State electionz

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 Well it's all done and there's no more I can do but hope. Whatever happens at the very least I can say that if Paul Green or any other member of the Christian Democrats gets any kind of power in state politics it most certainly wasn't thanks to me. Same goes for the Liberals and Family First. I voted for the greens first and the independents

Comments

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An injection room is an initiative to help drug addicts by providing clean needles. So it helps them not share needles and contract diseases. The conservative politicians are all up in arms about how we should be "helping" the drug addicts quit (with strict laws that get them arrested a lot) not helping them shoot up. It's a controversial thing, and not common. I don't know if there actually are any, or if it's just an idea the Greens want to put through. They're not on every street corner or anything.

I know there is a parade/festival somewhere else in the world called Mardi Gras which is just a general celebration but the Sydney Mardi Gras is a Gay and Lesbian pride march/festival which started out as a demonstration and has evolved into a yearly week long GLBT party/celebration with all kinds of events attached from just having fun to more serious stuff. The actual march is one big party with costumes, music, dancers, and all kinds of people marching for different organizations. I've marched in it once before with the youth group I was part of at the time and it was heaps of fun. Anyway, I don't know as much about it as I should so here's a link to the history. http://www.mardigras.org.au/about-us/history/index.cfm

Paul Green would outlaw all porn if he could, but he is politically focusing on x-rated video and dvd porn, mainly banning the importation of it from other countries, so the more hardcore stuff I suppose. I don't really know the different ratings but I assume there would be an R rating under X that he isn't trying to oppose (yet). He and his party are also supporters of the controversial internet filter which will block out a lot more than porn on the internet.

Your republicans would be our Liberals I think. I always remember which is which between Liberal and Labour by "Liberal is the opposite of what their name implys (they are conservative)" The Greens have great initiatives but are not one of the major two parties. So your Democrats would be our Labour (mostly fair and good, but not as left as they could be (still aren't doing anything about gay marriage for one). The Greens mainly represent the environment so far as a lot of people know but they actually have many other great policies. One of the big things they were pushing in the state election was for NSW to get a bill of rights. Because we seriously have no or insufficient laws protecting a lot of our basic human rights on a state level. They are also pro Gay marriage. The national leader for The Greens (guy who would be prime minister in the unlikely event they were voted in) - Bob Brown - is gay. Lately because of how badly both Labor and Liberal have been screwing us around The Greens are really rising in power and becoming almost a third party. I don't think Bob Brown will be Prime Minister any time soon but they had a guy win a seat in Melbourne last election which gave them a decent amount of power in parliament.

Do you have other parties besides your Democrats and Republicans who don't stand a chance of being voted in as presidents but who get the occasional guy voted in on a regional level thus gaining some power in the upper and lower houses? (If you have houses - um perhaps it's called the senate over there?) And do you have independents (guys who run for local seats without affiliation to a major party)?

I could regale you for hours with rage inducing tales of conservative politics here but I won't. Politically Paul Green is pretty small fish. He ran for a seat in the state election this year but before that he was (well still is) the Mayor of Nowra which is why I have such personal dislike for him. That and the party he runs under out of all the horrible racist homophobic crappy parties is the worst (in my book). Oh, Liberal got in btw. It was to be expected because Labour have held NSW for the past 16 years and haven't treated us the best. But given the option of the occasional screw over by labour and the shady conservative politics of Liberal, I'd choose The Greens any day :P Then I'd chose Labour.

Yay for way more information than you ever asked for.

Re: Australian Government

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Oh I just had a thought. Does your government keep a record of every voter and how they voted? Because our voting is 100% anonymous but I've seen on American tv where people mention a list of who voted for who and use it as proof of fake votes or something.

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Yeah I'm pretty sure the phrase Mardi Gras just technically means a festival and is used for all kinds of celebrations over the globe. But because the only one we have in Oz is the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade (its full official name) the term is generally accepted to refer to that event unless specified as something else.

So, taking your info into account, our Christian Democrats aka The Fred Nile Group would be pretty close to your Tea Party, though our Family First party is also pretty close. Other rage-inducing minor parties include One Nation (Amongst other things - "It promised to drastically reduce immigration and to abolish "divisive and discriminatory policies ... attached to Aboriginal and multicultural affairs." Condemning multiculturalism as a "threat to the very basis of the Australian culture, identity and shared values", One Nation rallied against government immigration and multicultural policies which, it argued, were leading to "the Asianisation of Australia."" - or in other words were all about being racist and ignorant)

One of my favorite minor parties in the last election was The Australian Sex Party. They sound like they're a joke party, and they certainly had fun with their campaign, but they had some really good policies (http://www.sexparty.org.au/index.php/policies). They weren't really trying to get elected on a grand scale, just raise awareness of certain issues so that more mainstream parties might start to listen.

I really don't know as much as I should about politics here or anywhere else though, so I'm glad you were able to find info about it and figure it out because I couldn't have told you much about the structure and the like.

So I hear voting is completely optional in The States. How does that work? Like how encouraged are you to vote and are there many people who never vote? It's technically illegal to not vote here if you're a citizen and over 18. Once you're registered if you don't turn up and vote for an election you can get fined (though I know plenty of people who never bother to vote and never get fined either). If you never register (my b/f isn't) they hassle you every election and you can be fined but I think they remind you for a while before they get annoyed and slap a fine on you. There are very few accepted reasons to not vote or register. My mother-in-law cites religious reasons as "belief that voting is morally wrong" is a valid reason to not vote. "claims that compulsory voting violates human rights" and "demonstration or protestation against society, voting, or politics" are NOT valid reasons to not vote. (Mostly because the definition of "vote" is "show up and get your name crossed off".) You can draw a penis or do whatever you want with the ballot paper and you haven't broken a law - just invalidated your vote so it can't be counted for anything.

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Oh I like the compulsory system, simply because - like you mentioned - so many people don't vote when given the option. I understand not liking any party, and if the Greens didn't exist I wouldn't really like any of them either. But I use my vote as a way to vote opposite to the really terrible parties. I start it out by putting the highest number possible next to my least favorite candidate (say 16 as it was for the state election), then I put a 1 next to The Greens, then depending on my other options I'll fill the rest in from "best to worst" or "most horrible to least horrible". So far as working or voting, it isn't a public holiday here and it is also usually on a weekday but you can absentee vote through the post beforehand if you know you won't be available. It's a little more complicated, but worth it if you want to (or have to) vote and can't be there on the day.
Your right on the can't complain unless you did something about it front. Unless your form of complaint is to vote next time :P

On the other comment - I think it would be a terrible invasion of privacy to keep that kind of record too but I hear anecdotes that made me unsure if maybe USA do or not. Little things like the Simpson kids figuring out that even the pets buried in the pet cemetery voted for Bob by checking the list (stolen) from the mayors office. I know mayor is different to president, but...

Yeah we have the same system as you mentioned (parties elect their leader and reps, then we vote for parties). So Barry O'farrel is the state rep guy for Liberal who was just voted in, and each region of NSW has a liberal rep, lobour rep, and other reps. The reason Barry (or Bazza* :P) got in is that a high majority of those regions voted their respective Liberal rep into local power. It works the same on a national election too. I have gathered from watching The West Wing that you do the region tally thing but it's based on the states. We don't have enough states so our regions for the national election are based on regions called shires or council areas depending. Nowra is in the Shoalhaven shire. I won't get into too much more detail because I really don't know much more for sure.
* Sorry random, but I find the thought of calling such an uptight conservative politicial Bazza funny. (It's a very casual/Occa** way to refer to him.)
**Occa - A thing or person characterised by their (usually extreme) Australian-ness. Esp. refers to persons with heavy Australian accents and mannerisms. Typically used as an insult.

What do you mean that you "have to" register a party? When you vote? Or in surveys? I vote Greens and in a two party preferred system I'll take Labour over Liberal, but I've never been required to tell anyone that. Even if someone asked me to be in a survey or census I could say no, not answer that question, or say other or that I was undecided (if I wanted to lie for whatever reason).

Re: Registering as a Democrat/Republic/Whatever

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Ohk. Sounds interesting. Here in Oz the people in the parties get to chose who represents them, not the public, as evidenced by the hostile takeover of the Labour party a bit before the last election where they all suddenly decided they didn't like Kevin Rudd and voted Julia Gillard as their leader instead. That kind of scandal and the fact Julia was a woman and all other sorts of personal details that should have nothing to do with politics but unfortunately did (such as she wasn't married, didn't have kids and admitted to not being religious) was a major blow to Labour's approval rating. It looked for a little while like it had cost them the election. But the fact that Tony Abbot - the leader of the Liberals - was considered such a bad choice by so many people from so many angles and also the rise of The Greens as a minor party meant that in the end the election was a hung vote between Labour and Liberal (not a high enough margin to declare anyone prime minister) so the Greens candidate that won in Melbourne and three other independent candidates who won seats across Oz had to get together and have negotiations with each party then vote one in. Gillard ended up winning that, so now she's our prime minister. (for now). It was quite an intriguing election to follow, even for those not too into politics.

Re: Registering as a Democrat/Republic/Whatever

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I found some quotes from Wiki which explain it better than I can:
"The national Leader of the Labor Party is elected by the Labor members of the national Parliament (the Caucus)"

and because wiki says the term Caucus means something else in America:
"In Australia the term is used only by the Australian Labor Party. ...When used in these countries, "caucus" is more often a collective term for all members of a party in Parliament, usually called a parliamentary group, rather than a word for a regular meeting of these MPs."

I can't get a solid list of who the members of this caucus for Labour are, but they're all politicians of some kind who sit in parliament with the prime minister, or represent her on a state level, or stuff like that. They're people like shadow treasurers and ministers for transport and I think these three are on it: National President - Anna Bligh (also currently the premier of Queensland); Senior Vice President - Jenny McAllister; Junior Vice President - Michael Williamson. (In this sense of the word they're president of the Labour caucus, not of the country...)

I'm beginning to understand just how little I know about politics, and how bad that is.

Re: Registering as a Democrat/Republic/Whatever

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I just got your letter a few minutes ago by the way. :) My reply to this comment is directed to an earlier comment of yours because the stack is getting very skinny and I went on for quite a bit.