Lunchtime musings

I sent this missive to local freesheet the Herald & Post today:

In Talking Point in your May 5th edition, Brian Binley MP uses the Australian experience of AV to make the disingenuous claim that "six out of ten voters (in Australia) want the AV system scrapped". Firstly to have a contentious claim like that published on the day of the referendum when there is no time for a reply shows a bias on the part of your paper toward the No camp. Secondly, and this would be the proper riposte had there been time to give it, the statement Mr Binley makes is simply not right.

Respected Australian political journalist Antony Green debunks the same claim made by Mr Binley's boss in a speech back in February. Mr Green says "The problem is, the Prime Minister's statement (and therefore Mr Binley's claim) is based on a single survey, and that survey was one in which the Alternative Vote was not even an option." The survey asked whether the voters were in favour of the current compulsory preferential system, where one is obliged to rank all the candidates, or to just vote for one candidate. Again to quote Mr Green "What was not offered in this survey was the Alternative Vote option being offered in the UK. The Alternative Vote is is optional rather than compulsory (my highlights) preferential voting, a system used at elections in the Australian states of New South Wales and Queensland. As the survey stated, it is compulsory to give a preference for every candidate on the ballot paper to vote at Australian federal elections." So our AV was not offered as a choice in this survey, as the optional or compulsory distinction is a contentious issue in Australian politics. The survey panned out "57% for first past the post and 37% for compulsory preferential voting." This is where the "six out of ten" quote originates.

Mr Green's full article can be found here: http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2011/02/do-australians-really-want-to-abandon-the-alternative-vote.html?cid=6a00e0097e4e688833014e5f66017a970c

I would ask Mr Binley to check his facts before making clever use of semantics to get his (and his leader's) point across.

By the time this is hopefully published we will know the result of the referendum, and, if the No camp win it is to be hoped that this is not taken as a mandate to ignore calls for proper PR (which is not AV by the way) for the next 50 years. If the Yes camp win, maybe Mr Binley will have to be a bit less cavalier with his propaganda to get re-elected?

I have no expectation of a reply from Binley, and only low expectation of it being published at all. Ah well, at least I tried....

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A glance at the jobs pages in the same paper showed a pathetic total of 25 vacancies, 17 of which were posts with various State or State funded agencies, mainly teaching posts. To put it another way, only 8 (or 32%) of the jobs advertised were with employers who actually make money for the economy and thereby pay taxes to fund the State sector. And they tell us we're on the road to recovery?
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