I meant to do this earlier in the week, oh well. Now it's halfway through polling day in the eastern states.
In broad terms, I am advocating an above-the-line vote in the Senate in each state for The Greens. They, and the Democrats, have demonstrated their value as minorities in the Senate holding the balance of power. The Democrats, while looking good on their policy documents, have imploded over the past couple of years, perhaps fatally.
It seems such a waste of paper to have that huge senate ballot just so that I can do one vertical stroke in one box.
This is how I voted this morning in my eleventh House of Representatives election:
House of Representatives, Grayndler:
2 Philip Myers (Greens)
3 Sue Johnson (Socialist Alliance)
4 Jen Harrison (Democrats)
1 Anthony Albanese (Labor)
5 Stephanie Kokkolis (Liberal)
Senate, New South Wales:
An inspired choice for the 2004 prize. Here is the press release from the Norwegian Nobel Foundation:
The Nobel Peace Prize 2004
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2004 to Wangari Maathai for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.
A whole heap of stuff about tomorrow's election in no particular order:
ChilOut (Children out of detention) have their election guide to policies on refugees. They are running a campaign to hand out 20,000 flowers of hope tomorrow.
A Just Australia (now RefugeeGuarantee.com.au) has rankings for candidates and whether they have signed AJA's Refugee Guarantee.
Rupert Murdoch's newspapers all advocate the re-election of the Howard government. Are you shocked?
Let's do the rounds of the editorials:
The Australian (News Ltd, national) - No convincing reason to kick out Coalition:
On the basis of what they have placed before us in this campaign, neither side of politics merits enthusiastic endorsement. But a choice must be made, and on that basis we should look to Mr Howard's record and Mr Latham's promise.... And we know that for all his policy failings, Australia has grown richer under his leadership....
October 7, 6:30 pm.
http://www.empirenotes.org/#07oct041
October 7, 6:30 pm. Today is the third anniversary of the war on Afghanistan. On the one-year anniversary, I wrote an article summing up the effects. Depressingly, every one of the major points is at least as true today as it was then. On Saturday, Afghanistan will have a "free" "election" for president ("president" -- the United States will still run those things it wants to run). Here's an exce ...
I believe that John Howard and his government have shown such impropriety, through their handling of "Children Overboard" and the war against Iraq, to make their return to office untenable. I believe that their standard of global citizenship has been not just bad, but poisonous. On the domestic front, I believe that the main issues can be subdivided into two categories:
Domestic issues:
I've seen "trust" and "truth in government" described as issues in Saturday's election. As I said yesterday, I think "propriety" is numero uno. John Howard and his government have a long track record of impropriety which, if you or I behaved like that, would have us sacked by our boss. Please remember on Saturday, that we are John Howard's boss. Sack him.
