Latham was excellent value. Thank goodness someone who would be noticed had the gumption to get up and state some hard truths and tell us that the voting system that purports to compel voters to vote for one or other major candidate, either directly or via preferences, actually doesn’t, and that you CAN and should vote for neither! So basic but so good to see, and very prominently in the mainstream media. Great stuff.

BTW Niall, I absolutely applaud Dick Smith for his ground-breaking ‘home movie’.

Now, about voting confusion – there certainly is a whole lot of confusion about what a vote for the Greens, or the Libs or Labs, actually means in terms of support.

No doubt a good portion of votes for the Greens were not due to a feeling of support for them, but rather a feeling of greater loathing for both of the liblabs. Unfortunately, most of those Green primaries would have counted for either Lib or Lab after the distribution of compulsory preferences!

A large portion of votes for the Libs and Labs, probably larger than for the Greens, would not have been cast in support for them either. They would have been cast on the basis of which major party the voter felt was the slightly less loathsome.

So all round there would be a very poor correlation between votes gained by Lib, Lab or Greens and voters that actually support them! In fact, I would think that something considerably larger than 50% of the vote for the liblabs and something quite a bit smaller for the Greens would not be supportive!

If a much larger portion of voters had taken Latham’s advice and lodged a blank ballot paper, of if we'd had optional preferential voting and a box on the ballot paper for 'no candidate', we would have had a MUCH more realistic representation of the level of support for the different parties.

Well, Naill has done a great job of sitting on the fence, telling us all about what's wrong with every body.

Hell, even I can do that.

What I would be more interested in is what would be right. In other words, what they should have done to be more effective, & "fair dinkum".

So come on mate, get off the fence & say something. It's not much use doing heaps of analysis, if you don't come to a conclusion. Who knows, if you sound convincing, one of those terrible parties may hire you for the next election, as adviser.

I am not that easily convinced that Green politics is the worst of Australian parties.

Lets look at history to find out about morality of Australian parties: Who dragged Australia into wars in the last since WWII?

1950 Robert Menzies (Liberal) involved Australia in Korea on request of the UN Safety Council.

1962 Robert Menzies (Liberals) sent Australians for no good reasons to Vietnam.

2001 John Howard (Coalition) sent troops to Afghanistan to fight Al-Qaeda and to catch Bin-Laden. Now suddenly the goals have changed. Now we fight the Taliban while Osama nearly is forgotten.

2003 John Howard (Coalition) repeated the axes of evil slogans of best mate Bush like a parrot and sent Australian troops to Iraq without a UN mandate and based on lies: Bush's and Howard’s crusade (holy war) against terror!

What is more evil, dragging Australia into wars, cause soldiers and excessive civilian death, or being pro-abortion or to accept gay’s rights?

Is it ethic to tell Australians that defending our country in Iraq and Afghanistan is required to make Australia a safer place? This argument is complete rubbish.

Is it responsible to send soldiers into terrible wars and let them later suffer for life from horrible dreams and stress?

There are more ethical reasons for not voting for the Coalition than the Greens!

The Liberals are responsible to have initiated the cause for all life's lost in these wars.

These wars have probably cost Australians more than ALP ever has wasted with alleged economic miss-management.

Liberals and Nationals seem more to be a Coalition of Evil than a Coalition of Christian Ethics?

Unfortunately the ALP has not the guts to end our involvement in wars.

The only party which would support the idea to get out of the wars or better not to get involved in it are the Greens.

Chris

When I voted Labor in 2007 I was voting for an end to the 'Howard's Battlers' era where progressive ideas were seen as a threat to white bread family values and dog whistle politics was the norm. Rather than shake things up though the Labor party just continued on down the same path. They made the apology which was promising and then just came out with stuff like the hard line against refugees, the family values internet filter and Penny Wong's ridiculous stand against gay marriage. I'm an inner city cafe latte sipping intellectual and my vote counts too.

Agreed, Dick. When the choice is between Liberal and Liberal Lite I can understand why people might prefer the real thing. But you forgot massive government funding for private schools -- another Liberal mantra that our 'New' Labor has borrowed.

I am now wondering if we should scrap preferential voting given the obvious voter confusion in the federal election. It seems as if most voters still consider the candidates personal attributes more important than policies put forward.
Also many of us jump on to one policy and disregard the total picture when we cast our vote.
Maybe the whole system of federal government needs to be re structured.