What a pathetic piece of propaganda.

<<...between a fifth and a quarter of first preferences (counting informals) did not go to the major parties.>> Actually, informal votes didn't go to ANY party, so don't try to grease them as wannabe Green votes.

About 80 per cent of first preferences went to the major parties. That's 11.2 million votes to the Greens' 1.3 million. Well, I suppose getting 1.3 million votes for their crypto-communist policies is some sort of victory for the lunatic left.

And how does an 11.5 per cent vote make <<...the Greens and informal voters>> big winners? How does an informal voter "win" anything?

Lots of empty assertions, zero evidence, zero logic in this piece. As an historian you make a good geophysicist, Geoff.

<<The Liberal Party has moved far to the right over the past three decades...>>, and you then imply that Labor has moved further to the right and is in the hands of a manipulative minority of the wealthy. I guess they realised where the votes were.

And Malcolm Fraser resigned from the Liberal Party in disgust? The old Mugabe promoter? The 1975 coup plotter? His resignation was significant in what way?

<<Tony Abbott’s sloganeering and erratic aggressiveness could only appeal to a diminished party embracing very narrow and regressive views, including climate denialism.>>

Yet the LNP won 600,000 more votes than Labor. Sounds like a lot of people disagree with you.

Geoff, you need to do more than project your own extreme left desires on to the clouds and pretend that's a picture of the past three decades of Australian political history.

Ozandy- so you know it's called neoliberal because they're being liberal towards companies and businesses, and don't like public ownership or accountability- that's it.
NeoCons differentiate only in how un-liberal they are to social policy.

Personally, I hate them both.

Anyway, a good article Mr Davies, and good point rpg.

For the record, my lean towards Greens comes only from opposition to privatization and neoliberal policy endorsed by the other parties in general (and their increasingly poor records of acting in the Australian public's interest over their own), and there are no not-so-leftwing alternatives in my electorate.

The leftists always call for political action and then are disappointed when, surprise surprise, it turns out to be corrupt, self-interested and servile to vested interests.

They think the answer is for the political process to be more democratic. They do not understand that the quintessential characteristic of the democratic process is unprincipled grabbing. What else is to be expected from a process in which the only principle is what the majority might want?

Leftists dream of "principled" politicians and clamour for someone with "vision" to impose on the population what they will not consent to, a vision in which the liberty, property and livelihoods of the individual will count for nothing in the grand socialist scheme for a better society.

Fraser Tyler, author of The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic more than 200 years ago said it best. “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.”

Thus the leftists are stuck. On the one hand is the individual liberty and property that they despise and want to forcibly override. On the other hand, they can't do that without using force, so they must turn to politics. But since socialism is completely unworkable, the only constant result of their political efforts is an ugly form of corrupt state corporatism, the only possible result of their combined political ideology and economic illiteracy.

A most impressive article Geoff. Sadly we seem to lack main stream journos who are capable of applying your historical and social insights to lay bare our broken and corrupt system of democracy.

It's my fervent hope that this hung parliament may be the necessary catalyst for sparking several deep and broad reforms to our constitution, structure of government and some cost effective strategies for engaging regional communities that really can deliver power to the people.

Getting rid of state governments, unifying the country under one body of law and bolstering the role of local government are policies that are right for our time.

The basic premise of this article is simply wrong.

'Clearly the message from many voters to the major parties is “a pox on both your houses”.'

From the ABC, the Labor vote was down by about 5.3%, the Greens vote was up by about 3.8%, Independants was down by 0.1%, the Coalition was up by 1.6%. Informal votes were 5.64%, up from 3.93% in 2007 or a 1.71% increase. Now it seems only an extra 1.71% of votes rejected both parties.

And obviously a vote for the Greens was nearly always a preference (70-75%)vote for Labor.

Hardly a massive result to support the premise.

What is equally important, but unverifiable at present, is whether those informal were mostly former Labor voters as Flinders University associate professor of politics Haydon Manning indicates.

http://www.theage.com.au/federal-election/informal-vote-a-sign-of-disillusion-20100822-13ay1.html?autostart=1

or were equally distributed from both parties.

I think it was as Manning indicates and such would support the argument that it was only Labor voters who reject 'the ossification, lack of principle and systemic corruption' of Labor and that very very few people view the Coalition, including former Labor voters, with being blighted in the same manner... at all.

I reject the notion or arguments that voters rejected both parties. That sort of argument undeservedly diminishes the Coalition, which clearly isn't diminished, and pours honey all over the magnitude and significance of Labor's catastrophic loss.

Geoff Davies

Last Election Day an old man went around Melbourne with the poster.

“TO VOTE IS TO SURRENDER TO CHARLATANS YOUR WEALTH YOUR DIGNITY
THE LIFE OF YOUR CHILDREN”

Until politicians are elected for set times on the only strength of statements for which they cannot be made materially accountable we can expect from them nothing other than irresponsible decisions that ultimately negatively impinge on our lives and our surroundings.

Did it ever pass your mind that among the informal voters you mention there might have been more than one aware of this undeniable reality?

If there was one, we would be two.