Category Archives: Voters / voting
Sexism and false equivalences
So I guess it’s my turn to pen a reply to Kath. Earlier today she wrote a piece here on AusVotes whose central thesis was that ‘I don’t believe that women are more the victim than men, or that the sexism is better or worse than other varieties of insults.’ Sorry Kath, but this is […]
Assertions, the Greens and the Black Knight
One of the chief weaknesses of political reporting and blogging in the leadup to the 2013 election is assertions. Assertions that x will happen because of y – and the y is usually based on evidence that is part gutfeel and part reading media reports through an already constructed prism. It would be good to […]
Scary Internet and an apathetic public
Internet things are complicated. Hard to follow. Advocates of all things computing tend to speak in a language all of their own, replete with acronyms and neologisms. And, through no fault of the tech industry or its aficionados, it may be doing serious damage to Australian – and global – privacy and security. To begin […]
A forecast is an educated guess
Reading Simon Jackman’s Guardian article Opinion polls tell us Labor can’t win it dawned on me I was reading another article discussing the seeming inevitability of a Coalition victory in September. What if Australians elect another hung parliament and Labor negotiates to form government (discussed here and here)? You may laugh off this as a possibilty, but the point is forecasts […]
ALP: $6.00, Coalition: $1.10
Head out and about to homeless shelters and gambling support groups. Chat to the victims of problem gambling. Ask them what it was that they lost their fortunes, their houses, their families, and even their health to. There’s one response you’re damn near certain not to hear: “I couldn’t stop betting on games as they […]
Why my money is still on another hung parliament
I know, I know, all those of you who didn’t already think I was certifiable have just joined the cult. A little over a year ago I said in multiple fora that I think we’re heading to another hung parliament result in 2013. I still think that. I am unmoved. 14 billion in additional spending on public […]
Are we left with the right centre?
The other day, on the AusVotes2013 Facebook page, we received a concisely-worded piece of feedback. Apparently, AusVotes has become, in its brief lifetime, a hive of Coalition Groupthink™. Never mind the piece I wrote the other day suggesting that I couldn’t conceive of a rational argument for voting for the coalition, or lambasting Joe Hockey […]
Whither the progressive voter?
As Australia careers towards an Abbott government, a question that routinely occurs to me is: “is it really conservatives voting for this party?” There really is nothing conservative about what the Abbott coalition is offering. Rather, it is a strangely inverted conservatism; a big-government, socially regressive proflicracy. How could the fictional classic conservative that exists […]
How Values influence Policy
This word ‘values’ flys around the politicians and media players; but like many English words it seems to have many meanings. This is not in the slippery or weasel-wordish way, it is just a word that most people seem to feel they understand, and are entitled to use in any old way that they mean […]
Thank you to AusVotes 2013′s writers and readers
Wow. Four months ago, AusVotes 2013 didn’t even exist and yet today it’s been honoured with an award in the Australian Writers’ Centre’s 2013 Best Australian Blogs competition. Colour me gobsmacked…. Most of this recognition is due to the blog’s writers: an eclectic bunch of ne’er-do-wells if ever you’ve seen them. We have teachers, lawyers, […]
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