Category: Columns

The idea is that no-one’s vote should be wasted. Even if you vote for the guy from the Free Money party and he only gets three votes, you still deserve to have a chance in electing the government of the day.

If your number one choice does not get up your vote lives on, at full value, and goes to your second choice.

That simple, honourable idea gets so complicated in practice that it drives some voters mad – causing them to write rude things on the ballot paper, like Bring Back the Train, in an attempt to pass the madness down the line.

It gets most complicated in seats like Richmond that have four parties splitting the vote in various size pieces. Even though every voter has complete control over who gets their number two or three spot, most voters fill in the numbers the way that their party suggests on their how to vote card. Those suggestions are referred to, in the business, as directing the preferences.

If the National party, for example, decided that the Libs were selling farmers down the drain and they were better off with Labor they might direct their voters to put Justine ahead of Joan. Unlikely as that scenario is, it illustrates the point.

That scenario is unlikely because the Libs and Nats have a coalition agreement. The problem for Labor is that The Greens are independent. It is the members of the Greens party in each electorate who decide what goes on the local how to vote card.

Green members will meet to decide the first stage in that process in the next three weeks. Justine, Joan and Alan keenly look forward to the results of that meeting.

Watch this space.

Joe Ebono is the Greens candidate in the forthcoming Federal election

Justine Elliot did not deny the charge. She simply repeating woodenly, as she did on every platform in response to every question, “Labor’s fresh new team will deliver a revolution in education <or the topic under discussion>. Our fresh new team and fresh approach will mean a new start in education, health and the end of Work Choices.”

The phrase still revolves in my head.

Now the team is not so fresh, the revolution has arrived and teachers are horrified that things have worked out exactly as Senator Nettle predicted.

Specifically, in this instance, the Learning, Literacy and Numeracy program will go to Nortec, who run their Brunswick Heads courses out of the CWA Hall, putting away the doilies and plastic flowers on Thursday morning and bringing them out again on Friday evening. Meanwhile TAFE class rooms sit empty, taxpayer’s resources unused so that the government can reduce the wages bill and pay Cert IV tutors instead of Diploma trained teachers.

In 2007, The NSW Teachers Federation almost backed the Greens at the ballot box, but could not bring itself to cut the umbilical cord that joins the political and industrial wings of the labour movement and so gave the Greens second preference.

If we have learned anything in the last three years it is that the ALP is a political machine designed to gain power, not to govern on behalf of the people.

Don’t repeat the same mistake this time, put The Greens first.

The Senate Inquiry into Aged Care released a unanimous report, in which Senators from all sides of politics condemned the department for denying that there is a crisis in aged care. The problems are that manifold. Underpaid staff are leaving the sector in droves. Cash strapped operators are not building the only partially funded beds. The complex and difficult funding and classification system is so daunting that many clients and their families are avoiding registering until acute care is required.

It is unsurprising that The Greens chose Tweed Heads as the venue for one of the forums for discussing the document, only the statistical district of Port Macquarie is more mature. Over one third of the area’s population is older than 55 and more than one quarter of us are over 65. That is double the national average.

What surprises some people, however, is that The Greens are launching an Aged Care policy at all. The assumption seems to be that The Greens are focused on purely environmental issues. Of course, the truth of the matter is that the Greens are a grass roots movement building into the major political force of this century, just as the labour movement did during the last one.

The things that set The Greens apart from the old parties is that we are not chasing votes for the sake of power, we are seeking power for the sake of the earth, the environment and future generations. The people representing Green voters in governments around Australia are there because they are convinced that a better future is possible. The surge in Greens support at the polls is evidence that we all have something invested in that hope.

Giovanni (Joe) Ebono is the author, editor and publisher of a number of books on sustainable living.

Of course, they have not, so he publicly had to eat humble pie. He honoured the terms of the bet, but not the spirit, because he still believes he’s right. House prices, he says, are propped up by first home-owner’s grants, negative gearing and the lack of a capital gains tax on family homes. He thinks the crash will come when people can simply no longer afford to pay the mortgage, and that day is not far away.

Other commentators have pointed out that property investment starves business of capital and skews the economy.

Another form of skewing, known as Dutch Disease, is taking place here, in Casino. The disease is named after the infamous tulip bubble. Google that and giggle.

The good burghers of the beef capital bask in the benefits of a real estate boom brought on by the gas plant. While that is handy for those who can sell out, it is a disaster for anyone saving to by a home. It is a microcosm of what is happening across the nation.

The mining boom is driving prices up rapidly but most of our wages are frozen and people are doing it increasingly tough. For the first time in its post-convict history, Australia has a servant class working for a fraction of the wages of their employers because they have no choice.

We might be addicted to economic growth, but that does not mean it is good for us. Those of us old enough to remember the earlier half of last century know that austerity and frugality has its benefits. We need politicians who have the courage to slow down the economy for the good of us all.

The opening day at Billen Cliffs was dedicated, as is the whole community, to creating a sustainable future. I reminded the assembled throng that very similar values guided the pioneers 150 years ago, who opened up the area, built the roads and many of the buildings that we now take for granted.

They might have come here to exploit natural resources rather than preserve them, but they cared about their community and employed as much ingenuity, self sufficiency and cooperative spirit as any billy cart or community hall builder does today.

It is critical that the original settlers and the recent arrivals recognise these similarities because we all have a common enemy. That is the forces of global capital that would prefer to see us in debt than in control, consuming instead of cooperating and buying our entertainment instead of making our own.

Billy Carts might not rate a mention on the Greens policy website, but community values over the interests of commerce do, and no other political party dares go there. They are all too dependent on the corporate vote. The website democracy4sale.org accurately documents the extent to which the old parties are in hoc to the big end of town.

For years, elections around the world have been knife edge, now most countries are finding a third way to break up the old power cliques. In Australia that force is The Greens. A vote for The Greens is simply a vote for the good, old-fashioned values of thrift and common sense, of looking after the future instead of seeking short term gain.

Giovanni Ebono is the author and publisher of a number of books on sustainable living and was the candidate for The Greens in the 2007 Federal Election.