actually I’m not sure if it is politics that sucks or if it is just political parties. or the way that our voting system is set up. <\/p>\n
this week there is a state government election. i quite like our current premier and would be more than happy to vote for her to keep her job. the problem is, i can’t. i’m not knowledgeable enough about the general political processes in other countries but I get the impression that in other large western countries that I am somewhat familiar with, that when they have an election for, for example, their national leader, people are voting directly for the person they would like to see in that office. here, you vote only for your local representative based on the area you live in. there are different areas and boundaries for council, state and federal electorates. in the state and federal elections, it’s the overall number of members a particular party gets elected that determines who will be the premier or prime minister. the party leader of the one that got the most members elected gets the job.<\/p>\n
i understand that in theory this ensures that the leader at high levels is representative of the ideals that most people support.. but it really doesn’t work that way. in the current state election, in order to support the incumbent premier, anna bligh – which i would like to do – i would have to vote for my local member who is in her party. my local member is a guy called michael choi and i think he has held the position for several election periods. however i’m not going to vote for him because he does not believe that ALL of his constituents are worthy of the same representation and social and legal rights<\/a> as every other person. this is not acceptable to me.<\/p>\n so, what to do? vote for him anyway so that i support the leader of his party (who has differing opinions to him on the issues that make him an offensive choice)? cost: this gives my implicit approval of his views that I disagree with. vote for a different person? cost: i am not supporting the premier I like. not vote? cost: $20 fine. (here, voting is not a democratic right, it is an obligation<\/a>.) make an invalid vote? cost: i don’t get to have my say.<\/p>\n i think it may end up being the vote for him anyway option. only four of the members of labor voted the way he did on the civil unions bill, but all of liberal voted against it. and i really like anna. and i don’t know a whole lot about campbell newman, to be honest, but in all the ads i see he comes across like a smarmy salesman. i can’t see him struggling to speak through obvious emotion at a press conference<\/a>. he either doesn’t value all queenslanders as equal or else doesn’t have the guts to go against his party’s official stance. economy and growth and development and all that is important, yes, but what good is doing lots of stuff for the future if you don’t show that you care for the people you represent right now? that is what i want to see in someone i elect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" actually I’m not sure if it is politics that sucks or if it is just political parties. or the way that our voting system is set up. this week there is a state government election. i quite like our current premier and would be more than happy to vote for her to keep her job. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[390,388,389],"class_list":["post-460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-democracy","tag-politics","tag-voting"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5SdGC-7q","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.gazpachosoup.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.gazpachosoup.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.gazpachosoup.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.gazpachosoup.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.gazpachosoup.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.gazpachosoup.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":461,"href":"https:\/\/blog.gazpachosoup.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions\/461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.gazpachosoup.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.gazpachosoup.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.gazpachosoup.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}