Aston I
Make up your mind Green Left. Your editorial on July 25 is headed "Why nobody won in Aston", and then it goes on to say that the Greens' preference policy handed the Liberals a propaganda victory.
Shouldn't your headline then have been: "How the Greens handed the Libs victory in Aston"? That would have been a more honest title for your Green bash.
No doubt many Labor Party apparatchiks would agree with you that the Greens cost them the election. They always say that of parties to their left that contest elections, and the GLW editorial merely echoes them.
The Socialist Alliance is firmly locked up in Labor's preference prison. Yes, you can make a bit of noise during the campaign, but when the votes are counted you're nothing more than a left preference catcher for the Labor Party.
Instead of gathering votes for the anti-worker environmental vandals of the Labor electoral machine the Greens took the opportunity of a by-election that could not change the government to make the point that Labor is next to no alternative to the Liberals.
Graham Matthews (Write on, GLW #457) says we have to fight the lot that is wielding the stick now. Fair enough, but isn't there also a responsibility to tell the truth — that the Labor economic rationalists' stick may be a different shape but it does just as much damage?
The GLW editorialist should know better than to accuse the Greens of costing Labor the election. I seem to remember Labor and others saying something similar about the Democratic Socialist Party in the seat of Moreton a few years ago, and the DSP replied, correctly, that the Labor brains trust had lost all on its own. Its non-policies deservedly were rejected by the electorate.
That's what happened in Aston. Facing a government that is close to the most unpopular ever in Australia, Beazley Labor threw away Aston and is more than capable of doing the same in the next federal elections.
Finally, if the Greens' 2.5% in Aston was "pathetic", as Green Left says, what does that make the Socialist Alliance's 0.46%?
Steve Painter
Carlton NSW
Aston II
Rose McCann (Write On, GLW #458) argues that the editorial in GLW #457 attributed the Democrats' success in the Aston by-election to Natasha Stott Despoja's "sexy image".
While the editorial, which I wrote, argued that the Democrats ran an apolitical campaign, it attributed their success to the failure of any widely publicised party to present a real opposition to the Liberal-Labor-Democrat consensus.
McCann argues correctly that some of the increase in Democrat vote was due to a general public perception that Despoja opposed the GST. McCann argues incorrectly that Despoja did oppose the GST on the floor of parliament.
Perhaps McCann's view of the world is shaped by scrutinising the media (most of which has portrayed Despoja as anti-GST) in an isolated environment.
Despoja opposed the GST on books, not the GST as a whole. No doubt the Democrats decision to depoliticise their election publicity was an attempt to capitalise on this misconception.
The Australian Greens did, and do, oppose the GST. Yet they did not pick up much of the anti-Labor, anti-Liberal vote in Aston. Perhaps (as was argued in the editorial) this is because the Greens' campaign let the Democrats off the hook on the GST, privatisation and cuts to public funding by focusing on traditional "green" issues.
Alison Dellit
Harris Park NSW
Objectionable statements
Lev Lafayette (Write on, GLW #458) claims that in my article ("Labor Left in Bed with the Sex Industry", GLW #456), the comment "Mr Lev Lafayette stated that feminism is a 'sectional interest' rather than a 'universal concern'" is a "fabrication".
It would seem that Lafayette is busy in doing damage control with regards to his objectionable statements made to the feminists who have protested to him concerning the omission of independent feminist representative at the Labor Left conference.
I would like to cite some relevant paragraphs from our correspondence with Lafayette, and leave it to GLW readers to decide for themselves.
To Professor Sheila Jeffreys he wrote: "As the first conference of this nature we are interested primarily in universal concerns rather than sectional interests. However, we do have two speakers on specific, contextual matters: Gary Foley, on indigenous issues and Anthony Leong, on multiculturalism. Which of these two do you propose we replace for a speaker on women's issues? And what women's issues relevant to Victoria do you propose have political priority over reconciliation with our indigenous people or enhancing multiculturalism?"
To Heather Benbow he wrote: "I do not see (but acknowledge that I might be wrong) that the political and economic rights of women are about to undergo a rapid advance or are seriously under threat."
If there is an apology to be made, then it is this: I am sorry that women today are still predominantly silenced by their society, that there are men out there who purport to appropriate women's speech, sexuality, and political activisms. I am sorry for all this, but I am not sorry to speak out against oppression and the attempt to silence women.
Joyce Wu
Melbourne
A Downerian smile
When countries, e.g., China and Indonesia, refuse to sign international conventions like those against genocide and torture there are no adverse consequences for them. Failure to sign was never cited as a black mark against China's hosting of the Olympic Games and it was never an issue in Australia's military co-operation with Indonesia.
Unless the international community takes its own conventions seriously by imposing sanctions against non-signatories we cannot expect individual states to pay much heed to them.
It is time for Australia to exercise a leadership role in these matters and not simply meet the Bush administration's smug rejection of the Kyoto protocol on climate change, the protocol on biological weapons, and the treaties on ballistic missile defence and the control of small arms proliferation, with a bland Downerian smile.
Gareth Smith
Byron Bay NSW
Proportional representation
The dissatisfaction with the major parties, their policies and their leaders is widespread. Up to 35% of the voting population have given their first preference to minor parties and independents in recent years. However, Australia's electoral system ensures that most preferences still end up with the major parties, at least in all lower houses of federal and state parliaments except Tasmania.
This means that the claim that Australia is a representative democracy is a myth — and not only on this ground. The unrepresentative "winner take all" mentality inherent in the Westminster system further adds significantly to render the claim worthless. One wonders how much longer the Australian voters can live with this shameless deception? The signs are not much longer! The result in the Aston by-election suggests that much.
At the recent well attended Now We The People Conference held in Newtown, Sydney, I asked Anthony Albanese (ALP) MP and Greg Barns, a former Liberal Party staffer and now ARM president, panellists in the final plenary, if their parties had any plans for introducing PR. The answer was "no" and Albanese emphasised that he was a supporter of the two-party system! What has the left of the ALP come to?
Clearly, it is now up to the people to break the vicious circle by no longer giving their first preference to these parties. The vote should go to all those parties who have long advocated proportional representation as Australia's electoral system, e.g., the Greens, Australian Democrats, Progressive Labour Party, the Democratic Socialist Party and the Communist Party.
Klaas Woldring
Sydney [Abridged]