12 December 2007, 12:35 in

Australian federal election 2007

Australia recently had its 2007 federal election. You have probably heard that Labor won, and fairly convincingly too. It was a highly polarised election with the large majority of the votes going to the big two parties (Labor and Liberal), and the minor parties not getting many votes.

Election results are available here. More information is available at ABC News, Google, and The Australian.

I believe one reason that the election was so polarised is that many people believe that if they don’t vote for one of the big two, they are throwing their vote away. We have a fairly complex voting system and it would be nice if there had been some more effort made to educate people about it, especially when you consider the huge amounts of money being spent on advertising.

The AEC does have some info on how to vote for the Senate and for the House of Representatives. Also see the Wikipedia entries on Politics of Australia, the House of Representatives, and the Senate.

I was a bit appalled at some of the name calling, fear tactics, personal attacks, and so on, that the major parties used in their election campaigns. Instead of focusing on explaining their own policies, it seems most of the effort was put into discrediting the opposition and creating fear.

One Liberal Coalition brochure made me particularly angry. The brochure was trying to show that the Liberals were better at managing money and it did this by comparing various figures, such as average wages, interest rates, and so on, for when Liberals and Labor were in power. The problem was that they were using data from ten to twenty years ago for Labor and comparing it to very recent data for the Liberals, and then jumping to conclusions. Wow, wages have increased since the 80s… Well duh, inflation alone would see to that! There was a global recession in the 80s, so yes interest rates were higher then. Obviously it is not fair to simply compare figures from different times side by side like that. A little too keen to take credit for anything good that happened during their term while also pointing out anything bad that happened during the opposition’s term. Again just a shameless attempt at getting votes from stupid people who don’t understand the issues. I find it offensive that they dare publish this kind of crap. [Please note that I am not anti-Liberal or pro-Labor; I am merely using this as an example.]

I guess I was a bit surprised at how low the parties are prepared to stoop to get votes. Why do political parties get away with behaviour that would be condemned if it were perpetrated by an individual?

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