Senate Voting II: The Balance of Power

This is obviously the second post I had planned in the sequence of two about upper house voting in the upcoming election. Since the first of these posts was circumlocutional and hard to read, I’ll get to the point straight away.

It is imperative that one votes for minor parties and independents over major parties in the senate.

The reason for this has been laid out for all to see in the last couple of years when the coalition has held a majority in both houses of parliament. A balance of power in the senate provides a sanity check to save our country against the worst excesses of the government. Prior to 2004 we were saved from the worst ideological excesses of the Howard government by there always being a balance of power in the Senate. Examples immediately spring to mind – Workchoices, VSU, changes to the enrollment to vote process, “anti-terror” police state legislation. The only way to stop this from continuing and have a sane government is to not let either major party have the balance of power in the Senate, and thus one must vote for the minor parties and independents.

Of course, I refer to the sensible minor parties such as the Greens and Democrats and not the wacko religious nutcases that run. And this time around, it is better to preference Labor over Liberal in the senate since the coalition have a greater number of senators continuing from the 2004 electoral disaster.

Advertisement