But shouldn't you start with keeping yourselves honest?

It seems to be an unfortunate feature of politics that if you're not showy, you get ignored.
Unfortunately for the Australia Democrats they do not have a showy style. Also, unfortunately, they do not attract huge funding.

I will admit that I used to see them as but pale Liberals.

However, As Senator Allison shows, The Australian Democrats are not just a pale version of our neo-con, Bush-worshipping Liberals.

At this critical time for Australia - we don't have the luxury to think "left-wing" or "right-wing". We are faced with the global threat of the warming planet, and the nuclear threat of the so-called "nuclear renaissance".

The Australian Democrats have shown that unlike the major parties, they can think and show some imagination - considering the future for our children and grandchildren.

This election should see support for the Democrats from people who can think and who care.
Christina Macpherson www.antinuclearaustralia.com

You have to hand it to anyone who hears, and responds to, the call to keep on trying in this dog-eat-dog democracy of ours -- but that does not detract from the doom of this lot.

The Democrats are stuffed. And deservedly so, because they brought it on themselves. Meg Lees, John Cherry, and anyone they could convince to join them got sucked in by the allure of the big deal on GST.

What is more, Lyn Allison lead the supporting charge by voting for that deal in the Senate. You cannot keep bastards honest when you have been so utterly seduced by them.

Apologies if this sounds like a partisan rant. One of Lees' advisers lied to me (and to several others) directly at the time the deal was going down (pretending the Democrats would insist on provisions to reduce the impact on students when in fact he had already agreed to the exact opposite), so I take some satisfaction from seeing where they have all come to now.

Said it before, say it again, opportunity will probably still be missed.

You have one chance; merge with the Greens.

Hi Lyn

Great post, but hey I'm biased. Looks like you've attracted the usual comments about the GST and a comparison to the Greens. I highly doubt there's been a time in the Dems 30 year history when they weren't heavily criticised for something or other.

I suppose it's only human for people to focus on the one or two things they don't like and forget about all the good stuff....and there really is a lot of good stuff about the Democrats.

Keep up the good work Lyn.

Tom, get over yourself and the GST for that matter. The Dems aren't perfect but pound for pound they work harder and make more sense than any other politcal party we have. I'm afraid too many will only realise their importance once they're gone, like you Tom. What's your alternative Tom, you know you could put your hand up yourself.

As for merging with the Greens, I agree they should work more closely together, all the minority parties and independents should but I don't agree with merging.

Good luck to the Dems, they'll get my vote in the Senate

SpaceO,

The political reality is that is only sufficient support for one liberal-left party in Australian politics. It can either be the Greens or the Democrats; it can't be both. One of them will wither and die, and I suspect that's going to be the Democrats - which is a damn shame because people like Lyn Allison will be the sort of people who are no longer in parliament. In the meantime, both parties will spend scarce resources competing between each other for an extra 2-3% of the vote.

And that's a tragedy.

Regards,

Lev

Lev,

The Greens might find themselves under challange from a new "environmental party".

I don't know if you saw the news yesterday but Dr Karl Kruzilnitske (I know I've probably butchered his name, apologies) will be running second on the ticket for the Climate Change Coalition.

The results of that particular tussle are going to be interesting.

Dear Lyn
The Democrats started well (gee I even voted for one of you once) and Natasha and I have had some debates but the reality is that you have lost the plot and the vote.
Your policies often sounded good and even excellent but you knew damn well that you were never going to get enough members up to have to carry them through.
You have ended up blocking legislation that should have been passed and passing legislation that should have been blocked...hardly keeps the bastards honest.
Sad really. The Greens will go the same way

Lyn,

If the election were between Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF and the Australian Labor Party on the other, would the Democrats have any difficulty in advocating a vote for Labor on a two party-preferrred basis (i.e. putting the ZANU-PF party candidates last)?

I should hope not.

Such a stance need not be misunderstood as Democrats uncritical support for Labor, only as necessary measure to defend democracy.

So how different is Australia today from Zimbabwe?

We have before us the sickening spectacle of Howard's government clawing its way back into a position where it may get back into power using a massive saturation campaign of Government self-promotional advertising paid for by us. It has been estimated that the cost of Government self-promotional advertising, in this term alone, may reach AU$1billion (see "'$120 million and counting' spent on 'Work Choices' propaganda" at http://candobetter.org/node/152#speech)

And yet the Democrats are virtually silent about this. Almost nothing said on the Democrats web site and no media releases to be found (and the Greens seem to be no better).

If a Government is as prepared to stoop as low as this one has through the past four years at least, then how else can we hope to keep them honest except by removing them from office?

If your agree, then the Democrats must make clear its stance by advocating a vote for Labor ahead of the Liberal.

If the Government is allowed to get away with what it's now doing because Democrats and others fail to use the voices that they have against this, then we may lose the last chance we have of preventing Australia from becoming a one-party dictatorship. The principle that a governing party is entitled to make almost unlimited use of taxpayers funds in order to cling to office will have become enshrined.

In these circumstances, I see nothing principled or noble in the Democrats failure to take a stance on the critical choice that all Australians face through the preferential voting system, perhaps only weeks from now.

'Keeping the bastards honest.'

Ah, politics is so entertaining. The capacity of a politician for accidental self deprecation, delivered with haughty pride, infused with oblivious irony, knows no bounds.

Priceless.

Given the pereformance of the democraps in recent elections, its quite clear which bastards the electorate thinks is less honest, or more dishonest.

Nice work.

"With Pauline Hanson knocking at the door again, you may have seen him on his feet for hours in the Senate this sitting, highlighting the dangers of racist “citizenship tests”."

For a second I suspected Lyn Allison was making a self-deprecating mockery of the those on the far left who see racists under every bed. But poor befuddled Lyn is deadly serious. How she can make such ridiculous accusations with a straight face is beyond me.

Lyn, are you fully cognisant of the current immigration intake levels and the main countries of origin? If so, you'd know that the Howard-Liberal Government has ramped up immigration to record levels. And the vast majority of these new migrants don't have white faces. The Howard Government's mass importation of Third Worlders is unprecedented by any standards. So, I think you'd be hard-pressed to assert that the Howard Government is somehow sneakily running a 'racist' immigration program. If anything, it's so politically correct that it discriminates against immigrants from traditional European source countries in order to avoid the accusation that Australia is still favouring certain nations.

But by falsely claiming that the new citizenship test is somehow 'racist', I suspect Lyn may have inadvertently revealed something very interesting about her own views. It seems that racism (real, not imagined) and Lyn's beloved multiculturalism share similar traits - both ideologies separate and define groups of people in terms of skin colour. And according to Lyn's logic, there is a genetic obstacle to non-European migrants learning our language and history. The idea that the prospective citizen might actually do something - like buy a book or take a class - is automatically condemned as 'racist'.

I suggest you get your own head checked, Lyn. No doubt you'll have plenty of time for that after the Democrats are demolished at the upcoming election.

We do need another major party to represent the needs of those who work in private enterprise and small business.85% of Labor's power is underpinned by Public Service Unions.The Coalition basically looks after the big end of town and ordinary workers are feeling the pinch of paying high taxes to maintain our bloated state bureaucracies and being diligent enough to meet the demands of private enterprise bosses.No wonder they are not happy chappies.

The Democrats just want more socialism thus more taxes and bureaucracies.If you want to know a party's real allegiance,study carefully whom they feed off.

Yes Lynn... It appears that you are making a fundamental mistake...

You are trying to help us forget that you guys didn't listen to your members & supporters hence the GST, and you are so willing to negotiate that people like me, who on occasion, just expect you to say NO, are let down by your insistence on negotiating.

Since you guys got rid of Natasha as leader you have slid quickly into obscurity. And to think I was hoping you might have been Australia's 3rd effective party. Natasha was popular... Ouch that hurt the other Senators! She had a recognisable and likeable public persona - Ouch that hurt too!

Is there any member of your Senate Team (For want of a better word) that hasn't been leader yet? If there is, it must be their turn next... OR, they may miss their turn because your party may no longer exist after the next election. Check your member lists Lyn... you might already not be a party...HA!

Why have many of your members left Lyn? Why has your vote slumped to almost zip? It must be because you listen to constituents... Yeah right... your Senators don't even respect your parties members.

What did you guys do to Don Chipp's inspirational party... wrecked it!
Congratulations! A job well done!

This comment on the comments about Democrats is deliberately constructive.
What can be done to check sweeping generalisations and opinions based on single events, and ignorance through media obliteration? It is a pity that political debate is conducted in sound-bytes. We are not well-informed.

Rather than money spent on TV political advertising (ie spin) I would like to see one advertised data-base Electoral Commission site that the media and citizens could use as a source.

On it, all political parties list
1. What they achieved in Parliament in the last six years (or other fixed date). This includes government legislation, other parties’ amendments and defeats, committee outcomes, etc.

2. Policies for this election in sufficient detail to show more than motherhood statements and including funding.

3 Thumbnails of candidates when available. What have
they done in their lives so far?

4. FAQ and the different party responses in under 200 words.

5. Responses to slurs and distortions in the media.

I see the Democrats’ main problems as
1. Meg Lees' enormous mistake over the GST - a lesson there.

2. Media obliteration, e.g
a) Anthony Green's Page 1 assertion in the Age that the trouble with the Democrats is that they have no policies, when they have a problem in having detailed policies on just about everything.

b) Push-polling for 2-party preferred voting, as if there were no other parties.

c) More attention to Family First, and to unpopular minor policies of Greens and Democrats than to their core policies.

d) Public ignorance not dispelled e.g. A poll could find out how many people believe that if their first vote goes to a minor party, their whole vote is lost. i.e. ignorance about preferential voting.

Lyn Allison spoke her honest mind recently when commenting on the new testing processes for immigrants.

“it's conservative, it's very male and I don't think it necessarily represents the history that a lot of people can relate to.”

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2007/s2047773.htm

So according to this democratic logic, the only immigrants that should be allowed into the country would have to be female, (as males are no good).

But of course no member of the democrats has ever been known to be gender prejudiced, and no member of the democrats has ever been known to stereotype a gender (ever, ever).

But as a “male”, the democrats won’t be getting my vote.

The underlying thing that the Democrats just don't get is that when they accepted the GST in a modified version they actually sold out on everyone who was expecting them to just say NO.

Even though the Democrats have done some wonderful things in the Senate... with one fell swoop they undermined totally their "We'll Keep the Bastards Honest" campaigning and handed their voters across to the Greens.

If they are so politically inept to give away their base constituency to another party then what else could they do?

Even the GST exemption on books was taken off once they lost their power. Johnnie (I couldn't lie straight in bed) Howard put the tax on books!

See what happens when you do deals with the devil Lyn? They overturn your deal the first opportunity they get.

So what has changed in your party that would make anyone want to trust you again Lyn?

Do your Senators still want to be trusted to make decisions on the run? (OOps the GST decision was an on the run decision)

Have you learnt the lesson of actually LISTENING to your party members and your constituency Lyn?

Lyn if you want to get any of your core constituency back you had better make it known loud and clear that you have LEARNT from your mistakes and that you PROMISE never to let down your constituency again. Do your egos make you too proud to apologise sincerely, loudly and often?

But hey what do you guys care you will all retire on a high Tax Payer Funded superannuation anyway... and being politicians you will probably sleep very comfortably on that!

It's fine to crow about the good things you guys have done ( and I admit there have been plenty) BUT when you really needed to be counted you rolled over. So much for negotiating and keeping the bastards honest!

HRS

Lyn Allison didn't say males were not allowed to migrate to Australia.

Give your agenda a rest for once. It gets tiresome.

Dresdener: "And the vast majority of these new migrants don't have white faces."

And then s/he has the temerity to try and argue that multiculturalism, like racism "separates and defines groups of people in terms of skin colour"!

Multiculturalism celebrates diversity in culture, racism assigns essential characteristics according to skin colour. Guess which ideology is worried about migrants who "who don't have white faces"?

I have numerous problems with the Dems, but their approach to immigration and multiculturalism isn't one of them.

Liz,
It is true the Lyn Allision didn’t actually say that males should not be immigrants, but she doesn’t like the new immigration processes, and she did refer to these processes as being “very male”.

So following this line of thinking, then she obviously doesn’t like males, and can’t expect males to vote for her accordingly.

I hope that clears up the issue.

HRS

Now that post explained your thoughts better than the first.

However, it's still not fair to judge that Lyn Allison doesn't like males. When she spoke of a 'male' approach, it's another way of saying a paternalistic approach. And women are frequently the flame holders of male-defined values. And men often do not support the same values.

Surely you know that it's common terminology used by all political parties. Many male politicians use that terminology.

If you want to challenge negative portrayals of men in society, then if would be helpful to your cause not to do the following:

(1) Attacking females at every opportunity.
(2) Constructing a hidden anti-male agenda in every thread.
(3) Channeling every thread towards your own agenda, when it's not relevant to the thread.

Lyn,

On the GST, do you recall that one reason used to justify the Democrats' GST deal was that it would make more funds available for social welfare?

Since then the Howard Government has slashed spending on social welfare spend with its "Welfare to Servitude" laws, forcing into prostitution at least one disability pensioner in Kalgoorlie, who was interviewed on Radio National's "Street Stories" of 24 June http://www.abc.net.au/rn/streetstories/stories/2007/1954374.htm

If the Democrats had grasped then what every thinking compassionate Australian knew, that is that the Howard Government was dangerous, untrustworthy and driven by a hatred of Australia's workers and poor, then it would have honoured its commitment to the public to block the GST.

Do you recall the fact that tens of millions of taxpayers' dollars was spent on lying pro-GST propaganda in order to get the Howard Government back into office, and even at that it lost the popular vote on a two-party preferred basis 48.5% to 51.5% to Labor? So the excuse of Howard having a mandate for the GST is utter nonsense.

A chance to defeat the Howard Government in the Senate which would have ensured its subsequent defeat in 2001 was lost, and the Democrats, together with the rest of us, have reaped the terrible consequences.

I ask you again, in the light of this sorry experience, to respond to my post above at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6431#94957

(Also, apologies for a mistake at the start of that post.

It should have begun:

"If the election were between Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF ON THE ONE HAND and the Australian Labor Party on the other, ...")

---

Also I ask you as I have previously asked Senator Andrew Bartlett to comment on the question of population growth fueled by record high immigration now at a real, but unofficial annual rate of 300,000 according to Ross Gittins at: http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/backscratching-at-a-national-level/2007/06/12/1181414298095.html

If the Democrats were to re-establish the policy they once had against the principle driver of Australia's environmental, economic and social problems, that is, population growth, and were to take a stand against Australia becoming a one-party dicatorship, they would gain my enthusiastic support.

Liz,
As a highly democratic teacher, I feel very privileged when you lecture me and tell me what to do and when to do it.

I regard this as being very paternalistic.

I’m sure Lyn Allison made some type of Freudian slip in her comment about males, but as a male I do feel insulted if a politician does not like something and refers to it as being “very male”.

I guess this would be the same for a female if a politician did not like something and referred to it as being “very female”.

I understand that the results of latest polls indicate that the Democrats are heading towards political oblivion in the next election. I don’t believe this would be healthy for a democracy as it brings us closer towards a 2 party political system.

So I’m sure that Lyn Allison will apologise to all males for her Freudian slip, so as to regain as many male votes as possible.

HRS

I did hear someone recently discussing a 'maternal' approach. It was something to do with Indigenous issues and the interference of some white women. It was used in a criticial way, and I understood the meaning behind it, without being offended or feeling it was an affront to all Australian women.

Liz,
Of course the reasons why the Democrats are now so unpopular would be quite relevant (at least to the Democrats).

Some of the decisions and actions taken by the Democrats in the past have been quite just and constructive, and there are few political reasons why the Democrats should be so unpopular with the public.

So I tend to think that there are many people who may support the Democrats politically, but dislike them personally, and under such circumstances, I don’t think anyone in the Democrats should be maligning 50% of the voting public.

You can make all the excuses you want for Lyn Allison, but she did recently malign the male gender, and I don’t think that maligning 50% of the voting public will at all improve the chances of the Democrats at the next election.