
Pirate Party Australia - zensavona
http://pirateparty.org.au/
======
coopdog
Honestly both the major parties here are such dud choices (so bad that a third
party won a seat in the lower house last election), and with PRISM hopefully
becoming a voting issue the pirate party are surely going to get some notice
this election. Thank the FSM for preferential voting

~~~
vacri
We regularly have minor parties and independents in the lower house, this is
just the first time that they have held the balance of power. The ironic thing
is that despite being a minority government, the 'hung' or 'hamstrung'
government, there has been more legislation passed this term than any
previously.

But you wouldn't read it in the papers, which have performed the most amazing
political smiling assassination.

~~~
JimJames
Our media does an amazing job at presenting labor and liberal as the only two
options. Especially by suggesting that voting third party is throwing your
vote away (which it isn't because of our preference system).

I have no faith in Australian politics anymore, every campaign seems to be
entirely focused around mud slinging and fear mongering.

~~~
jacques_chester
I ran as a small party candidate.

Based on coverage, there are _three_ major parties. The only microparty that
gets any coverage is the Australian Sex Party and that's only because of the
undergraduate boorishness of their name.

Katter and Palmer will get coverage this time in the "lighter side" columns
and then we'll go back to having the majors take turns at the Treasury benches
while the Greens get to pretend they are a genuine alternative because nobody
actually reads their policies.

I miss the Democrats. They were boring centrists and it was wonderful.

~~~
vacri
The DLP had more success than the Sex Party at the last election, and there's
no boorishness in their name... only their policies :)

In terms of coverage, Family First gets more than the Sex party, as does One
Nation.

~~~
jacques_chester
The DLP had the benefit of a number of favourable preference deals, but nobody
noticed or cared until a DLP Senator was elected. But the ASP got widespread
coverage.

Family First gets coverage because they are very good at faking noise and
movement. They learnt well from previous generations of protest movement. The
body of media hadn't yet innoculated themselves against it in the way they
have against weekly the National Days of Action and Marches Against Whatever
that take place in Sydney and Melbourne CBDs every 20 minutes.

------
Mexxer
I live in Germany where we have one of the most successful pirate parties with
several seats in state parliaments. I had a alot of hope in them but they just
fight with each other and are in no way ready and way to chaotic for national
parliament. It's kinda sad.

~~~
jacques_chester
Australia's political structure is actually subtly and importantly different
from a lot of others. From the British we have a fused legislative/executive
Westminster system. From the Americans we borrowed various features of our
constitution.

But what is particularly unique in the Australian context is our party
discipline. It is probably the most rigid in the world. There's a lot less
horse-trading. Our current Parliament is only the second in history where it
has been at all necessary for the major parties to negotiate with independents
to obtain "confidence and supply" \-- ie to form a government.

------
Falkvinge
Shout-out to my activist colleagues down under. Good to see y'all.

------
girvo
My plan for the future is to attempt to ressurect the Australian Democrats.
They're centre-left, and align with my views nearly perfectly (except for
their opinions on nuclear power).

The Pirate Party are interesting, but I don't see them having enough of an
impact here, what with the Greens and Independents usually taking the "third
way" spot.

Still great to see, though :)

~~~
jacques_chester
The Democrats died when they became centre-left.

They thrived when they were genuinely centrist: neither left nor right.

The Democrats used to win Senate votes approximately equally from both Labor
and Liberal supporters. When Meg Lees negotiated to introduce the GST, Stott-
Despoja deposed her and yanked the party towards the left.

In doing so she alienated all of the Liberal voters who'd previously given
about half of the party's vote. The Democrats kept trying to lurch further
left to shore up the votes that were left, but ran smack into the Greens, who
had already hoovered all those votes up. Then they died.

The Liberal centrist vote, incidentally, has nowhere left to go. So the
coalition has outperformed all the others in the Senate -- that's how Howard
wound up with a Senate majority in the first place.

If Stott-Despoja had stuck to the Democrat formula, there's a reasonable
chance they'd still be around.

~~~
girvo
Just wanted to say, that's a really nice analysis of what happened :)

Ahhh, Ms Star-Destroyer.

------
brotchie
Are the Pirate Party running candidates for the senate in this coming
election? I think they have a good chance of getting a few seats is so... the
youth vote is big and I foresee a lot of GenYers putting 1 above the line for
the Pirate Party.

------
_k
We have a pirate party in Belgium and I have to say it's interesting but I
honestly don't see how people are going to vote for them.

~~~
subsystem
The EU election is where the swedish pirate party has managed to get seats.
It's also nice to have a party for "protest voters" that isn't far-right or
far-left.

------
contingencies
So how does this work .. can the Pirate Party of Australia send preferences to
Wikileaks?

~~~
jacques_chester
In the Senate, voters may vote "above the line" or "below the line".

If you vote "below the line", you must number every candidate in order of your
preference.

Every. Single. Box.

In some states there are hundreds of candidates. One NSW ballot paper was
nicknamed "the tablecloth".

If you vote "above the line", you are required only to tick or mark _one_ box.
That box delegates your voting preference to a party, who have registered a
preset order of preference with the Australian Electoral Commission. Your vote
will be counted according to that party's scheme.

Almost everyone votes above the line in the Senate, so the arrangement of
preferences by different parties can have surprising effects on the final
composition of the Senate. As you can imagine, this leads to a lot of horse-
trading, known as "preference deals".

I vote below the line because I like to work backwards in order of craziness.

~~~
contingencies
Thanks for the explanation.

On the face of it, it would then seem that the system is rigged to reduce the
honest preferences of the more informed or politically engaged portion of the
population through technicalia (forgot a box, wrote same number twice, etc.).

~~~
jacques_chester
No, the system is basically honest and above board. It just has quirks that
would be made worse if they were "fixed". Our electoral system has evolved
over the past century to be, quite honestly, one of the most open, progressive
and balanced electoral systems in the world.

What we in Australia call "exhaustive preferential voting" is sometimes called
"instant runoff voting" elsewhere. Having to number every box is a _feature_ ,
not a bug. If you don't have an exhaustive ballot, then in practice political
parties will encourage voters to "just vote 1" \-- to mark only one box.

And then you've arrived at a first-past-the-post system, which is what IRV is
trying to get away from in the first place.

In the House of Reps, few candidates turn out because it's very difficult for
a non-major party candidate to win. It happens, but only rarely. So in any
given seat it would be unusual to find more than 5 or 6 candidates -- 2
majors, a green, whatever microparty is currently making a push and perhaps
the local village idiot or somebody who doesn't realise that running as an
independent is a mug's game.

But the Senate is different. The Senate is based on proportional
representation. Each State elects 6 senators, and the Senate seats are
effectively allocated to parties according to the final distribution of votes.
In a recursive process, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and
their votes redistributed according to the voter preferences, up and up until
there are 6 people with a full "quota" of votes.

The thing about the Senate is that the _final Senate seat in any given state
is usually in play_. The top 4 seats are almost always won equally by the
majors; the 5th usually won by a major or the Greens. But the 6th seats can
and frequently do wind up in the hands of the most unlikely people because of
the complicated preference deals I described above.

Because there is a _chance_ for a microparty candidate to wind up in the
Senate, lots of people run. Being a Senator is a pretty sweet deal. Good pay,
your own offices and staff, travel entitlements and the like. And if you luck
into holding the balance of power in the Senate, you've just become a very
powerful individual.

~~~
contingencies
Thanks. I'm Australian, I just left very young and never really went back, and
hold multiple other citizenships as well. Definitely going to hassle my local
consulate about voting this election though.

