Make Your Vote Count This Election – Research, Think, and Vote Wisely

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• Very good advice, Dennis. I will be sharing your article, but honestly, most people seem to not think at all, let alone research, and just vote the way they've always voted despite the hash the two majors have made of everything, and screwed us into the ground on almost every issue. If I was a praying person (I'm not) I'd pray that this election will be different and the two majors get the boot. Once and for all.

• The unanswered question is, what happens if no one gives a first preference to a major party? Presumably the count takes a lot longer and is more subject to error in the preference distribution. You don't know who will somehow float to the top - you think it will still come back to Labor or Coalition, but the chance allows say a shooters Party candidate in. A few years ago the Senate got shaken up and I remember Ricky Muir from a motorists party getting in to everybody's chagrin. (As a Senator, he was not bad but that is irrelevant)
  For a stable Government with clear philosophy and expertise in actually running the country, we need one of the major parties to be able to form government, which means ultimately that it is important to vote them first preference, or clearly give them your second preference.

• I’ve done my research.

  I’m putting the Liberal candidate for my electorate (Sussan Ley) last.

• That's what research has come to for me, Roswell - deciding who to put last. My whole list starts at the bottom and finishes with the least worst option.

• If you want to save a bit of time and you're not worried about a democracy sausage, try registering for a postal vote : https://www.aec.gov.au/election/pva.htm

  I'm waiting with heightened anticipation for Clive Palmer to announce his candidates and policies for his Flatulence Party. If UAP senator Ralph Babet is anything to go by, they clearly have a significant contribution to make.

• Not just a grain of salt needed to be taken but a whole dump truck full sounds about right. A friend told me that only people who signed up spewscrap got to join in the "debate" so it smacks of the usual Merdedoch bullshit.

  https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/australians-reveal-who-they-actually-want-to-be-the-next-prime-minister/news-story/3c02050a93e5dcb83ff7d883bbcb5717

• Lyndal, don't you think they've had enough chances? They are not listening to you. They will just do whatever they want, to suit donors and billionaires, non taxpayers and climate trashers, and it won't matter what the people want. Supporting Israel's genocide was the red line for me. They do not deserve the votes of decent people. AUKUS without consultation - literally nobody voted for AUKUS. Housing has been deteriorating for decades, and still not improving. Whistleblower promises broken, NACC knackered, more fossil fuel projects, worsening transparency - the worst in the world, the disgraceful inequity between public and private education, still not fixed, after decades. I could go on and on and on. Literally anybody could do a better job. I look at people like Barbara Pocock who has 10 x the brainpower and human decency of either Dutton or Albo.

• Thank you, Jen, for your frank & accurate assessment re. the calibre of the two major parties and their policies and behaviour. As noted, you could have gone on and on. I would also have added to the list of policy and program failures the following:

  Uncritical support of the Tasmanian salmon industry (three companies, all foreign owned), objective evidence of massive environmental costs associated with the fish pens (sea-bed dead zones), killing of marine mammals (seals & dolphins), the deoxygenation of Macquarie Harbour (as a function of the salmon pens) leading to the potential extinction of the critically low population of Maugean Skate from within its only known habitat... and why, one may ask, was legislation passed to protect this noxious industry? To harvest the votes of ~60 salmon farm employees on the West Coast and to secure the seat for the ALP at the next election. Politics over principle.

  As if that particular example isn't bad enough, add to it the wholesale failure at every level of environmental safeguarding and protection nationwide, along with the political neutering of the Environmental minister Tanya Plibersek by Albanese when she was endeavouring to get a national EPA up & running. Australia is a continent massively damaged by feral animals; rabbits, cats, pigs, goats, foxes, deer, horses & donkeys, camels, along with the cane toad and Indian Mynahs... and when one asks what's being done about it the usual response is uncomprehending glazed eyes and lip-flubbing, in other words, nothing at all. Couple that unaddressed issue with ongoing clearing of native habitat and it's simply a disaster, writ large. Who cares?, might be the de facto political position. A national shame that this continent has the highest extinction rate of any continent on earth - 10% of the 273 endemic terrestrial species gone since colonisation. I don't believe I've ever heard a senior federal politician (except Bob Brown) raise this as a matter of extreme concern.

  What else? The ongoing appalling circumstances faced on a daily basis by a large percentage of this country's indigenous people, despite the many many millions of dollars tossed in their direct over decades of indifferent concern, along with the seeming political propensity to blame those indigenous communities for their woes and difficulties.

  More? The shameful sycophancy in relation to the USA. Tell them to go f^ck themselves, in polite diplomatic language... they are an unnecessary existential burden to this country and the relationship is more trouble than it's worth.

  More? Fix the roads and other infrastructures destroyed by floods & fires. Years after these disasters and communities still wait for restoration.

  More? Address the causes of fossil fuel related climate crises... bite the bullet, replace fossil fuel mining with a competent renewable energy infrastructure development commitment, and stop being part of the problem and become, instead, part of the solution. It may indeed be too late, but better late than never.

• Spot on, Canguro. And there are more issues of unfairness, injustice, criminality, corruption, which need to be dealt with, that gobsmackingly, seem to be overlooked by many of our populace as something that you "get in any government." Well, it shouldn't. It's not necessary or something we should ignore. We (many of us, any way,) really are our own worst enemies. Australia could be so much better, so much more. Time to give some of our uncorrupted, smarter, bolder, keener, fairer politicians a go. Those with Australia's best interests at heart, not those of Zionists, or the US. I'm probably dreaming, but remain hopeful for a better future.

• Hi Jen,
  Thanks so much for your support and for sharing the article! You're right—old habits die hard, especially when it comes to voting. But the more we speak up, share facts, and encourage people to think critically, the more we chip away at that complacency. Let’s hope this election is a turning point—that voters reject the failures of the two-party system and vote for candidates who represent us, not donors or party machines.

  If enough of us get active, informed, and strategic, change is not just possible—it’s inevitable. 🙌💪