Possibilities for Pauline Hanson

Because of the Proportional Representation Voting System, virtually no vote is wasted: votes cascade down like a tower of champagne glasses being filled with champagne and flowing over.

This also means, though, that people can be elected to the Senate on the primary votes of fewer than 200,000 Australians. This is why minor parties love the Senate. It also explains how Australian voters have chosen time and again to hand (but not at the 2004 election) the balance of power in the Senate to minor parties.

The minor parties have to put their hopes in canny preference deals. In the 2004 election, Family First got a Senator from Victoria up with just one per cent of the primary vote. They are clearly desperate to get more people up.

So desperate are they that Family First is doing deals with Pauline Hanson which could see her elected to the Senate.

Heaven forbid that long-standing minor parties - The Greens and the Democrats - who have a history of acting responsibly and involving and interacting with the mainstream polity of this nation should be preferenced ahead of ratbags, particularly ratbags with a racist history.

Hell hath no fury like a preference deal scorned...

Family First got one Senator up at the 2004 Federal election. With a primary vote of one-point-infinitesimal-per-cent and an array of very c-u-t-e preference deals, they got their man in Victoria up.

They were so chuffed about this that they are r-e-a-l-l-y determined to get some more of their people into the Senate - especially since s-o-o many people have tried s-o-o hard in 2007 to get the Christian vote and its family values (well, a certain brand of Christian vote and a certain brand of family values) up front and taken seriously in the political debate. Seems that there's a lot of Christians out there determined to give it to Caesar!

And Preference Deal Season - or, at this stage, its final results - is upon us. Family First is most amusing. Probably they are so amusing because they were so clever last time, their Senator so energetic and determined to be Everywhere Man on his trendy scooter, they are so publicly Good, and - it now becomes clear - so DETERMINED TO WIN AT ANY COST.

It is being reported that Family First preference deals have been made with the Liberty and Democracy Party (a bunch of libertarian nutters) and Pauline's United Australia Party. This is the evidence for Family First putting winning above anything else. Funny that. I thought Christians were against an "ends justify the means" attitude.

You see, dear Reader, Pauline Hanson's political adventures have always carried racist undertones if not, indeed, full blown overtones. Now there is a report that a Liberty and Democracy Party candidate in Tasmania has spoken out in favour of decriminalising incest. In regard to the latter, I am waiting for the jokes from all those funny people out there. You see, if you are an overseas reader, you may not know that there have long been jokes in Australia about Tasmanian family life, incest, and people with two heads. These unkind jokes relate to the fact that Tasmania is an island with a small, insular population. Now we have someone in a political party who has taken the whole thing seriously and turned it into a political policy. Wow!

Please note: If you go to the comments, dear Reader, correspondence has been entered into by Terje of the Liberty and Democracy Party. Based on his comments, Miss Eagle has issued a non-John-Howard type apology and agreed to forbear from references to nutters and the legalisation of incest in relation to the Liberty and Democracy Party. Miss Eagle has issued a full reply in the comments section. Thursday 8 November 2007 4.40pm

Well, if Pauline having another adventure and keeping her name in front of the Australian public - perhaps she wants a reprise of Dancing with the Stars - and the Liberty and Democracy Party turning an Aussie joke into political policy were not funny enough....

then amuse yourself with the idea of the good Christian supporters of Family First entering into preference deals with such racists and libertarians. OK, dear Reader, up off the floor. You are making a display of yourself.

But, on second thoughts, dear Reader, stay there a while longer while I tell you that Family First is outraged. Absolutely outraged. Its rage is out and there. Why, you ask dear Reader? Because there is a preference deal between the ALP and The Greens. Ooooh-wah! Naughty aren't they. And why, again you ask dear Reader? Because of the drug policy of The Greens!

How outrageous! Harm minimisation policies in relation to drugs are beyond the pale - but racism and incest are not! Not when it comes to Family First winning it seems.

Miss Eagle - as well as a lot of others in that tiny factional group known as Rusted-on Labor Who Vote Green - will be pleased to know that the ALP has listened and noted that the ALP constituency prefers its preferences (ok, Lexicon Harlot, I can hear you listening!) to go to parties of the left - not parties of the ultra-right. This howl of protest was heard loudly in last year's Victorian election when the Demo(n)cratic Labor Party (the dreaded, historic enemy of the ALP, the DLP) got one of theirs into the Upper House on the strength of ALP preferences.

So - if Pauline gets up - will Family First take responsibility? If people with two heads (do they get two votes), vote for the Liberty and Democracy Party will Family First publicly apologise?

What is taught at City Life Church, the second biggest Christian church in Australia after Hillsong, where Senator Steve Fielding and his family worship? Traditional Christian ethics?

The Battle for the Senate

Get Up! is masterminding the fight to keep the Senate out of the hands of one party, in particular out of the hands of the party which has control of the House of Reps. There's little doubt that Australians prefer the Senate to be a true house of review complete with Committee System (thanks and tribute to Lionel Murphy). The body politic is smarter than the major political parties give it credit for: they are able to vote one way in the Reps and vary their vote intelligently in the Senate. Long may they do so!

Family First has been reported as indulging in some classic dummy-spitting about the projected preference deal The Greens have stitched up with Labor (with the exception of Labor in Gunn's Tasmania). "Outrageous" cries Senator Fielding who holds his Senate seat on a primary vote of one point not very much per cent!

Fielding is in the Senate because of a cute preference deal at the last election and he says he's ready to talk to Pauline Hanson on preferences. Will the FF preference cuties try to come up with a deal whereby they can get anything Hanson has on offer without giving anything back? Talk about long spoons and supping with the devil!

But if venality re Hanson's preference is not enough to put FF colours on full display, get this:

"It is absolutely outrageous to think that Kevin Rudd would want to preference the Greens, knowing their stance on drugs, free injecting rooms in streets, free heroin," Senator Fielding told ABC television.

Clearly, a vote for Family First means voting for Chicken Little and his policy platform of the sky falling in. Certainly, harm minimisation is something FF finds intolerable. And injecting rooms in the streets! Well, whoda thunk it? A building with rooms in streets! Where else do rooms go? In the air so that the sky can fall on them?

But seriously, dear Reader. When all is said and done, a primary vote for The Greens in the Senate makes good sense for one very good reason - Rudd's industrial relations policy.

The electorate has not responded negatively to Rudd's "me too" political campaign. This probably means two things:

1. a lot of people swallow this and feel comforted by it
2. a lot of people don't believe the "me too" campaign and think he is doing it to get over the line and things will change in power - either of Rudd's own free will or because others will do the convincing post-election

To ensure that Rudd and Labor introduce an industrial relations program that is more accommodating to the wishes of the masses of Australians who have switched their votes to Labor on the strength of Howard's industrial relations legislation, the best bet is to vote The Greens 1,2,3 in the Senate.

The Greens industrial relations policy is more accommodating to those who have fought for the industrial rights of working people.

The best way to ensure Your Rights At Work is to have Labor in government and The Greens with the balance of power. In fact, The Greens are calling it "Third Party Insurance"!

Let Family First focus on the quality of mucus on their pacifier!

'round the traps

Is Andrew Landeryou over at The Other Cheek having withdrawal symptoms? It's either that or there's something wrong with Blogger.

In my FeedDemon, I have a post from OC dated Friday 8.53am with the heading LEGAL SAGA: Family First threaten to sue DLP. Now the OC feed only gives the shortened version of a post. When I tried to get the post up in full, it is nowhere to be found either on the whole blog or by its permalink. If you are more successful than I, dear Reader, please advise. In the meantime, I am left to think that there is someone out there who thinks OC has overstepped the mark and convinced AL that he should withdraw the post. Anyway, here are the first two sentences:
The OC understands that there is a spat emerging between Family First and the Democratic Labor Party which could end up in the courts. Our source told us this morning: Family First has sent a legal letter to The DLP threatening legal action against Vern Hughes because he states in a flyer that FF is associated with the Assemblies of God.

Miss Eagle, for one, dear Reader, is always amused when Family First goes into denial about denominational affiliation from the Assemblies of God. Coz Miss Eagle thinks FF protesteth too much.

Miss Eagle would think that Pentecostal churches are to Family First what Trade Unions are to the ALP and business organisations are to the Liberal Party and the National Farmers Federation and state farmers' organisations are to the National Party. Is Family First really trying to convince us that it is a secular party? Where's the ethics in that?

And as for ethics, let's cross to Father Bob who posts on The Chaser Treatment. Miss Eagle always pricks her ears when it comes to the topic of prophecy in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. After all, Miss E considers the Eighth Century Prophets of the Old Testament to be good friends of this blog. So Father B gives us a bit of early christian history and where everything went awry and where we are to-day and where The Chaser fits. Good stuff! More Please!

Election Day in Victoria

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To-day has been Election Day in the State of Victoria. Miss Eagle has been participating in the process. A fellow member with Miss Eagle of St Thom's congregation at Upper Gully, Rex Thompson, stood as the Greens candidate in the seat of Scoresby. Now Miss Eagle does not know Rex's age but let us just say that Rex and June celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversay in August this year. So Miss Eagle figures this puts Rex at 70+. Miss Eagle reckons he needs a medal: putting up a creditable, but unwinnable, campaign for a party some would consider radical and the province of a younger generation.

Victoria has the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in government under the leadership of Premier Steve Bracks. His main opponent is the Liberal Party led by Opposition Leader Ted Baillieau. The National Party, a rural and agriculturally based party, runs in rural and regional areas and holds seats in the Victorian parliament. The Greens have no seats in the Victorian parliament but are a well known political party. Family First, a party widely supported by people in Pentecostal churches, has become known since it won a senate seat in the last Federal election with a Victorian candidate from the second largest Assembly of God church in Australia. The new kid on the block is People Power.

The real interest will focus on Victoria's upper house, the Legislative Council, where reform has been instituted in the form of election by proportional representation within multi-member electorates which will, in all likelihood, mean a more diverse membership.

As this is being written, it appears there is a possibility of the Greens winning their first seat in the Victorian Legislative Assembly in the seat of Richmond. The Greens are outpolling the Liberals to come in second which, under the preferential system of voting, means that the outcome of Liberal preferences will be of great interest.