Why does this remind me of the scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian?

"DEADLY DIRK: Campaign for Free Galilee.

FRANCIS: Oh. Uh, People's Front of Judea. Officials.

DEADLY DIRK: Oh.

FRANCIS: What's your group doing here?

DEADLY DIRK: We're going to kidnap Pilate's wife, take her back, issue demands.

FRANCIS: So are we.

DEADLY DIRK: What?

FRANCIS: That's our plan!

DEADLY DIRK: We were here first!...

DEADLY DIRK: You bastards! We've been planning this for months.

FRANCIS: Well, tough titty for you, Fish Face...

C.F.G. and P.F.J. fight

BRIAN: Brothers! Brothers! We should be struggling together!

FRANCIS: We are!...

BRIAN: We mustn't fight each other! Surely we should be united against the common enemy!

EVERYONE: The Judean People's Front?!

BRIAN: No, no! The Romans!

EVERYONE: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes."

Fascinating article Bernard and obviously very well researched. It would be amazing to rid the Senate of the 'fairies at the bottom of the garden'. Hopefully those parties listen to you!

The Sex Party and HEMP far left? What drivel.

Left wing parties want to control your money. Right wing parties want to control your private life. Get it right.

I’ll let the new DLP, the one with the “u” in “Labour”, speak for itself on religion, but the original DLP, the one with “Labor” in its name, was not a religious party at all. It is true that its membership was largely Catholic, but it was a social democratic party that took people of all faiths and none.

It was the first parliamentary party to call for the end of the White Australia policy, it ran a campaign for prison reform, it supported unions, and it argued for substantial class size reductions, as also supported by the public sector teacher unions, as early as 1967.

It was environmentally aware long before the creation of the Greens, advocating the “protection and conservation of our natural environment and the planned use of natural resources in recognition of the close relationship between man and nature and the finite nature of the earth’s resources”.

The DLP voted to disband in 1978. The current DLP was created by the people who did not accept the decision to disband.

The current DLP is not the same party and has some attitudes that are contrary to those of the original DLP. The new DLP’s opposition to land rights (“No land rights for ‘nomadic’ people: MP”, The Age, 16/9/2010) would break the hearts of those active in the original DLP, especially that of the late Ben Nona, the DLP candidate for Cook in the 1972 Queensland election, a Torres Strait Islander and a representative on the National Aboriginal Conference. Frank Dowling, the DLP leader, went to the 1973 state election calling not only for land rights for Aborigines, not only for negotiation on royalties, but also for the protection of their scared sites (“Plan for a Better Victoria”).

The current DLP has done preference deals with One Nation and the Citizens Electoral Council, something the original DLP would never have done.

Chris Curtis
(Vice President, Victorian Branch, Democratic Labor Party, 1976-78)

"Finally, on border protection, the minor Christian alliance should be a thorn in the side of the Liberals. It is the biggest political issue of all, and Australians simply want to see the boats stopped"

If the Author believes this is the biggest issue for Christ-stain voters then the church is in an even worst state then I thought.

'Because while these parties are filled with good people who have good intent, collectively, they are not very good at politics.'

Could not agree more Bernard. You can see how the Greens with such a small number believing their fantasies influence policy so much largely due to a godless press.

Thank "God" that we have nothing like the "religious" phenomenon in the USA as described by Chris Hedges in his truth-telling book American Fascism - The Christian Right & The War On America.
And by Frank Schaeffer in his various books and online essays.
Frank of course grew up in the belly of the right-wing fundamentalist beast and was actively involved in promoting their dreadful applied politics, until he woke up and realized how dreadful the right-wing beast was/is.

“Considering that they are political parties, this is not going to get them very far at all. For a start, most Australians don't even know these parties exist”.

What? Does this mean that the drongos who share the governing of Australia are ‘good at politics? I think not. The only reason that the Coalition and Labor share the government benches year, after year, after…is because the average Australian voter is a nicampoop, too lazy or too stupid to think about politics.

The only way to get good politicians is to stop preferential and compulsory voting.

The people who want to vote have certainly heard about “these parties”, and getting rid of the morons by not forcing them to vote when they clearly don’t want to, would see a vast improvement in our politicians. The only politicians in SA, a few months out from an election, saying anything worthwhile, are Family First members. And they don’t go around chuntering about religion.

With girly-man Abbott merely pretending to be conservative, there could be many more votes going to Family First in future, and it won’t be because of religion.

Not likely, but an insurrection, possibly? But particularly, if we hear from just one more pulpit pounding pedophile!
Rhrosty.

What a depressing article. These peanuts claim to speak on behalf of Christians? I, and most of the Christians I know, wouldn’t have a bar of this ultra social-conservative agenda. Trying to outflank Abbott to the right on asylum seekers. Preferencing Clive Palmer over the Greens. This does not seem compatible with the values I read in the Gospels.

What is truly scary is that these tiny parties that represent virtually no-one now feel entitled to a seat in the Senate, thanks to our absurd electoral system. So 2-5% of the vote is “enough to get a Senator elected”. Well, it shouldn’t be. And shame on Bernard for proposing the Machiavellian route to power through preference deals, not the democratic one entailing getting more votes than the other parties.

While Mr Gaynor has obviously put a lot of effort into this article, he's labouring under the delusion that he and the parties he mentions actually represent Australian Christians in some way!

The truth is that he and his ilk represent no-one but a fringe minority of rabidly right-wing nutbags.

Take, for example, Rise Up Danny Naliah's "prophetic dreams" of the 2008 Victorian bushfires (in which 173 people died) which he claims were a "consequence" of the decriminalisation of abortion in that state. Or his blaming the QLD floods on a speech once made by K. Rudd critical of Israel! Wholly despicable comments (not to mention plain bonkers) for a man who would hold a public office!

And why does Mr Gaynor assume that on the matter of climate change all Christians *must* be deniers like himself? Such hubris.

If Mr Gaynor wants to be elected by stealth, then rather than trying to arrange sneaky preference deals, I suggest he starts by deleting his personal blog and Twitter accounts, both of which provide a truly frightening window into a small mind wholly consumed with nothing but foaming, seething, palpable hatred.

Read them at your own peril!

http://bernardgaynor.com.au/

https://twitter.com/BernardGaynor

and yet Jimmy the Greens are happy to bang on about the evil 'polluters' that they benefit from and then everytime their is a fire or flood. Strangely enough they jump on their doctrines even after their high priest failed to predict. I suspect judgement is far more likely for murdering the unborn than for keeping pensioners cool in the summer and warm in the winter. I know which relgion is more extreme and it cetainly ain't Mr Gaynors.

runner,

It's cute how you think the trappings of religion ("doctrines", "high priests") are derogatory terms. :-)

And if you really believe God sent bushfires and floods in retribution for policy and speeches by Mr Rudd, then I'm afraid there's no point in engaging with your further... we're operating in different planes of existence, my spooky little friend.

Take care!

Jimmy

you obviously chose to misrepresent my post. Standard practice for those in denial.

Rhian,

Why shouldn’t 2-5 per cent of the vote be “enough to get a senator elected”? It has been enough for at least 64 years, and no one who understands the single transferable vote system that we use could possibly object to it.

Stephen Conroy of the ALP (with 780 votes or 0.03 per cent), Julian McGauran of the National Party (with 1190 or 0.04 per cent) and Judith Troeth of the Liberal Party (with 829 or 0.03 per cent) were all elected in 2004 (http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/) yet no one objected to those three getting into the Senate on preferences. Bridget McKenzie of the National Party was elected in 2010 from an initial 1045 votes (or 0.03 per cent of the vote). No one objected to that. The fact that their preferences came from within their own group is irrelevant. The single transferable vote is designed to elect individuals, as required by Section 7 of the Constitution, which states senators must be “directly” elected. Under STV, all votes are equal. The vote of someone who supports a minor candidate is not of less value than the vote of someone who supports a major candidate. That voter is entitled to have his or her vote remain in the count until the end. To exclude it or discount it because it went to a minor party candidate is the antithesis of democracy

It is also an infringement of the democratic rights of other voters to have candidates excluded because they fall below a certain threshold as those other voters may prefer them to others allowed to remain in the race and yet would be denied the right to have their true preferences counted. Once candidates with quotas are elected and their surplus votes distributed, the process is a contest to reach a quota of 14.3 per cent (just as in single-member seats the contest is to reach 50 per cent plus one). The candidates are ranked from the highest to lowest in votes and the lowest is eliminated because, obviously, the lowest has the least support. The votes of the lowest then move to their next choice. This may mean that the second-lowest jumps ahead of the third-lowest, which is telling us that the originally third-lowest actually has more support than the originally second-lowest. To eliminate the second-lowest because of an arbitrary threshold would thus distort the result.

There would be nothing undemocratic even for a person to win a seat from an initial zero per cent. No one wins a Senate seat until they reach a quota – 14.3 per cent for everyone. The vote they start on is immaterial, as is whether or not they get their preferences from their own party or another one. The micro-parties got around 20 per cent of the vote in every state, so it is perfectly democratic that they end up with a senator from every state. If they had scored 5 per cent in total, no number of preference swaps would have seen any of them elected.

Chris C

I would agree with you if the senate voting system allocated votes in a way that reflects voters’ preferences. But it clearly doesn’t. The great majority of people vote above the line. For these voters, even the ordering of candidates within the larger parties is at the whim of party bureaucracies, which is why for example popular and competent senators so often lose out to party hacks. I very much doubt that more than a tiny fraction of voters bothers to check the way their preferences are allocated, let alone endorses it.

I’m happy with a system that delivers a seat to a minor party that attracts hardly any first preferences so long as it really is a lot of people’s second or third choice. But from what I can see there is almost zero relationship between the distribution of preferences among minor parties and the actual preferences of voters, except for the rare tragics like me that vote below the line . That cannot be democratic.

Rhian,

People choose to vote above the line and thus to follow the preference allocation of their chosen party. If they do not wish to do so, they may vote below the line. I accept that some people are put off doing this because they fear they may make a mistake in numbering 110 candidates, so I think we ought to make preferences below the line optional after, say, the first 20, but I do not have a problem with above-the-line votes.

I have said a lot more at http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2013/09/25/senate-call-of-the-board/?comment_page=6/#comments (Post 288).

Fortunately there are a few differences amongst the conservative Christian parties that will hopefully prevent such an unholy alliance and a lot of Christians are happy to vote Green and for the ALP.

One major issue is the politics of hate directed against Muslims and Muslim immigration which appears in some policy platforms but not others. What is strange is that on the issues that concern Bernard, many Muslims would agree with his ultra-conservative position on issues like family,abortion and euthanasia.

Many Christians are worried about the environment too as they see God's commandment for us to be stewards of his creation, not to trash it in pursuit of the Golden Calf. The same goes for those of us who remember the words of Deuteronomy where we are told to welcome the strangers, or as Christmas approaches, remember that Jesus (an Asian) was once a refugee in Egypt, at least according to the Matthew story.

As for getting rid of the Greens, they represent a core of 10-15% of voters in Australia, including many young people. In the name of democracy, surely they have a right to be heard as much as conservative Christians ?