Tim Malone.id.au

Before I start, the title of this post is a bit of a misnomer, which I’ll explain soon. But it’s what I was asked to call it by two people who have asked me to write this post. Shan and Nicole, both friends from work, are realising that they’re finding it difficult to be fully informed about their vote this coming Saturday. They’re finding that there’s too much information out there – some of it conflicting – and they’re having difficulty finding their way around it.

So they asked me to write “Christian Voting for Dummies”. Well, they actually wanted it to be called “Voting for Christian Dummies”, but I figured that wasn’t the best idea!

So, although I feel slightly honoured to be asked to help them work through the information that is simply a maze for someone who is not politically engaged, I’m not completely sure that I’m the best person to do the topic justice. This post is my attempt, and your additions are welcomed.

Why the title of this post is a misnomer

The fact is, creating a distinction between the vote of a Christian and the vote of a non-Christian is a strange thing to do. That’s because there is no set way a Christian should vote (not every Christian will agree with me on this), and even though there are issues which Christians may tend to clump together on, it’s not necessarily going to be black-and-white when compared to a “non-Christian”.

Topics to tackle

The other reason the title of this post doesn’t completely fit is because I’m also going to cover things which are specific to the way our political system works anyway – i.e. generic stuff that doesn’t just relate to the way Christians might want to interact with politics.

Here’s a few things I want to tackle in this post:

• How Australia’s electoral system works – preferential voting, proportional voting, and the two houses of Parliament
• What YOUR ballot paper will actually look like
• How to decide what matters to you – the issues of this election
• Deciding what to base your vote on – personality, policies, platforms, and “presidential voting”
• Understanding that you’re going to have to compromise

Australia’s electoral system

The first thing you need to know about Australia’s electoral system is you are not going to be walking in to the polling booth and voting for Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott. The Prime Minister is determined by which party has the largest number of seats in the House of Representatives, and you’re only voting to determine which person (and which party) will hold just one of those seats.

Australia’s parliament has two houses: the House of Representatives (the lower house) – where the government is formed – and the Senate (the upper house), or the house of review.

Generally, laws are introduced into the lower house, discussed, debated on, amended and finally rejected or approved, and then passed to the upper house for review. Here, a similar process happens and if the laws are changed, they are sent back to the lower house to be discussed and debated again. Laws come in the form of a bill – which is essentially a large document filled with a number of rules – and once passed, become an Act of Parliament which then governs this country and the people in it.

Let’s start with the House of Representatives, because this is where the majority of the focus is, given that the government is formed here. This is where the leaders reside.

Australia is broken into 150 electorates – or divisions or seats (there are usually several names for something in politics). Because both Shan and Nicole live in Victoria I’ll focus especially on Victorian seats, although you can easily apply this to any other state. Victoria has 37 of these federal seats (the second largest state in Australia), 21 of which are in the Melbourne metropolitan area: because each seat is sized so as to, roughly, have an equal number of voters living within it.

Let’s take the seat of Chisholm as an example. It covers the Melbourne suburbs of Box Hill, Burwood, and parts of Clayton, and is currently held by the Labor Party after it’s candidate, Anna Burke, received 38,439 primary votes in the 2007 federal election. The Liberal Party candidate received 31,514 primary votes, essentially meaning that the contest in this seat is a close one – not as close as some, but there’s still a theoretical possibility of enough people changing their votes in this election for the seat to change hands.

Preferential voting

I talked about primary votes there. To illustrate what preferential voting is and how it works in the Australian electoral system, let’s take a look at the seat next door: Deakin. This seat takes in the Melbourne suburbs of Blackburn, Forest Hill, Mitcham, Nunawading and Ringwood. At the last election, the Liberals’ Phil Barresi took 36,501 votes, while Labor’s Mike Symon took 34,451 votes.

But Mike Symon won the seat!

Here’s how preferences work – and you need to understand this so that you can make the most of your vote on election day.

Say Candidate A gets 32,000 votes. Candidate B gets 31,000 votes, and Candidate C gets 5,600 votes. As the votes are counted up, these numbers refer to primary votes – that is, where the voter has put a number 1 next to the candidate they want to see elected.

Now what this means is that anyone who voted for Candidate C effectively won’t be getting a say in the outcome. Candidate C turned out to be an unpopular candidate, so the contest is effectively between Candidate A and B. If you voted for Candidate C, wouldn’t you like to have another go to choose between A and B? You’d probably most likely accept the fact that C didn’t get in, but you still want to have the opportunity to have your say between A and B.

This is where preferences come in. 5,600 people put a number 1 next to Candidate C on their ballot paper. Then they also numbered 2 and 3 for the other candidates. Here’s where it gets interesting though. 4,000 of these people put down Candidate B as 2nd choice. The other 1,600 voters put Candidate A their 2nd choice.

Once all of these 5,600 ballot papers are recounted and placed as new votes towards Candidates A and B, it turns out that Candidate B has received 35,000 votes to Candidate A’s 33,600 – and B walks away having won the seat, despite coming second in the primary vote!

There are two ways to vote on election day: to number the boxes the way your chosen party tells you to on their How to Vote Cards, or to number the boxes according to your own preferences for the candidates standing for election in your seat.

And, this is what happens in each of the 150 seats around the country. Usually, the Liberal and Labor parties will win most of the seats – and the party that wins an outright majority of seats has the right to form government. There are usually a few seats won by independents, and in this election, the Greens also have a chance of winning a lower house seat.

The Senate

Before we move on to have a look at what your own ballot paper will look like on election day, let’s have a look at the Senate.

You’re going to receive two ballot papers on election day. One for the House of Representatives, as discussed above, and one for the Senate. The Senate, as we have already established, is the house of review. It’s where laws, once passed by the lower house, are sent for review. When the government of the day also has a majority in the Senate, they can usually pass their laws through quite easily. If they have a minority, they must try harder – and potentially make compromises – to get the votes of the opposition party, or to get some of the independents or minor parties siding with them to create a majority vote.

In the Senate, there are effectively eight “electorates”. They’re based purely on the states and territories of Australia. Each state has 12 seats in the federal Senate, and each territory has 2. In the two territories, these 2 seats are up for re-election at each federal election, whereas in the states, each senate seat is safe for two election cycles – with staggered terms. What this effectively means is that at each election, in the six states, six of the 12 Senate seats are up for grabs.

Taking Victoria as an example again, there are 60 candidates running for the 6 Victorian Senate seats available at this election. That’s a lot of numbers you’ve gotta write… right? Well, yes, if you want to. But you can also put just one number 1 next to the party that you want to support – and then they’ll do the rest of the numbering for you (each party has already submitted to the Australian Electoral Commission their “group voting ticket”, which records these preferences for each state, and the AEC will apply these to the ballot papers as they count them).

On the senate ballot paper, each party is listed above a thick, black, horizontal line, and every candidate is listed – under their party columns – below the horizontal line. Hence, putting just a number 1 next to your chosen party is called voting “above the line” – and taking the time to number every candidate (which is much easier in the territories and the smaller states!) is called voting “below the line”.

We haven’t talked much about informal voting yet, but it’s worth mentioning now. If you make a mistake – such as missing out a number or listing the same number twice – your vote will be deemed informal and it will not count. Because there’s more chance of making a mistake when you decide to vote below the line in the Senate, you can actually also vote above the line as a fallback – and if, when the counting is happening, it’s found that you missed a number, missed a box, or repeated a number, your vote will fall to the preferences as determined by the party you selected above the line. Your vote won’t be wasted – you’ll just be getting “second best” (it’s also worth noting that if you’ve noticed you’ve made a mistake, you can just ask for another ballot paper!).

We’ll talk more about voting in the Senate shortly, and unpack it further with the help of a great website.

What will YOUR ballot paper actually look like?

When you visit the polling booth on election day, you’re going to be confronted with representatives of several political parties asking you to vote for them, and giving you How to Vote Cards showing exactly what numbers in put in what box in order to ensure your vote goes to the party of your choice.

If you want to follow those instructions, then there is little need to check out your ballot paper and research your vote beforehand.

But party preferences can sometimes do things you don’t want them to do. For example, in the race for the six Victorian Senate seats up for grabs at this election, if you vote above the line for the Liberal Party, your preferences will go to the Australian Sex Party before the Labor Party. That may be ok with you, but for me it’s not and I want to vote Liberal, so my only option is to vote below the line.

Let’s look at your ballot paper for the House of Representatives. To find what your paper will look like – and hence the candidates that you will be numbering 1 to 5 or 6 or however many on Saturday – you need to first find your electorate. To do this, visit the Australian Electoral Commission’s search app at:

http://apps.aec.gov.au/esearch/

Enter your suburb or post code, and in most cases, finding your electorate should be pretty easy. If you have any difficulty, just call the AEC on 13 23 26. Once you know your electorate, visit:

http://www.aec.gov.au/election/who-are-the-candidates.htm

It’s then pretty easy from here to access a list of the candidates standing for the House of Representatives in your seat. Now that you know who your candidates are, you can research them by googling for news on them, visiting their personal website, checking if they’re on Facebook, or following them on Twitter. You may even be able to talk to them directly through social media sites to ask questions you might not be getting answers to elsewhere.

Your state’s Senate candidates will also be shown on the above page, but I’d recommend checking these out at this website instead:

http://www.belowtheline.org.au/

I’ve already talked about voting above and below the line. Although 95% of Australians vote above the line, if you choose to make your vote count further by voting below it, the Below the Line website (thanks to Josh Withers for the tip) allows you to check whether voting above the line would result in a preference flow that you’re happy with, and if you’re not happy with it, you can drag the candidates up and down and print out your final list to take with you on polling day. Ingenious!

Deciding what to base your vote on

Now that you know how the Australian political system works, it’s time to work out what you are going to base your vote on in this election. You may decide to base your vote on a number of factors, and there may be more that I haven’t listed, but I’ve been able to narrow a vote down to four things:

• Personality: voting for your candidate based on their personality – perhaps their charisma, friendliness, or openness to your local community’s needs
• Policies: voting for your candidate based on their or their party’s policies, many of which have usually been announced specifically for the election
• Platforms: voting for your candidate based on their or their party’s platform – that is, the document that guides the decisions the party makes when in power and gives a good indication of their ideologies
• Presidential voting: voting for your candidate based on their leader – i.e. on who might become Prime Minister

Probably the most common way people make their decision is on a “presidential” basis, and that’s because this is how our media cycle works. In some ways it makes sense – the leader of the winning party will of course have a great influence over how their government is run, but they’re not the only influence – and as we saw with Kevin Rudd recently, they can be overthrown and you can’t really complain because you didn’t vote for them directly (remember how we talked about Australia’s proportional representation system you voting only for your local member).

I’m not personally against this being the primary method of deciding on your vote, but some will speak out against it. When I vote, I do put great weight towards the leader, but I follow it closely by thinking through the party platforms.

I haven’t actually read any of the party’s platform documents yet (I plan to one day!) but it is fairly easy to get a general idea of the ideologies that the parties come from by watching them over time. I don’t presume by any means to be the best judge in this sense – and this is where I really am not the best person to be writing this post – but I will try to outline some of the main party’s ideologies. I am borrowing heavily from their websites to do this, and I certainly recommend that you do not use this post as your only source of knowledge on the parties – there is just too much that I don’t know or don’t know how to express yet.

• Liberal Party: Conservative social values, and a friend of business. Believes in freedom for all people and prefers smaller government, with less interference in people’s lives, and a larger private (business) sector. Believes that business and individuals – rather than government – create wealth and employment. Wants to see all Australians enjoy the highest standards of living, health, education and justice, and believes that Australia should play a constructive role in maintaining world peace.
• Labor Party: Progressive social values, and a friend of the working class. Has strong links to the union movement. Wants to see a society that values equality, security, fairness, compassion, and environmental sustainability. Wants to see workers have better living and working conditions.
• National Party: Represents regional Australia. Believes in building stronger regional economies and communities, and the preservation of health, safety, social and economic welfare standards. Conservative social values, similar to the Liberal Party.
• The Greens: Grew from a foundation of protection of the environment. Believes in action on global warming, peace rather than war, conservation, social justice, grassroots democracy and energy efficiency. Believes that human beings are part of the natural world, and that all forms of life on Earth deserve respect.
• Family First: A party based on advocacy of the nuclear family unit and on policies supporting families. Has conservative social values, many of which are based on Christian ethics. Believes in supporting the raising of children, an appropriate work-life balance, and a reduction in marriage breakdown.

So Australia’s main political parties summed up in one word:
Business – Workers – Regional Australia – the Environment – Families

It’s also worth noting here the special arrangement between the Liberal and the National party in that they are represented federally (and in some states as well) as a “coalition” – or rather, they are referred to as the Coalition. The Liberal Party is the larger of the two and provides the leader (the Prime Minister or the Opposition Leader), and the National Party provides the deputy leader (i.e. the Deputy Prime Minister, who is acting in the Prime Minister’s job when he or she is out of the country – when the Coalition is in government of course!).

If you base your vote on party platform, remember how the preferential system works, and that only two parties really have a chance of governing. So it’s important that as you vote, you consider where your vote will go if your first choice isn’t elected. This is especially true when you preference a minor party first, because they’re less likely to win. What this doesn’t mean though is that you should ignore minor parties: quite the opposite – if their values appeal to you, then go for it, because in the Senate especially, they have a fairly good chance of election.

Deciding what matters to you

Now, we’ve covered a lot, but believe it or not, there’s something else you could choose to take into account if you wish: policies. In every election campaign period, the TV, radio, newspapers and even your letterbox are filled with information on specific policies being released by the parties that want your vote. Especially when it comes down to letterbox fliers, the policies could be as specific as being about a train station, a school or a park just down the road from you – and when it’s as local as this, it usually involves promised funding to improve or reopen a community facility.

The key word here is ‘promise’ – and it’s well known that politicians don’t always (or can’t always) keep their promises. This is the key reason why I’m personally a bit skeptical about relying on policies released in election periods – and I prefer instead to base my vote on overall party platform or on tried and tested, long-term policies. But that doesn’t mean you have to.

Moving wider than a local focus, the specific issues of this election surround the following:

• the Economy: economic management; sustainability; returning the budget to surplus; the recession; interest rates; and an economic stimulus plan
• Immigration: asylum seekers, offshore processing, and turning back the boats; and general population growth
• the Environment: climate change; a carbon tax; and an emissions trading scheme
• Jobs: workplace relations; and unemployment rates
• Communications: a national broadband plan; and internet filtering
• Other issues: education; health; the war in Afghanistan; the super profits tax; the removal of Kevin Rudd; and the religious beliefs of party leaders

While many of these issues are always around, a lot of them have a specific focus in this campaign period and you have no doubt already seen many of them discussed in the media. Over the next few days before voting day, if you are considering basing your vote on current policy announcements then it may be a good idea to buy a couple of papers, watch some TV news bulletins, listen to the radio, or do some online reading of major news sites.

But… I don’t have time to do any more research!

Fair enough. Fortunately, there are many organisations that have already done the research for you. They’ve put together questions and had the major parties answer them all for you, and scored them based on criteria that the various organisations pre-determined.

There are a number of these “checklists” or party comparison tools that you can check out – and often which one(s) you use will depend on what your voting priorities are. You may also find it interesting to check out checklists covering policy areas that you don’t really think are important – you may discover a policy idea you didn’t know existed!

Here’s a selection that I’m aware of:

• ACL’s Australia Votes: The Australian Christian Lobby has put together a website for the election, where you can (among other things) compare responses that parties have given to a range of questions on topics that Christians might be concerned about
• Make Poverty History scorecard: if international aid is important to you, this is a good checklist to check out
• Australian Christian Values Checklist: if conservative issues from a Christian point of view (morals etc.) are important to you, this checklist will answer alot of them
• GetUp Election Day Scorecard: if workers rights, health, and a “fair go” are important to you, this checklist might cover some of your interests (it’s not very extensive though)
• News.com.au Vote-a-matic: An interactive tool that takes you through a number of questions and gives you a suggestion of who to vote for at the end

You’re going to have to compromise

The final point to make is that when it comes down to it, you’re probably going to have to compromise in who you want to vote for. Usually, no one party or candidate is going to suit your beliefs, values and passions down to a tee – and you’re probably going to have to make a decision on what you want to prioritise. I would suggest thinking not just about yourself, but Australia as a whole nation – and consider who is affected by the policies that the nation is governed on (that includes people who do vote and people who don’t vote, as well as people who don’t even live in Australia).

In the end, it’s your decision, and you’re extremely fortunate to live in a country where you are free to exercise your vote. I hope this has helped, and choose wisely!

References: To help compile this post, I drew from the following resources: Wikipedia; ABC; The Liberal Party; Australian Labor; The Nationals; The Greens; Family First; Australian Electoral Commission; Below the Line.

Your input: Although this is a fairly long and comprehensive post, it would not be complete without your input. What have I forgotten? Was I wrong on anything? Do you have a question? I’d really appreciate your comments.