Greens, waste and democracy
By Stephen O'Brien
NEWCASTLE — During last month's NSW state election campaign, supporters of the Greens gathered signatures on a petition which called for a ban on campaigning within one kilometre of polling booths on election day. Ironically, the Greens' campaign workers on at least one booth, Newcastle, encouraged people to sign the petition as they themselves handed out "how to vote" cards on March 27.
The Greens justified this anti-democratic stance by stating that distributing "how to vote" cards wastes paper.
Many things, not just paper, are wasted in a society dominated by private profit. To rule out a form of campaigning which at least allows ordinary people, not just party machines, to get a message to voters, is short sighted.
Election campaigning is now largely focused on expensive advertising in the capitalist media, and the electoral regulations reflect this. While the candidate's handbook has only four lines about television advertising, the restrictions on where posters can be placed fill four pages. Further, while "how to vote" cards distributed at polling booths have to be approved by the electoral officer, television advertisements do not require approval before going to air.
Elections are becoming increasingly remote and face to face campaigning, of which distributing "how to vote" cards is one form, is becoming rare. Public meetings, at which candidates explain their policies to electors in detail, are fast disappearing. Instead, capitalist politicians use the more readily controlled 15-second sound bite, photo opportunity and stage-managed "mall walk".
In the seat of Newcastle there were no "meet the candidates" public meetings during the state campaign.
Public disillusionment with the policies of the big capitalist parties is increasing (note the 24% of people in the state election who did not give their primary vote to a major party). The major parties are therefore finding it increasingly difficult to convince people to give time to election campaigning, including doing a stint handing out at the polling booths.
In the Newcastle region, while the ALP had most booths covered, its supporters appeared to be doing much longer shifts than in previous elections. The Liberals were not present at many booths, the Democrats were hardly to be seen and One Nation is said to have paid people to hand out for it.
The major parties know that smaller parties' vote is directly proportional to how well those parties distribute "how to vote" cards outside polling booths. The big parties would look favourably on any move which reduces the effectiveness of the minor parties and if "saving paper" provides an excuse to do so, they may just take advantage of it.
Labor premier Bob Carr has already foreshadowed that the registration of minor parties will be made more difficult in NSW and running in elections will be made more expensive. On election night, NSW treasurer Michael Egan even called for the abolition of the Upper House.
Paper is wasted at polling booths, but to call on the capitalist state to further restrict democracy in the name of saving paper is naive and dangerous. This ill-considered call by some in the Greens can only rebound on the democratic right of people to oppose the anti-environment and anti-justice policies of the capitalist parties.