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Byron Shire
September 23, 2023

A voting guide for dummies

Latest News

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Still haven’t made your mind up who to vote for yet?

Well, crawl out from whatever rock you’ve been hiding under and pay some fricking attention. 
It’s really quite simple. Just match your ideology with one of these political parties and away you go.

  1. Is the only measure of the value of anything that should be considered its monetary value? Think capitalism is awesome and infinite growth is possible in a finite world and that big corporations will do the right thing because they’re run by nice people who deserve salaries 100 times larger than yours because they must be so clever?

Yes?

Congratulations! You’re an economic rationalist! You should vote Liberal/Nationals (by the way it’s your fault the planet is dying and that there is so much poverty).

  1. Do you think that the economy is really important because when it’s growing there are more jobs and high employment is important for social cohesion? Think that there should be a few rules in place so workers earn a fair amount of money and should not be forced to work in dangerous conditions? Do you think free universal education and healthcare are pretty good ideas? Do you think the economic bottom line should be balanced against social equity?

Yes? Hey you’re a Labor voter! (or at least should give Labor your two-party preferred preference).

  1. Do you agree with all of option 2 but also believe the health of our planet is really important because, like hello, it’s the effing planet we live on, there’s only one of them, and if we destroy the thing, then life will suck for everyone and our kids will hate us and nature is pretty cool when it still exists. Do you believe a diverse and tolerant society that looks after the unfortunate and the unusual is tops?

Yes? Congratulations! You’re the progressive voice of the future. You should vote Greens.

  1. Do you want buck the system? Think all political parties suck and because none of them exactly match your views you don’t want to vote for them?

Yes? You’ve got 2 options: you could vote for an independent and hopefully they’re really smart and will do a good job of thinking for you. Or you could do a donkey vote and yes, the donkey will be you.


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4 COMMENTS

  1. There are no parties representing small business. All support big business and/or big government. My hypothesis regarding a successful society is the vibrancy and number of small businesses. Over the last two decades the number of laws and regulations have stifled small business’ vibrancy and its ability to flourish. Post WW2 immigrants’ rags to riches stories were common and inspirational, nowadays they are rare and far between.
    Who wins with all this regulation. Regulation is generally a flat cost giving big corporations a huge advantage. This protects the big business from competition and can argue that they are “too big to fail”. Eg banking and energy sectors.
    The conundrum is that regulations and laws are required to for protection [environment, economy, people etc] but too much white ants our society’s foundations.
    Can we regain a good balance between regulation and business? History tells us, rebalancing requires a tragedy or possibly a “Greek Tragedy”.

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