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Labor prefers
conservative parties ahead of
Greens
The ALP is presently having a tantrum because
the Greens did not ask Green voters in every
lower house seat to preference the ALP in the
2006 State election. Yet, the ALP's preference
deal with right-wing Family First Party resulted
in Family First winning the final Victorian
Senate seat at the 2004 Federal election. This
seat would have been won by the Greens had the
ALP not entered into a deal to swap Senate
preferences with Family First. In the Senate,
the parties control where above-the-line votes
end up. How Labor elected a Family First senator
is reported in the
Age and ABC
online.
The Family First senator has voted against
the ALP in the Senate on most occasions. His
vote has been crucial in passing many of the
Howard government's laws since 2004.
In the 2004 Federal election and 2006 State
election the Greens directed preferences to the
ALP ahead of Family First.
In the 2007 Federal election, the ALP is
considering directing preferences once again to
Family First ahead of the Greens.
If you think the Labor party should not be
directing its preferences to Family First, you
could fill out this online
petition.
Meanwhile, let's acknowledge the ALP for
being blatent hypocrites when it comes to
preferences. They demand everyone, from
right-wing christian fundamentalists to
left-leaning environmentalists, to direct
preferences to Labor while they try to avoid
inquiry and criticism about where their own
preferences end up.
The solution to all preference deal dramas is
to abolish above the line voting in the Senate
and follow a model similar to that used in the
NSW upper house (see Peter
Brent's paper on this issue), and prohibit
the distribution of how-to-vote cards within 400
metres of a polling booth, as is the law in
Tasmania and the ACT. However, as the Labor and
Liberal Parties are the primary beneficiaries of
preference deals, changing the system is not
going to be as simple as it sounds.
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