Monique Ryan vs Josh Frydenberg's how to vote cards in Kooyong

How to vote cards are a window into candidate leanings and possible political deals.

Monique Ryan, the community independent candidate for Kooyong, has published the How to Vote instructions below.

• The order of candidates shown is the order on the ballot that voters will use
• Monique Ryan asks people to vote 1 for her
• Then voters select other candidates according to THEIR choice (values alignment, policies etc.)
• This is the best for democracy.

Josh Frydenberg is the incumbent Liberal member of parliament for Kooyong.

His How to Vote is below, with annotations.

Frydenberg has directed preferences to the following candidates:

• 2. Liberal Democrats (right wing)
• 3. Derryn Hinch (Justice) - centrist
• 4. UAP (Clive Palmer, right wing)
• 5. Australian Values Party (right wing)
• 6. Dummy candidate for Frydenberg (fake independent)
• 7. Animal justice
• 8. One Nation (Pauline Hanson, right wing)

Ahead of the following progressive candidate and community independent Monique Ryan:

• 9. Peter Lynch (Labor, progressive)
• 10. Piers Mitcham (Greens, progressive)
• 11 Monique Ryan (Independent)

This indicates possible preference deals between the Liberals, Justice, Liberal Democrats, UAP, AVP and possibly One Nation.

Frydenberg's preferences will not be distributed but they do indicate his political leanings to the right.

When voting:

Make sure you number EVERY square 1 to 11 to ensure your vote is valid.

There will be two ballot papers - House of Reps (green, 11 candidates) and Senate (big, white).

Plebiscite on gay marriage is a political ruse for delay and polarisation

A majority of the Australian population clearly support marriage applying equally to heterosexual and gay couples.  It is a basic human right.

However, some religious groups and a cohort of federal MPs (both Labor and LNP) oppose it for personal reasons.

There has been only 3 Plebiscites in the history of Australia:

• 1916: military service conscription (defeated)
• 1917: reinforcement of the Australian Imperial Force overseas (defeated)
• 1977: choice of Australia’s national anthem ('Advance Australia Fair' preferred.)

John Howard changed the Marriage Act by parliamentary vote to make it "between and man and a woman" - proving that no plebiscite is required.

The plebiscite was proposed by Tony Abbot when he was PM as a tactic to delay legislative changes, and provide a platform for vilification and hate speech by the minority who oppose marriage equality.

Malcolm Turnbull is too spineless to stop this expensive, divisive, ineffective and unnecessary plebiscite.

It will be ineffective because the result is not binding on MPs.

Our MPs should just do what they are elected for: vote on a bill to change the Marriage Act.

Tony Abbott, the Game of Thrones and why party politics is failing

Its interesting to watch the decline of Tony Abbott as Prime Minister.  I was concerned when he became Prime Minister that he would not be a good leader.  My worst fears have since been realised.

Tony Abbott: Source

The list of broken promises and bad policies gets longer almost every day, here are just a few:

• Funding cuts to ABC and SBS (a broken promise and appalling "efficiency levy lie)
• "Loggers are the ultimate conservationists" and "no more national parks" (appalling lie)
• "Coal is good for humanity" (appalling lie)
• Deregulation of university fees - that could result in $100,000 degrees (no policy for this during the 2013 election campaign)
• Continued incarceration of asylum seekers (including children) in concentration camps and offshore processing centres - a clears breach of human rights and the UN Convention for Refugees. (Note this is also supported by the Labor opposition)
• Encouraging Islamaphobia is making Australia less safe, rather than considering the causes of radicalisation of the minority who join the likes of ISIS, and how we can prevent this happening.
• Lifters and Leaners: vilification of low income earners and protection of corporate tax evaders
• A budget emergency that actually did not exist, but is now being created by the failed LNP budget and policies.
• Ongoing denial of climate change accompanied by policies that are crippling our transition to renewable energy and a zero carbon future.
• The proposed GP Copayment - research indicated that this will have a negative effect on health care outcomes and greatly disadvantage low income earners.

All these policies have a common thread - they are based on ideology rather than evidence.

However, for all this I don't just blame Tony Abbott.  

We have serious systemic problems with political parties, where their policies come from, how their leaders are elected, and the basic failure of representational democracy.

Political parties actually only represent their own traditional support bases:

• Liberal - medium to high income earners, "the big end of town" corporates, media barons etc. Notional "conservatives".
• Labor - "working families", unions (some but not all), Notional "progressives" etc
• Greens - conservationists, some unions, progressives disillusioned with Labor and the Coalition
• Nationals - the notional "rural vote"

The average citizen has next to zero input into party policies.  Many actual party members (a small fraction of voters) also have little or no input to party policies.

Party policies come from secretive processes that are largely controlled by internal and vested interests.

The basic failure of representational democracy is twofold:

1. Yet we vote for our local Members of Parliament, who are supposed to represent us. In reality, they vote the way their party instructs them most of the time.
2. Parties have policy platforms during an election that are not binding - promises are routinely broken once government and policies that were not part of their election platform are forced onto society.

Our Prime Ministers are selected by internal party processes such as Party Room votes.  There is never any public participation with this - MPs decided when to sack a sitting Prime Minister and appoint a new one.

Recently, this has been chaotic.

The Labor Party sacked Kevin Rudd due to internal problems they had with his autocratic leadership style.

The Labor Party then sacked Julia Gillard and reappointed Kevin Rudd because nervous Labor MPs thought she couldn't win the 2013 election - which Rudd went on to lose.

Malcolm Turnbull was deposed as Coalition Opposition Leader in 2009 by the Liberal Party room, many of whom were concerned by his bipartisan support for an emissions trading scheme.  Tony Abbott won by one vote and went to become Prime Minister.

Now in 2015, it is evident to the wider electorate that Tony Abbott is manifestly unsuitable for the role of Prime Minister, so nervous back benchers (scared of losing their seats) bring on a "vote of no confidence" in him, which is defeated (61 votes for him, 39 against) with no alternative candidate. 

Since then, Abbott has continued to prove himself incapable of governing the country, he is locked into "attack mode" where he insists he well "beat Bill Shorten" and he continues to bully and threaten anyone who doesn't agree with him such as Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs.

It now seems likely that the Coalition Party Room will vote again on who will be Prime Minister (if someone challenges) and that Tony Abbott is considered likely to now lose.

So these are some big problems.  

Here are some possible structural solutions:

Constitutional change: Form governments based on the skills of elected MPs rather than party allegiances and membership

Constitutional change: Ban binding party votes - make every vote a conscience vote

Constitutional change: Provide voters with the opportunity to directly elect political leaders (e.g Prime Minister, Head of State) and move to some form of Republic

Legislative change: Ban large political donations - these fundamentally corrupt politics as they buy influence and large media driven election campaigns.

Constitutional change: Citizen initiated referendums and issue/policy referendums - give voters the opportunity to vote on binding policy matters that governments must then implement.

If we don't reinvigorate our democracy will continue to be subjected to the whims and vagaries of a largely autocratic political elite that don't act in the best interests of the nation and all citizens.

Liberal, Nationals and Labor converge to shut out Greens

When political parties lodge their "group voting tickets" with the Electoral Commission, their distribution of preferences reveals deals that have been done between them.  These "group voting tickets" number all candidates in order and determine the order of voter's preferences for those who vote "above  the line" by putting a "1" in a single party's box.

Looking at the "group voting tickets" lodged for the 2010 Victorian State election, the following preference deals are evident:

Labor and the Country Alliance
Labor has a directed preferences to the Country Alliance in Northern Victoria and Eastern Victoria regions - which could result in a right wing candidates getting elected who would oppose new National Parks, support native forest logging and support duck shooting and hunting.

Labor and the Sex Party
Labor has directed preferences to the Sex Party in Northern Metropolitian ahead of the Greens.  This is likely to have no effect as the Greens are most likely to win a seat on first preferences.  In exchange, the Sex Party is directing lower house preferences in some seats such as Melbourne to Labor ahead of the Greens.

Liberals and the Sex Party
A deal has been done between the Sex Party and the Liberals, making them strange bedfellows. The Liberals have given the Sex Party second preferences in Northern Metropolitan. The Sex Party give immediate preferences to the Greens in South Metropolitan, but as the Greens are likely to have a full quota, the next preference to be effective is to the Liberals ahead of Labor, defeating Labor's Jennifer Huppert and electing Liberal Georgie Crozier (source: Antony Green).

The Sex Party may have even put the Greens last everywhere. The are looking like "the porn and pimps party" run by the big money of the adult industry and are supporting Labor.

Labor and the Greens
Labor has directed second preferences to the Greens in five of the eight upper house seats.  In exchange, the Greens have directed preferences to Labor in 11 of Labor's 13 most marginal seats (Mount Waverley 0.3%, Gembrook 0.7%, Forest Hill 0.8%, Mitcham 2.0%, South Barwon 2.3%, Frankston 3.2%, Mordialloc 3.5%, Prahran 3.6%, Burwood 3.7%, Ripon 4.3%, Bendigo East 5.4%, Bentleigh 6.3%, Ballarat West 6.5%)

Labor has also directed preferences to the Greens in 79 of 88 lower house seats, but this is of no real benefit to the Greens as the only seats where they are likely to get elected are direct contests between Labor and the Greens, which means Labor preferences will not be distributed.

The Greens appear to have withdrawn preferences in two of the 13 (possibly Gembrook and one other) in retaliation for Labor directing preferences to the Country Alliance in the upper house.  The Greens have stated that they did not direct preferences to Labor in lower house seats in regions where Labor preferenced the County Alliance.

Liberals and the Greens - no deal
The Liberals announced their decision to put the Greens last in all lower house seats across the state. This breaks with their practice in past elections of putting the Greens ahead of Labor on their how to vote cards.

There appears to be four possible reasons for this.  The first reason is that the Greens were apparently not offering the Liberals anything they wanted - such as more open tickets (no preference direction) in key Labor marginal seats.

The second reason appears to be ideology. John Howard stated that the Coalition had nothing to gain by helping the Greens take seats from Labor. This was due to perceptions that the Greens would always support Labor and their agenda was more extreme. "I think my side of politics has got to be very careful about giving preferences to the Greens. In my view the Greens are worse than Labor". "The Greens are fundamentally anti free enterprise. They have terrible  foreign policy attitudes and they have a lot of social policy attitudes that a lot of Labor people would find abhorrent."  Senator Helen Kroger expressed similar views.

It is interesting to note however that both Howard and Kroger participated in previous decisions to preference the Greens ahead of Labor.

However, there was a split within the Liberal party on this.  Ex-Treasurer Peter Costello stated that it made good political sense for the Coalition to direction preferences to the Greens in the four inner city seats of Melbourne, Richmond, Northcote and Brunswick as Labor losing these seats would make it easier for the Coalition to win government, and because Labor would be directed campaign resources on two fronts - the inner city contest with the Greens and the other Labor marginals mostly in the outer Eastern Suburbs.

Ex Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett weighed in with an attack on Helen Kroger, stating the Liberals should direct preferences to Labor in the inner city seats, but then later backed Ted Baillieu's decision not to.

Premier John Brumby also made an extraordinary direct appeal when he begged for Liberal voters preferences for Labor ahead of the Greens, stating that Liberal voters should realise a Labor government would be better placed to tackle the big policy challenges than a minority government with the Greens holding the balance of power. ''For the Liberal Party to de facto elect Greens members of parliament is quite anathema to the Liberal Party,'' Brumby said.

The third reason is that it seems there were perceptions within the Liberals that the Greens would not form a minority government with them in the event of a hung parliament, which would have been likely if the Greens won four inner city seats.   The Liberals were possibly thinking "if we have got nothing, we have got nothing to lose", or they may prefer staying in opposition to the prospect of entering a minority government with the Greens.

The fourth reason, probably the most likely, is that Labor got onto its big business mates and used them to persuade the Liberals to put Labor ahead of the Greens.

So the Liberals announced their decision to direct preferences to Labor in the four inner city seats, and attempted to claim the high moral ground by claiming "voters now have a clear choice" and that "a Labor majority government is better than a Greens-Labor minority government.  Brian Walters, the Greens candidate for Melbourne stated that in doing so, "The Liberals and Labor seem to have formed a grand conservative coalition to shut out the Greens".

Mandatory preferences are not good for democracy
The electoral requirement for parties and candidates to specify "preference flows" for Upper House voting in Victoria (and the Australian Senate) opens up the playing field for parties and candidates to do all manor of "preference deals", which sometimes results in candidates being elected from a tiny percentage of the vote as Stephen Fielding (Family First) and Peter Kavanagh (DLP) were from Labor preference deals.

This is anti-democratic as voters are not involved in or even aware of such deals, yet their votes go where the party apparatchiks have decided.

A solution is to give voters the right to decide NOT to distribute the any or all of their preferences.  For above the line voting this would mean that a "1 Liberal" vote would go only to the Liberal candidates and not "flow on" to others.  For voters who do wish to allocate their preferences they could go 1, 2, 3, 4 etc above the line, or number any desired squares below the line in sequence - stopping when they want to.

In the lower house, how-to-vote cards favour political parties who have the resources to (people and/or money) to have them printed and handed out.  This provides a heavy bias against any independent candidates who don't have the resources to do this.

A solution would be ban handing out of how to vote cards, and provide fixed printed versions in every polling booth.   This would have the added benefit of eliminating the massive waste of paper from the hundreds of thousands how-to-vote cards printed and mostly discarded.

In conclusion
The Liberal-National coaltion's decision to direct preferences to Labor has certainly have impacted the Greens chances in all four inner city seats, but a lot still depends on the voters, many of whom may not follow their party's how to vote cards and choose where their preference goes.

If Liberal voters in these seats follow the Liberal how to vote card, then a vote for the Liberals will be a vote for Labor. 

If you live in the seat of Melbourne, Richmond, Brunswick or Northcote (or any other seat for that matter) you would do well to allocate your own preferences and not follow any how to vote card.

It is also possible that  Labor preferences may elect the Country Alliance to the Upper House, and that they may hold the balance of power in the upper house.  Yet another right wing group could hold the government to ransom.

Links
Note that some of the articles below would have been written by party apparatchiks and fed to the media, and may bear no semblance to the truth!

• Antony Green's Election Blog: Legislative Council Preference Tickets 
• Kennett Attacks Kroger Over Green Preferences | AustralianPolitics.com : 
• John Howard urgers Liberals not to give preferences to Greens : 
• Liberals In Conflict Over Preference Deals :
• Preferencing Greens may be Libs' best option | The Australian : 
• Victorian Liberals Put Greens Last On How To Vote Cards The Age
• How-to-vote cards awaken the rebel in inner-city voter The Age 
• Coalition Puts Greens Last | Greens On The Outer : The Age
• Deal founders on Greens' arrogance | The Australian : 
• Greens cling to lower house hopes :
• Of course the Liberals prefer the right-wing Labor party to the progressive Greens | An Onymous Lefty : 
• Greens still positive despite preference deals - iPRIME Albury : 
• Antony Green's Election Blog: Implications of the Liberals putting the Greens last in the Lower House : 
• Preference snub renders Greens 'a lost cause' - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) : 
• Labor’s Greens obsession on show over preference deals | Crikey : 
• Liberals split on Greens preference snub | The Australian : 
• Lateline - 15/11/2010: Greens lose Coalition preferences : 

Democracy relies on transparency yet political party room discussions are secret

I put the following post on my Facebook account:

So democracy relies on transparency, openness and public debate, yet political party room discussions are secret. Isn't this wrong?

Monday at 22:46 via Facebook for Android

This status update has attracted by far the most number of comments so far.  I have reproduced them under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence my Facebook content is licensed with.

Gail Plowman, Nick Bursey and 2 others like this.

Oliver Minter i dont think so... politicians need to be able to discuss things however they do it - not everything should be taped and broadcasted - becoz the broadcast WILL ALWAYS BE EDITED AND OUT OF CONTEXT unless u think all australians have the time to have like a spare earpiece listening to the whole context of a meeting whilst we r at work or play?!

Monday at 22:58 ·

Oliver Minter But i'm all for openness and transparency Peter - the new invention of Participatory Budgeting is an example of this - but even this is incredibly complicated - if u want to see citizens on video learning how to vote on their local government budget and exactly where that money should go - i can send u links...

Monday at 23:01 ·

Sarah Holt-Foreman Oliver makes a very valid point. There comes a time when we need to allow politicians to do their job without every utterance being analysed or misinterpreted.

Monday at 23:05 ·

Peter Campbell The problem I see is that none of there utterances inside their top secret party rooms are ever made public unless there is a leak. People vote for local members to represent them, not for a secret society that regularly hold secret meetings pertaining to public policy and legislation. This seems like a serious contradiction to me. If the full context is available, then the record could be set straight. It is in parliament.

Monday at 23:14 ·

Oliver Minter i didnt think ALL of parliament is publicly taped and available - i thought just some of it is.. but maybe i'm wrong.. but i still agree with Sarah... aniway even if someone was to tape me in my own deliberations about an issue - i make many mistakes and change my mind - i wouldnt want media trying to take that thinking process out of my head and into misrepresentation..

Monday at 23:20 ·

Rachel King Eww politicians, dont trust them as far as I could throw one, the media is worse than the lot with their bias and propoganda. I loved this quote: "The modern proletariat is still just as self-satisfied with living in sub-standard conditons as he was at the time of Marx's writing, the only thing that now supresses him from uprising is the constant ...

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Yesterday at 01:34 ·

Oliver Minter absolutely agree with u Rachel.. and unfortunately i am realising that 'Google' is far from a good thing - having one sole company in charge of ordering our internet searches for all of our information needs?! surely thats like saying "i'm happy with only ONE TV channel - thats all i need!!!

Yesterday at 01:41 ·

Rachel King hmmmm, exactly

Yesterday at 01:42 ·

Oliver Minter and pity none of these posts are "shareable" on facebook..

Yesterday at 01:42 ·

Oliver Minter Rachel- i think i'm insane!! Either i forget an enormous amount of important stuff that i have learned VERY frequently or i am just DUMB - becoz i honestly forgot that i felt that way about Google!! Completely forgot... Google is my homepage - its what i feel i need - just like the practicality and predictability of MacDonalds!!

Yesterday at 01:46 ·

Rob Jansson Never underestimate the importance of double speak in controlling the populous.

Yesterday at 04:18 ·

Oliver Minter what do u mean Rob?

Yesterday at 04:21 ·

Oliver Minter i think the whole issue Peter has brought up is important and we mustn't get too down about stuff- we are absolutley in the middle of one of the most important times in history- to me it compares to the wierd syncronicty that led to the hippie/left/socialism movement of the 60's and 70's.. which woz marked by an unprecedented number of pple in the western world becoming extremely politically active which then led of corse to an inevitable tipping point..

Yesterday at 04:26 ·

Oliver Minter i may be being a little too hopeful but all i mean is in the 50's and 60's Television gave information to the globe like never before in the 80's the internet woz born .. but in the 2000's - social networking and and social and peer created news was created - like wikipedia for example .. citizens around the world became more locally policticall y aware - the Global Greens movement didnt come from federal or state based politics but local..

Yesterday at 04:30 ·

Oliver Minter For the first time in all of human history - a political party can make an enormous amount of money just from little individuals like us on facebook...

Yesterday at 04:31 ·

Oliver Minter and that is only possible becoz we have online money now..

Yesterday at 04:32 ·

Peter Campbell Major parties seek the same prize - getting a majority of themselves elected so they can form a government. As they focus more on the prize and less on their notional roots and "visions" they converge onto the same turf. They seek broad appeal, to win over any undecided voters, and to discredit other parties that threaten them. The whole system has devolved into a game like Survivor, with about the same lack of sense and perspective. And a lot of it is secret.

Yesterday at 21:11 ·

Rachel King People who strive for power are the wrong type to be leading anyone. By discrediting opposing parties rather than the focus being upon how they can improve is to their own discredit. It becomes apparent how self serving they all are, give them a wage that equals that of the blue collar man and then see who fights for the PM position (not that it will ever happen)

Yesterday at 21:24 ·

Rob Jansson Double speak and hypocracy are the primary afflictions of modern democracies. These days the most successful politician would publically advocate the importance of transparency but have lots of secret meetings. The tradgedy is that darwinistically speaking what we most often end up with for politicians are people who are really good at deception.

The really good cheaters are allowed to win and rule.

Yesterday at 04:43 ·

Oliver Minter look i agree with the issues raised by peter and u rob- but i honestly think your veiws are too simplistic..Democracy is absolutley extremely complicated and slow.. trying to organise your own test group of say 300 pple takes 10hrs and usually fails.. Local Government and local government citizen participation is the closest evidence we have in ...

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Yesterday at 04:55 ·

Oliver Minter if u look at the youtube and internet versions of world first democratic citizens controlling a governments budget spending it is an absoltute eye opener..

Yesterday at 04:56 ·

Rachel King It seems to me (not wishing to sound like David Ikes right hand man) that no matter who gets in its still the same people running the show, just a different face ( or puppet). Did you see that the Rockafellers have been priming politicians again with their complementary holidays?

Yesterday at 21:03 ·

Playing politics with climate change and nuclear energy

So now the worst kept secret in Australian politics out - John Howard has just announced his decision for Australia to "go nuclear" for power generation.

After "calling for a debate" and commissioning some nuclear physicists to write a favourable report on nuclear, and completely ignoring viable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, Howard now leaps to the conclusion, and apparently "makes the decision" to go nuclear.

Were you consulted? Did you have any input to this "decision"? Does Howard have a mandate to do this? Is this the right thing to do? Is this good democratic process at work? Are the Australian publics views and wishes being represented by the elected government?

I think the answer to all these questions are emphatic "NOs".

Nuclear power stations are a bad idea because:

• It is not a renewable energy source
• There is no safe waste storage solution
• Nuclear power stations will take over 10 to 15 years to build and commission, which is far too late to address the immediate emission reductions we need to make over the next 2-3 years
• It isn't greenhouse neutral - huge amounts of greenhouse gases are emitted during construction of plants and the mining, processing and transport of uranium
• Huge amounts of water (which we don't have) are required to cool them
• The cost of decommissioning them are huge
• A clear majority of Australians don't support nuclear power, or want to live near a power station
• An accident could render a large area of Australia, possibly even one of our capital cities, uninhabitable.
• Wind, solar and geothermal are viable alternatives that are being largely ignored
• Reduction in consumption by improved efficiency measures mean that we don't need to build new power stations.

I think Mr Howard is on a real loser with this one. I wonder about his motives.

Is this really an attempt to wedge the ALP who have their own internal tensions on this issue? Is he really trying to shift the focus away from ramping up uranium exports of doing the enrichment processing in Australia? (neither of which have been supported by the Australian people either).

Or is Mr Howard just looking after his mates like Ron Walker, Ziggy Switzkowski and Hugh Morgan, who have all positioned themselves to get generous handouts of Australian taxpayer's (our) money? This would be very inappropriate, and may even be corrupt.

Is this just a giant red herring?

It is high time that Howard stopped playing politics and pushing his increasingly extremist neo-conservative agenda onto the Australian public. It is time he did what he was elected for - to represent us and do the sensible thing.

In the meanwhile, Australia is missing out on the booming world market for renewable energy, and all the vast local employment opportunities this could provide.

The Age: PM flicks switch to nuclear