The success of micro-parties reflects the entitlement and corruption of the major parties. Ordinary people are not proud of their lifetime voting alternatives, whether Labor or Liberal. The supposed alternatives in the former Democrats and Greens have demonstrated uselessness and lunacy. Its time to try something new, and while microparties are not ideal, they are a great way to take power away from the vampires that form Government.

ChrisPer
I disagree. The "success" of the micro parties owes almost nothing to their capacity to win the support of the Australian electorate, and almost everything to the perversities of the electoral system, especially the requirement to either fill every box “below the line” or to vote a party ticket in its entirety.

I fail to see anything good in an outcome that elects senators from the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party (with 17,083 out of 3,381,529 first-round votes in Victoria) and Australian Sports Party (2,976 out of 1,310,278 first-round votes in WA)

This last election I gave my first ever political donations - a barely doable amount to a non-delusional major party, and four times the doable amount as direct donation and as payments in support of my one-issue microparty.

And because I was in a 'safe' seat for a major I deliberately voted against the major, against my lifetime habit of voting for one responsible major party. I am now proud to be a swinging voter, able to vote to punish either party, and send donations to punish or reward parties for policies that affect me.

Rhian, I already agreed that the microparties are not ideal. Australia has had a Stupid Party that looked harmful, yet shrank when the interests that supported them were superseded by majors policies.

You will note however that the major parties still split power in every state and Federally. No Italian-style clown car coalition (bar one) has taken power anywhere.

Our political/government class could become as corrupt as the USA with its earmarks, special intersts, vote-rigging and suborning Federal agencies in the service of party politics. We have to use the power to dismiss members of the political class when they fail to be accountable. If we can do it with voting we are spared the inconvenience of revolution or terrorist actions.

We have had genuinely corrupt governments in several States in the 1970s and 80s. We have had terrible ones carried away by ideology and sectional interests.

In Western Australia and NSW a microparty has got members into the State upper houses. The result appears to be the majors are winding back their hostility on the issue now proven important to voters, and are now slowly moving to correct ongoing and aggressive injustice.

ChrisPer
My problem with the micro parties is not necessarily disagreement with the policies they espouse, than the fact they don’t represent the electorate. “Joke” parties have a long and useful history of focusing protest and sometimes well-deserved ridicule at the pretensions of the political establishment. Minor parties like the Greens and One Nation give genuine expression to minority views that aren’t represented by the mainstream parties. Most micro parties do none of this. The determination of which one (if any) gets over the line into the Senate is almost completely random, driven entirely by the mutual antipathy of the major parties and the peculiar preference deals of the others, with nothing to do with electoral preferences. It would be simpler, cheaper, and no less fair to draw names from a hat.

The chances that election of the Sports Party will help to correct “ongoing and aggressive injustice” are, I fear, pretty small.

I’d support something along the lines of proportional representation that allocated seats roughly according to the electorate’s preferences

Rhian, it sounds reasonable if you wnat power to always go to the existign major parties. What would your proportional allocation have given at the recent federal election? An extra Liberal or Labor senator in NSW or WA? Another Greens Senator? What would this mean for politics in Australia?

The circular preference deals among the minor parties meant that the Sports Party joker represents a lot more people than their first round preferences, that all chose not to vote for a major party candidate. I can imagine the majors working on all sorts of mutually beneficial deals to take that power from the voters. eg the limits on donations in NSW that were so effective a couple of years ago in cutting down the revenue of some minor parties that came from associations, while union funds and corporate donations were less affected. Tony Abbott's quarter million dollar legal slush-fund that got Pauline Hanson jailed is exactly the kind of tactic we can expect.