[Pil-pc-oceania] Politics?

[permaculture at apollobay.org.au]

Steve,

As a fellow resident in the Western Victoria seat and member of the Greens,
you should be well aware of what happened to the Green Candidate who
would've got the 5th seat, had it not been from preference votes that
streamed to the DLP.  

Or were you overseas at the time?

The greens candidate got the most primary votes, but hardly any preference
votes.

The liberal and labour partys have lots of splinter parties that
preferences them adding to their tally (or vice versa).

Fern
Otways & Coast Bioregion
  

Original Message:
-----------------
From:  steve_burns at wvi.org
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 19:49:00 +1100
To: pil-pc-oceania at lists.permacultureinternational.org
Subject: [Pil-pc-oceania] Politics?


Dear all,

I'd concur with David and John.

Would want  to state for the record that I am a member of the Greens; keen
to see people engaged in politics but when it comes to the concept of a
Permaculture Political party, I wonder about a few things, such as

1. although many Permies might vote Green, a solid block would also vote
for other Parties... we are NOT a homogeneous group
2. the energy involved in starting and then maintaining a legal political
party is huge - who is going to do that and why would that be a good thing
to do with their energy?
3. maybe more local councillors would be the right point of initial
interaction - building some PC design into local planning reg's would be
interesting, for instance
4. diluting the primary Green vote (especially in the Senate in the Federal
election) makes oddities like Family First getting a Senator (after polling
less than 2% primary vote) more likely - if the Left vote went first to the
Greens instead of via splinter parties, the Greens would have a quota in
their own right and we wouldn't have our Senate decided by dodgy backroom
deals done by the major parties (primarily the ALP!)

I'm personally regularly challenging myself to consider how best to balance
my time - and if I had to chose between my party political activity and my
community-based practical work (climate change/local food production
focussed), then I'm sure that the local and community-based stuff is
actually making more difference in the world right now.  As long as I can
also contribute to a progressive political presence in Australia, I'll do
that

so there you go -   : )

Steve



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