve their own situation.
Yes, I’m sitting here with a good income now, but the limited income I received when I was less advantaged was all the incentive I needed to improve my situation. The feelings of not being able to make my own financial decisions drove me to make the changes required to rectify the situation.
The majority of policies listed by all big parties are pretty much identical, its just the interpretation that varies. The Greens need to have fewer candidates, but of a higher quality. Low quality candidates discussing policy in public turn off swinging voters, and they are who the Greens need to capture.
Aside: There has to be a better interface for posting than this website – got any pointers? For a Mac?
Not sure what you mean – you mean the wordpress commenting facility?
As for welfare – I’m perfectly happy with newstart being subsistence level. The problem is that it’s presently BELOW subsistence level, and administered very unjustly – take the deduction for being partnered. As for the student allowance being lower and not being counted as independent until TWENTY FIVE, that’s absurd.
Also, I don’t want the Greens to pitch for swinging voters. I want them to advocate for lefties like me. If they stop doing that, then we’ll have to form a new party.
Agree with the independence criteria, it stuffed me around more than 20 years ago. From memory I think it was 21 at the time. I haven’t looked at the student allowance since then, but I do have family members on different levels of welfare/pension and while it is tough, I’m always wondering why they have never put in the same effort to change that I did. I started with less then them and now some of them make snide remarks about me being rich. I don’t believe they are receiving too much money from welfare, and the disability pension is definitely too low, but increasing welfare levels too much will remove even more of their motivation to improve. I’d rather see more training and education offered free of charge, including budgeting and financial planning.
The impression I get from your blog may be incorrect … you seem to have put a lot of thought in your opinions of what you think should happen to achieve your goals for social change. I just can’t help but think that you’re wanting too much too soon to be successful.
I’ve been having a few discussions with someone putting a lot of effort into rebuilding the Democrats. I have many doubts about her chances of success, but she is pushing for the goals of the Democrats to be actually getting seats to exercise political power in a realistic manner. This means seriously targeting lower house seats. Note I say goals, not expectations. The Greens in Tasmania have been working towards the same thing, and its paying dividends. But now that I’ve lived in Tassie for 6 years I can see the dramatic difference in political thought between island and mainland. If the Greens on the mainland don’t move at least a little towards the swinging voters, they’ll remain a protest party. I realise the Greens are the only parliamentary party in Australia that are actually on the left of the theoretical political spectrum centre line, but I think the actual centre line of Australian politics (ie actual voting patterns) is quite a bit to the right. What I’m looking for is a party that is more centric than left, as well as more libertarian than authoritarian. Not deep libertarian, but less authoritarian than current major options.
I hope that hasn’t wandered too far around the topics…
I guess they learned about alliances with the Greens in the nineties. Tasmania is becoming ungovernable. Looks like they will be having elections every year.
But hey, who wants stability! Time to bring back first past the post. Or maybe one vote per family – that way the election would be decided by the only vote cast.
Or they could stick with representative democracy, now they’ve got a chance of actually electing people who will represent them.
Governor says Labor should form a minority government in Tas.
Peg Putt and Christine Milne are gone, along with many of the old ALP stooges. If NcKim gets his agreement with Labor there is the distinct possibility of stability.
Of course what many people deliberately choose to ignore is that instability in any coalition requires intractability from both sides, with both sides taking blame.