Oz Politics says I’m an Australian Democrat

@Snarky Platypus: If you add a second sentence at the front of that, you could present the entire history of the Australian Democrats in a paragraph.

For those new to the story, Democrats leader Senator Janine Haines tried to win the federal seat of Kingston in the 1990 election. She nearly won — and had she done so, she’d have created a Democrats beachhead in the lower house. Had she run in the neighbouring seat of Mayo, the swing to the Democrats would have seen her unseat Alexander Downer — my how things would have been different if that happened!

I was a producer at ABC Radio in Adelaide at the time, and we scored the very first media interview with Janine after that defeat — in no small part because there a was a personal connection. When she’d been a teacher, she’d taught the children of my presenter, Tony McCarthy.

Over a bottle of wine or three with her husband Ian, we discussed this very point. Why didn’t she run in Mayo? Because, she said, she felt very strongly about running in the electorate where she lived.

Principles are all well and good, but there’s also Realpolitik.

The Democrats also suffered (and presumably still do suffer) from the fact that policy is decided democratically at the branch level and fed upwards to the parliamentary party. The problem there is that the party room then doesn’t have room for the negotiation and compromise that’s needed to actually get legislation through parliament.

I want to say more about this, but it’ll have to wait until another time.

@Quatrefoil: No, I’m not surprised there. Nothing wrong with paying more taxes per se, since taxes pay for services. I just don’t like seeing them pissed away at a million dollars a day on TV advertising for things I already know about. And for which I’ve already been mailed the brochure.

Or on dodgy wars in the Middle East.

@’Pong: All Hail the Rainbow Crystal Dolphin?

I think you’re right about the left-wing bias in such questionnaires. The preferred party of respondents shows more self-identifying Greens and Democrats than in the general population.

People who are “hard-wired” to their chosen political party aren’t interested in discussing the issues or reflecting on their choice: they already know.