In the inner-Melbourne seat of Richmond, the Greens (led by former Monash student activist Gemma Pinnell) got a not-unimpressive 27.4%. Serial public-transport nutter Paul Mees got 2.2% or 587 votes, and the local Nu Marxists got 544 votes (most of them probably coming from punk squats in the area). There were 866 informal votes.
The shift to the right that all these disaffected politics students are always complaining about happened 20 years ago. The naivete of these people ('but that's not how it's supposed to be! The ALP is supposed to be a left wing party!') is exacerbated by the fact that most of them tend to vote for their kuckold party despite daringly pointing out to anyone who will listen that they aren't the sort of party they thought they were voting for. To show a 'protest vote' they vote for some other party whose platform they don't understand (Greens, Democrats) then preference the ALP. Yet when I suggest that if they find it so disagreeable and that no party represents their views they should refuse to vote, they think I am some sort of radical anti-government anarchist (which I am) and poo-poo me.
Interestingly the Greens did well here in Northcote, getting around 25% of the primary vote last time I checked.
OK, I'm probably being a bit strong with the "end-game" statement then... I'm not a politics student. I only started voting 12 years ago and I've really only started becoming politically aware in the last six of those years (Kennett kinda made me). So I suppose that could explain why I've only started noticing the shift :)
On the other hand...
You don't think a primary vote is worth anything? You don't think we should vote at all? You think I don't know what the Greens stand for? It's fair though to say that no-one knows what the Dems stand for these days, possibly even themselves ;)
Your attitude seems right up there with people who just donkey vote because they're in a safe "other guy" seat. Sure, why not give them the illusion of complete support.
who were the "nu marxists" out of interest?
on a side note, we had fun at the fitzroy school berating the politicians (including Gemma) for standing there self servingly handing out their flyers and not noticing that 90% of people were accidently in the absentee line and were lining up for nothing... Help the people?? In her Defence, Gemma Pinnel seemed to be the only one who actually looked guilty from her comments, the rest, labour, liberal, alike, went into their "oh oh, stranger talking, wheres the police?" type looks...
To the anarchist who didnt vote... oops, no one noticed....
(to be honest I went down but had been wiped from the roll after being away last time... I meant to make sure I was enrolled, just, you know, thought surely I still would be....)
Fred, you're quite right. I suggest you not vote. Dumb-ox-racy causes most of the problems in our society. The very idea of encouraging the sort of scumbags, drug addicts, imbeciles and white-trash we have in this country to vote is absurd. These are the people being represented in Parliament. On a related note, an idiot I know got something like .02% of the vote in Geelong. He would have done a lot better running as the Greens candidate (which he was) but they luckily realised what an idiot he was and dis-endorsed him. Just selecting him made me lose a hell of a lot of respect for the Greens.
One of your public transport advocacy group, Ben?
e: the Nu Marxists: basically the Socialist Party. Like the old dogmatic Marxists only with blue hair and skateboards. (Have you ever noticed how a significant proportion of socialist campaigns are about "skaters' rights" and such? Where does Marx talk about that?) Or like punks only they think that Fidel Castro is a really cool guy.
oh, that reminds me, I saw the FUNNIEST thing at the peace rally on Sunday.. Some "hipster chick" in a "cool" Che' tank turning her nose up at the hippies, no doubt in a hurry to get to Dotti and buy and Osama Purse or something before they sell out..
Che chic was even bigger in London. In the casual menswear room at Harrods, I saw a shirt (button-up, not T-shirt) with the Che icon sewn on in a darker fabric, one half on each side. The price tag was over £100, I believe.
Further down on the price scale there were lots of Che vinyl handbags/shoulder bags at the Portobello market (in the northern part, near where you can get Doc Martens for £35 a pair and bootleg CDs and such).
Makes you wonder what the people in the sweatshops were thinking as they pieced them together.
Probably something similar to the 9-year-old Vietnamese girls making the "Girl Power" T-shirts, as mentioned by Naomi Klein.
Probably much the same as the Cambodian orphans whose nimble little fingers set the type on the printers which churn out ms. Klein's book. And don't get me started on those Greenpeace badges!
What's really interesting is how this is the end-game of the slow shift to the right that the majors are going through. And as I noted in my little piece on the ABC coverage, no-one seemed willing to actually talk about that.