I don’t want to spruke the australian government (frankly I find it fucking infuriating when people dismiss criticisms of this society by going "Yeah but at least we’re not the USA) however our parliaments function quite differently. I would not exactly call them democratic but they are closer to a democracy than the government you are likely familiar with. Unfortunately we don’t have multimember seats in the lower house so you have completely disgusting stuff like the greens getting ~18% of the popular vote but only having like 1/151 seats. I’m sure you can relate to that sort of frustration.
Recently, particularly in the senate which does have multimember seats, minor party influence has been growing. LibLab fucking hate this, so goddamned much. They have pushed through a series of electoral reforms (some decent I will give them that) with the goal of restricting the influence of minor parties. A recent one which disgusts me is requiring a degree of membership in order to run on the ballot as a party and not independents which would require something like running in 6 or 7 seats (keep in mind there are 151 seats overall, that’s a large number) before the members:seats ratio approached the current members:seats ratio of labor. A party with a like 120 year history that runs everywhere.
That’s a completely absurd requirement that absolutely scuttles the ability of an interest group representing say an area of a city from running as a clearly identifiable party.
I am deeply sceptical of their reforms for reasons like this.
you have completely disgusting stuff like the greens getting ~18% of the popular vote but only having like 1/151 seats
At the 2022 election the Greens actually received 12.25% of the popular vote, and won 4 seats. That’s 2.6% of seats, so still a pretty awful under-representation. And after the Qld State election last month I’m very worried that they’re going to drop back down to 1.
Fair enough. Thank you for the explanation! I’m not from Australia and I could only dream to have a bill like this in the US.
I don’t want to spruke the australian government (frankly I find it fucking infuriating when people dismiss criticisms of this society by going "Yeah but at least we’re not the USA) however our parliaments function quite differently. I would not exactly call them democratic but they are closer to a democracy than the government you are likely familiar with. Unfortunately we don’t have multimember seats in the lower house so you have completely disgusting stuff like the greens getting ~18% of the popular vote but only having like 1/151 seats. I’m sure you can relate to that sort of frustration.
Recently, particularly in the senate which does have multimember seats, minor party influence has been growing. LibLab fucking hate this, so goddamned much. They have pushed through a series of electoral reforms (some decent I will give them that) with the goal of restricting the influence of minor parties. A recent one which disgusts me is requiring a degree of membership in order to run on the ballot as a party and not independents which would require something like running in 6 or 7 seats (keep in mind there are 151 seats overall, that’s a large number) before the members:seats ratio approached the current members:seats ratio of labor. A party with a like 120 year history that runs everywhere.
That’s a completely absurd requirement that absolutely scuttles the ability of an interest group representing say an area of a city from running as a clearly identifiable party.
I am deeply sceptical of their reforms for reasons like this.
At the 2022 election the Greens actually received 12.25% of the popular vote, and won 4 seats. That’s 2.6% of seats, so still a pretty awful under-representation. And after the Qld State election last month I’m very worried that they’re going to drop back down to 1.
I am exposed as a hack and a fraud.