Now that all those ballot sheets have fallen into place it’s interesting to look at how the cards have landed.
There’s something odd when an environmental filmmaker is preferencing One Nation and Clive Palmer’s UAP. If you followed his guide and voted for him, you would end up voting for the Nationals. Similarly the Informed Medical Options Party preferenced the Nats above Labor – putting The Greens last.
David Warth talked passionately about rainforest ecology and environmental protection, yet his how-to-votes put one of Australia’s largest fossil fuel billionaires at the top and The Greens at the bottom. How can this make sense except in an alternative universe?
It gets curiouser and curiouser.
IMOP, who rail against vaccine mandates and lockdowns, preferenced the overtly racist Pauline Hanson, Clive Palmer and the Nats. If you followed their how-to-vote you effectively voted for the government that legislated all of the covid rules, including the mandates and lockdowns IMOP so vehemently oppose.
Neither of these candidates had a chance of winning Richmond, so your vote was certain to go to one of the major parties. The slogan ‘Put the Majors Last’ works fine for expressing a protest vote, but because you had to number all ten candidates, whichever ‘major party’ you put first is the party that got your vote. For both these ‘Independents’ that party was the Lib/Nats Coalition.
Curiouser and curiouser.
So – how well was this explained to voters? Well, not at all that I noticed.
On querying a very enthusiastic IMOP volunteer at the Murwillumbah markets I was told emphatically that ‘We are not preferencing the Nats – we put The Greens above them and Labor last’. I think she actually believed this herself as she didn’t have any preference sheets to show people. At the David Warth movie night this topic wasn’t touched on, and such is the general fog around the preferential voting system that no one in the audience asked the question either.
We really have gone Through the Looking Glass when things happen in reverse of the way they are presented.
If this wasn’t whacky enough, it turns out that a vote for the Nats may have helped The Greens to stay ahead of Labor… In this alternative universe an accidental vote for the conservatives can end up benefitting the most progressive party in the country?
Don’t ask me how – go ask the Red Queen.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
