Election win for FUD.

Election result: FUD defeats SHIC

(Sensible, Honest, Intelligent, Compassionate).

Before the election, most Greens seemed to have stayed positive about the effect of smears from Liberal/Nationals/Family First, Exclusive Brethren and Labor, but they appear to have had their desired effect. The Poll Bludger put it best: “the Greens are on 12 per cent, which is remarkably consistent with other agencies’ findings.” The end result seems to have been around 9.57%. The extent anti-Green campaigning had on results is questionable, but is not likely to be negligible.

I can see two main reasons for a woeful result:

1. Attacks (especially from the latest creature to join the circus, Labor)
2. Greening of the majors (which is a good thing.)

On a positive note, the major parties have made lots of promises, and water/environment policies have progressed. Despite green votes going to Liberal and Labor, they did have to earn them. Their position is still pitiful, but a lot of promises means either a lot of action, or a lot more broken promises that can be used as ammunition next round.

Another positive note is the shrinking Labor reign in the assembly, from 62 to 55, and rise of Liberals – 17 to 24. It is always bad for democracy to have ANY party dominate, especially a party that does not allow dissention, where the real voting is done in strict secrecy (true of both majors).

Of course, the result is still positive – I mean it’s Labor, the worker’s buddy, the environment’s friend right? They’re the good guys, yeah? I might try repeating the mantra:

Labor is good, Labor is great, Labor really is the worker’s mate.
Labor is good, Labor is great, Labor really is the environment’s mate.

If I keep it up, I’m sure it’ll push out any rational fact-based belief otherwise. It’d be easier if I was more weak-willed, impressionable, and susceptible to indoctrination, but if the majority of citizens here can do it, so can I.

Also, there’s a $1,000 water tank rebate (assuming that was a core promise), so cash in on that as soon as possible.

I might actually propose a blog meme:

HIGH-LIGHTS AND LOW-LIGHTS OF HANDING OUT HOW-TO-VOTES:

1. How much time did you dedicate to handing out HTVs? How many others were there to help you?

I did two shifts (5 hours) at my local booth, at one point there were 3 of us, but mostly only 1. Labor had quite a lot of volunteers, and Liberals had a few, but seemed to have abandoned ship towards the end. A Family First family were there the entire day, and 1 People Power lady was there for quite a while.

2. Categorize and estimate the percentage of each category of card-takers. (What percentage refused to take anything, how many took them all, how many accepted each main parties cards only, any interesting trends?)

• 42% took them all, but if they missed one most didn’t care. A few did and went past twice to make sure they hadn’t skipped one. (The HTV collectors.) A small percentage of these refused either FF, Greens, or People Power.
• 42% didn’t want any at all, and how dare we put them through the trauma of saying no?
• 8% accepted Labor only. A small percentage took Labor AND Greens, which was interesting.
• 5% accepted Greens only – almost exclusively young folk.
• 2% accepted Liberal only.
• 1% accepted Family First only.

Greens-only appeared either intelligent, or feral.
Family First-only appeared like zombies, they had that cult glint in their eye – it was a little disconcerting.

3. List the hightlights and lowlights of handing-out. (Anything happen that was funny, heart-warming, saddening?)

Good:

One woman came up to me, wanting to thank me/the party for offering a REAL alternative. (This, along with people accepting Green HTV’s only is what keeps you going ultimately).

The result was good, with only the Greens having an increased vote (FF did too, but they weren’t running in previous elections, so any vote is an increased vote.) 4,184 out of 26,890 voted Green, 16.2%, up 0.4. Impressive, as Libs got 36.9, ALP 41.2, and it’s outside of the metropolitan area.

Apparently FF had preferenced the ALP before Liberals in this seat, basically to reward the sitting Labor member for his right-wing Family First friendly views and actions in parliament. (Not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.)

Everyone’s nice – you have chats with all parties. Family First lady shared her Pizza Shapes with everyone, People Power shared her mints.

Bad:

There were quite a few Labor-card holders who grimaced at the thought of accepting a Green HTV, not many others did.

There was no wheelchair access (thankfully no one needed it), but there were quite a few elderly folk that had to climb a large number of near-45-degree concrete steps (the school was having major renovations, and some areas were closed off construction sites). People from all parties helped people up the steps, and made formal complaints, eventually resulting in a table being brought down to allow them to vote there, and spare card-handerers would go and witness the official putting them into the box (although he cocked up at one point at put them into the wrong boxes, apparently it happens but they do get counted properly in the end.)

I got sore legs.

4. List any interesting exchanges between each parties volunteers. (Arguments, comments?)

The otherwise pleasant Family First lady (who was the mother of her family there handing out cards) out of the blue made a few snide comments about the horrors of decriminalising abortion when I was within earshot. I controlled myself and kept my mouth shut, even when she ended her tirade with “next thing you know they’ll go around killing old people.” Contain the rage. My composure was that of Hindu cows. I did feel like mentioning Bob Brown is a bit of a right-to-lifer, but I feared it might send her on a crusade of critical thought, and I wasn’t sure that her fragile mind could handle thinking. Shattering an illusion of that calibre could be devastating; it’s probably best to start with something less shocking.

5. Which candidates bothered to visit while you were there? Which didn’t? Did anything interesting happen?

I didn’t get a single word of abuse or anything more negative than the subtle sneers of Labor-only voters, but the Labor candidate got there and I overheard a few ‘comments’ on Greens to his supporters. He spoke to FF and Liberal people, but avoided coming within 4 meters of where the Greens were. (He won on Greens preferences, if the Greens actually preferenced Liberals (like they said they were), he would have lost.)

Labor guy also tried to engage a couple of voters, who were glad to discuss his position. They talked for a good 10 minutes, I noticed they asked his stance on one of those issues where Labor has the same position as Liberal (I can’t recall which one, there’s too many to try and guess. Civil unions? Not sure.) And it was nice to see him try to weasel his way out of it. “Well, we don’t have a specific policy to… we do support the theory/principle of… but currently our agenda does not include…” (Could have been civil unions, because that’s Bracks‘ line on the matter). Afterwards, they took the other cards, including my Green card with a smile.

The Family First candidate dropped by, he was a clean-cut late-40 uber-dork with a calculator watch.

Greens guy dropped by, Liberal and People Power were no-shows as far as I could tell.

Anyway, thems the breaks. I'd just like to recommend watching the cricket, it seems like it’s going to be less one-sided than this election was, so should be more exciting. Plus it will be great fun comparing the different hideously dry wickets at each ground - I just hope the more slender players don’t fall into those cracks on the pitch; lack of rain has really made some canyons in there.