Tomorrow we go to
the polls here in Victoria Australia.
There are two
parties in the running: Labor and the Liberal/National alliance.
There is a distant third in the race, the Green party.
I'm not going to be
voting for the Liberal/National alliance. There are many reasons, but
there is a prime driver for me. They lie.
In the last
Victorian election, they promised to improve public transport: and I
distinctly understood them to say that they would get going on
building a rail line Doncaster. My local candidate for the Liberal
Party has told me that I was misinformed on this last point. Go
figure.
Regardless, once in
power, as a regular public transport user, all I have seen is ongoing
maintenance. The timetables have been changed in such a way that it
now takes me longer to get to my place of work, and the crowding,
breakdowns and failures continue unabated.
However, the
Liberal/National alliance did change the way in which the running of
the trains was assessed. They also allowed the operators to now skip
stations if they are behind schedule. The Liberals then used these
dodgy tactics to triumphantly crow that they had 'fixed' public
transport.
People who use
public transport on a regular basis will agree that this is a lie
based on dodgy figures. When you have to drive 10 kilometres late in
the evening to pick up your teenage daughter because the train she
was on suddenly turned into an express and dropped her in the middle
of nowhere you'll understand the anger. As an aside, I do wish that
the people who govern us would deign to use public transport
regularly, just to understand the pain of using it.
What the Liberal
party did do, once in power, was to commit to building a dirty great
big freeway. One that they hadn't mentioned in the election. And that
has its business case shrouded in secrecy. A freeway so expensive
that I believe it's going to suck cash out of the public purse for
decades, meaning that there is going to be very little money left to
spend on other needed services.
It would appear to
me that the freeway was chosen, not because the Liberals genuinely
believed it was needed, but rather either because it made moving
freight by truck easier, or because it threatened to wedge the Labour
party and drive support to the Liberals. Pandering to special
interest groups, or playing politics. Neither of these seem like a
very good reason to hock the future of the state.
But in the last
desperate weeks before they had to go to election, the Liberal party
committed us taxpayers to this freeway, seemingly aborting due
process and rushing to sign contracts with builders that have some
sort of large cancellation clause added. But again, we the public
have no idea as to what's in them, as they've been kept secret. The
secrecy, the unwillingness to take it to an election: the whole thing
just reeks. And its not a good reek either.
Along the way the
Liberal/National party also won the federal election. And guess what:
we soon learned that they had lied there as well. It's the same
party, and the same people.
So I now have the
Liberal party pegged as a bunch of pathological liars. I don't trust
them one little bit. On this basis alone, I don't know how anyone can
support them, and I don't understand why anyone would admit to being
a member.
As I said, there are
many other reasons to not vote for them IMHO, but this is my primary
driver.
Which leaves either
the Labor Party or the Greens.
The Labor party seem
to be poll driven. By this I mean that I feel that they avoid making
public pronouncements that might affect them in the polls. For
example, their commitment to cancelling the freeway project was not
expressed as a clear commitment until fairly late in the game. I
guess if you're ahead in the polls its a fair strategy, but not one
that endears them to me.
And they appear to
be the other half of a rather cosy duopoly with the Liberal/National
alliance. So whilst I would prefer Labor to be in government, rather than the
Liberals, I would also like to see the duopoly ended. We do need
change, otherwise it's going to be same old, same old.
So I'm going to be
putting the Greens at the top of my list, followed by Labor. And I'm
writing in all my choices below the line. This effectively means that
in my seat I'm probably going to be voting for Labor. But if the
Greens get enough votes, they might win the seat. It also means that
I've registered my disgust at the Liberal lies, and indicated to
Labor the direction in which I'd like them to move.
As you can gather:
we have a fiendishly complex electoral system. If you've read this
far, educate yourself about voting below the line, and the parties
you'll be voting for in the election here:
http://notionoriety.wordpress.com/2014/11/25/victorian-election-2014-tips-for-voting-below-the-line/
And then create your
own how to vote card: https://www.clueyvoter.com/
and take it with you to the polling booth.
And don't complain
about the status quo if you vote for it!
