[Linux-aus] TPP IP chapter leak

[Russell Coker]

On Wed, 27 Nov 2013, Tennessee Leeuwenburg <tleeuwenburg at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Australian senate used to have a strong showing from the Democrats, who
> used to be a strong party which stood up for transparency, honesty and
> middle-ground solutions rather than spin. Their motto was "keep the
> bastards honest". Both their commitment to that motto and their electoral
> support have long since waned.
> 
> Unfortunately, the remaining parties are doing little to respond to the
> more authoritarian and less transparent processes of current and recent
> past governments. The Greens have clear political standpoint, which is fine
> if you agree with it, but they don't necessarily appeal broadly, and thus
> don't necessarily get the political clout to force the hand of power.

Did the Democrats ever form part of a coalition government?  It seems to me 
that the Greens have done reasonably well in terms of "forcing the hand of 
power" and better than most small parties.

The Greens are widely regarded as being just an environmental party, but they 
have policies on most issues.  Many Greens members and voters aren't even that 
concerned about the environment.  When I was involved in drafting Greens 
policies the IT policies (in Victoria and nationally) were very positive 
towards open access to government data which implied support for free 
software.  The policies may have regressed in the past few years, if some 
members of this list would like to become Greens members (it costs about $50 
per annum and as much time as you feel like committing) then we could review 
the IT policies and try and make them better suit our ideas (which I strongly 
believe are in the best interests of all Australians).

I've had a number of long discussions about politics with a friend who's a 
farmer who might also be described as "conservative Christian".  I don't think 
I'll convince him to vote Green in the near future, but he hasn't had any 
great objections to the Greens policies that he has learned about.

I think that the lack of broad appeal for the Greens is largely due to people 
who take a very simplistic view of politics.  If the voters were better 
informed then I think that the Greens would do a lot better.  For example I 
often have people tell me that voting for the Greens is "a wasted vote", they 
don't even realise that the Australian voting system is not like the US 
system.

-- 
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