It doesn’t happen very often, but I think I have changed my mind. It would appear this election has broken me.

I used to be in favour of compulsory voting. Surely a democracy is enhanced when the government is elected by the entire voting population? Well maybe, but isn’t it more democratic if people are allowed to exercise their right to abstain from voting?

I guess, in the past, I’ve supported compulsory voting because, in practice, I thought our democracy was enhanced because the government has a mandate to lead from the entire population. This overrides the democratic trade off where citizens are able to abstain. But the effect of compulsory voting seems to have become greater disenfranchisement of the voting population.

Governments are decided by the handful of electorates that would, presumably, have low voter turnout if voting was not compulsory. They are the swinging voters in marginal seats that are primarily concerned with their lot – their house, their family and their mortgage. They are the product of 50 years of atomisation and suburbanisation in Australia. So the two major parties put the majority of their energy into wooing these voters at the expense of any real vision, safe in the knowledge that their core voters will always vote for them because they have nowhere else to go – it’s a two party system after all*.

Doing away with compulsory voting would, I believe, bust the whole paradox wide open. If you no longer have to worry about wooing those voters and instead have to appeal to your base in the hope that they will go out and vote, you can start to genuinely develop some visionary, if more difficult, policies.

I can’t imagine us moving away from compulsory voting anytime soon, but I’m not in favour of non-compulsory voting.

*There’s not doubt that the Greens are starting to change this for the left of the ALP but they are a very long way off becoming a ‘major’ party.

(here’s my first mandatory election post, please excuse me, I’m quite jet lagged.)

(an informative graphic from Indexed).

As we all know, 3 weeks ago Julia the Great became leader of the Labor Party. At the time I experienced the familiar wave of excitement I experience every time we get a new leader of the Labor Party. I become so full of hope and optimism. She’s from the Left, she’s done the hard yards, has important links to the Union movement and is Australia’s first female prime minister. How could this go wrong?

This time I really tried to ‘curb my enthusiasm’. I reminded myself of the ongoing disappointment that the Labor Party has left me with and that I’m sure to be disappointed again, but I can’t help myself, I got a little excited. I was even telling some German friends that I met up with how Gillard’s rise was great for Australia. I rushed to revise my position a few days later though as the policies rolled out: we will still be getting an Internet filter; an increasingly inhumane approach to asylum seekers; a absurd population policy; poor response to Climate Change and so on.

I began to get that other familiar feeling… betrayal.

At times I’ve heard myself say: ‘If Malcolm Turnbul was leader of the opposition I would consider putting the Libs above the ALP on my ballot paper’. That’s utter crap of course. Whilst I’m attracted to the progressive liberalism of the Liberal Party’s ‘Wet’ faction, the reality is that with the Libs in power there will be less spending on Health and Education, not to mention a further regression of Industrial Relations. My comment is really intended to point out that there isn’t much difference between the two major parties.

So how can I support a party that conforms to the popularist crap that the ALP does? I can’t. The problem is, that unless the ALP does conform to said popularist crap then they won’t be re-elected, which means having Abbott as PM which means I’m leaving the country (actually, I’ll be doing that anyway, but I’ll blame Abbott if I can).

Being the inner-city intellectual type, I’ve actually got a pretty good local (ALP) member (Kevin Thompson). There’s another dilemma: if the ALP lose Thompson there will be one less moderating voice in the ALP.

So once again, I’ll be voting Green’s this election and I’d encourage you to do the same. Not because I’m a particularly big fan of the Greens, I actually think they are conservative on a few issues, but because they are the party that most closely represent my views. In fact they are often the only ones that speak with any sense.

I’m depressed.

(On a slightly more encouraging note, it is good news for all that the Greens and the ALP have done a preference deal. I may also have a small crush on Bob Brown.)

I am one of the growing number of people completely disillusioned with the Australian Labor Party at both state and federal levels. The reasons for this are many but perhaps top of the list has been the gradual decent into management politics. This is the politics of branch stacking, focus groups and a profound a lack of leadership.

In my mind, there is no doubt that there is a direct correlation between the systemic corruption found in the Labor Party and this decline into management politics.

By management politics, I mean a political style that is gear towards managing the electorate to ensure that you are re-elected. It’s about politics for the sake of staying in power, rather than to improve the state or nation. It leads to popularism and a lack of leadership or conviction and panders to the lowest common denominator. It’s a politics where Government doesn’t bother having the debate and convincing the electorate, it just rolls over. The Federal Government’s rollover on asylum seekers is one example, the Victorian Government’s ban on suspended sentences is another.

There doesn’t seem to have been a lot of talk in the media about the Victorian Government essentially adopting the Opposition’s policy on the banning of suspended sentences which is disappointing. It’s a difficult and complex issues that is easily made highly emotive by victim’s groups and knee-jerk reactions lead to poor assumptions.

John Champion has an opinion piece in The Age today:

It needs to be clearly understood that sentencing is more often than not an extremely complex process. Judicial officers are expected to impose sentences that properly reflect the gravity of the offending by providing appropriate punishment and denunciation of the offender, deterrence to the offender from future offending, or towards other like-minded potential offenders, while providing opportunities for the offender’s rehabilitation. The process that involves the synthesis of these and other factors must be reasoned, totally transparent, and capable of standing up to scrutiny and a sense of satisfaction from many different sources, not least of which is the victim and his or her family and friends, the offender, the community, and relevant courts of appeal. Judges and magistrates often say sentencing is the most gruelling and heart-rending part of the job they do.

The characterisation of judges as ‘soft’ on criminals is just wrong and to legislate a judge’s discretion away is to pander to reactionary attitudes rather than stopping and having the discussion about the merits of suspended sentencing.

The greatest victims of crime are often criminals themselves. If we are to have any chance of rehabilitating people so that they don’t offend again, then gaol is the worst place for them.

Gaols are criminalgenic – few people leave gaol and become law abiding citizens. Whilst I accept that prison is occasionally the only real option for someone, we should be doing all we can to keep people out of prison. Our prisons are expensive to run and already over crowded.

The Brumby Government needs to show some leadership on this issue and have the debate. They need to make sure that the population understands that a suspended sentence isn’t a ‘soft’ approach at all, but a carefully measured one that ensures that the needs of all parties, including the victim’s, are met.