I have putting off my election postmortem because, well, it’s all too depressing. It’s fair to say that I put more effort into this election than any other. It would also be fair to say that the effort wasn’t that much, as until now I have done nothing.
On Saturday I was handing out how to vote cards for The Greens at Mt Gravatt and Murrarie. After standing up all day, I got home at about 6:45, did some work, washed my face and checked the election results before heading off to the post election pissup. By this stage, it was already clear that we were probably going to be stuck with Johnny Rotten, Abbott and Costello, and the rest of those stooges for another 3 years.
While the result was good for The Greens (though not as good as they expected), it wasn’t so good for the Country. Elissa managed get almost 5% of the vote in her electorate which made her As the night dragged on, the mood at the party deteriorated somewhat. Comfortably numb from lots of beer, Spikey and I left, got a pizza and went home.
More bad news came on Sunday. It now looks like the conservatives have managed to gain control of the Senate as well. For those of you who are too stupid to work out why this is not so good, digital_wraith has a nice explanation.
So what went wrong? Plenty of things. The most obvious was the “grubby preference deal” between Labor and The Greens. It was only grubby because someone botched the job. As a member of The Greens, I suspect that the problem was more to do with Labor not releasing their Forestry policy in time for The Greens to print their how to vote cards. I know that I was handing out open ticket how to vote cards in Bonner. This could only have lead to less preferences to Labor and an increase in informal votes.
There was also this hope that The Greens would pick up all of the votes that The Democrats had lost. As it turned out, this wasn’t the case. While The Democrats are now in ruins, and they have been accused of not having any policies of their own, the slogan of keeping the bastards honest and agreeing to work with the government of the day made them a major force in Australian politics. I am not suggesting that Drew Hutton or any other Greens candidate wouldn’t do as good or better job as the Democrats sennators they would have replaced. Perhaps the public just wasn’t ready for The Greens to hold the balance of power.
As for Labor, who are you? Who do you represent? Do you represent free market idealism? I thought that was the job of the Liberal Party. You say that you represent the workers, yet you continue to push for higher productivity from these workers in exchange for giving them the privilege of their wages keeping up with inflation. Workers rights and protection of the environment are in direct conflict with the free market and productivity growth. You can’t have it both ways, at least nobody has ever explained to me how this is possible.
While I was handing out how to vote cards, I got involved in a discussion with the Liberal and Labor volunteers. The Liberal was an accountant and financial planer. I’m not sure what the Labor guy did. The subject of Superanuation came up, and they were both agreeing with one another about how great it was, and talking about investment opportunities. This Labor guy was a Liberal wannabe.
I mentioned Foresters ANA and how their ethical super fund had managed to achieve a solid 5% minimum return over the last 12 years without investing in shares or distorting capital markets.. I was promptly told that 5% was pathetic, and that a good fund would have returned around 10% average. Reviewing my super, I would have been very happy with 5% (I got closer to 3%). For every fund that got a very high return, there were just as many that got a low return. I don’t see how it is possible for all funds to get high returns. The losses in one fund makes gains in another. If the aim of superanuation is to ensure that everyone can retire comfortably, surely this has got to be the most costly, inefficient way of doing it.
I could rant all night, but sadly its time for bed.