So, potentially 100 000 extra Australians might be voting on August 21.

Elsewhere: Hoyden About Town, Peter Black, CPD.

Update: Graeme Orr in Inside Story.

This issue has been discussed a number of times on LP. dk.au has emphasised the importance (and apologies if I’m oversimplifying here) of the sociological aspects of the issue, and the need for people to be involved in the decarbonization process – if they see their voluntary efforts being lost, support for the process will vanish. I don’t think it’s a big problem, myself. Despite all this, I don’t think anyone who cares about climate change thinks it’s the biggest problem with the proposed CPRS. The biggest problem, by far, is the twin evils of locking in monumentally inadequate carbon reduction targets and too-low projected carbon prices. The second-biggest problem is the ladeling out of free permits to Big Carbon.

All the voluntary participation in the world isn’t going to make more than a marginal difference to Australia’s carbon emissions. Tighter targets will make a big difference. So why spend all this lobbying effort to fix problems at the margins of the scheme, rather than tackling the big one head-on?

But while most Australians probably had other things on their mind, John Howard’s former Workplace Relations advisor and Alexander Downer’s replacement as Mayo MP, Jamie Briggs, found time on Boxing Day to denounce third party campaigns as a “a growing cancer in our democracy”.

Briggs named GetUp! and the ACTU’s Your Rights at Work campaign as examples of what he was talking about.

I don’t have any particular problem with disclosure of funding for third party campaigns, though I would object to caps on donations. But the hyperbole from Briggs (and no doubt his views are shared by Nick Minchin and others) is absurd and dangerous. Props to Andrew Norton for sounding the alarm. Norton refers to Briggs’ call for disclosure and observes:

He hasn’t even noticed that they already provide this information, with another report due early February 2009. Last year’s was really not that interesting, telling us a) that political campaigns cost money and that b) left-wing persons and organisations provide that money to left-wing campaigns.

What GetUp! and the ACTU are doing in their campaigns is crystal clear from the campaigns themselves. They are in a very different situation to political parties, which may privately offer favours to donors.

Briggs’ attitude, plus conversations I have had with other Liberals, makes me worried about the Party’s response to the Rudd government’s green paper on election funding and regulation. I fear that they will agree to draconian restrictions on political freedoms in an attempt to control the left’s current political ascendancy. As with the Howard government in its later years, they are too concerned with short-term problems, and show too little interest in the systemic consequences of their actions.

But, if the Fin Review is to be believed, the significance of a 4% plus swing to the Greens hasn’t escaped the attention of ALP wonks. “Labor hardheads” are quoted by the paper as concerned by the vote in Fremantle, and the implications for the seats of Federal Ministers such as Lindsay Tanner, Anthony Albanese and Tanya Plibersek. “Labor strategists” are cited as concerned about a drift away among “left-leaning voters”.

This is hardly rocket science. Any modern managerialist ALP government is bound to disappoint at least some left voters after the initial euphoria of a Tory defeat has worn off. And the Greens nationally are going to have a much bigger profile with a balance of power role in the Senate and new Senators who may develop a high profile. The article, however, leaves us none the wiser as to how “Labor strategists” think their party should respond.

The Labor Party’s response in the past seems to have often taken the form of “Extreme Green” propaganda. Kevin Rudd’s current disposition appears to be to ignore Bob Brown and the Greens altogether (perhaps because putting together a Senate majority comprising the Greens, Xenophon and Fielding is an inherently unwieldy act) and concentrate his rhetorical fire on the Liberals.

But at a deeper level, the fact that a party with almost 12% of the vote in WA goes unrepresented in the lower House (making something of a mockery about claims that it represents “one vote one value” because single member electoral systems don’t really do that) should cause progressives of all stripes to rethink things. There’s always going to be immense hostility from the major parties and all sorts of entrenched interests to any form of pr in any lower House (and Tasmania crippled its own governance by a Lib-Lab deal to shut the Greens more or less out of its version of Hare-Clark).

But Kevin Rudd should perhaps be thinking long term here (as he claims that he does). Tony Blair probably did want some sort of arrangement with the British Lib Dems – as demonstrated by his reaching out to then leader Paddy Ashdown and the inclusion of Lib Dem MPs and Peers in several Cabinet Committees. In the British context, even preferential voting would have been a significant innovation, however, and it was a bridge too far for Labour.

If, as has been reported, Rudd also has some sort of dream of a grand and enduring re-alignment which would consign the right of politics to a permanently embattled position, the best way to achieve this would be through electoral reform which would enable the ALP and the Greens to work together in a much less adversarial fashion. However, it’s hardly something that our Prime Minister, whose reputation for caution appears well deserved, would propose.

I think it’s time that we the citizens started pushing for this. MMP in New Zealand came about basically because of enormous distaste and alienation with business as usual “better of two evils” big party politics. This seems to me to be something an organisation such as GetUp! could well campaign on (and perhaps attractive to them because it would negate claims they’re an ALP front). It’s not as sexy as some of their issues, but it’s undeniably important. I suspect that it would actually be very much in the interests of trade unions to support such moves, because the disadvantages of putting all their eggs in the Labor basket should already be starkly apparent.

The site will include a number of tools that we hope will break down some of the barriers in Australian political life – between citizens, and between communities and their representatives. PD rolls together a number of features that might be familiar from other places. But by putting them together, we hope we’ll be more of a “one-stop shop” for citizen engagement with the parliament, and building local activist networks.

Some of the things on the site at launch include -

- Hansard-derived information on the parliamentary performance of Senators. (Powered by technology developed by the wonderful folk at OpenAustralia, and ultimately derived from the innovations at TheyWorkForYou.Com)
- Targeted news services, offering specific streams of information on individual Senators, states and local communities.
- Interactive maps of the Senate chamber, and the country.
- Space for user-generated content: we’re offering people the opportunity to blog on issues of interest, to monitor the performances of Senators, and to build localised campaigns on the issues that matter to them. We’re calling this section our “action blogs”.

We’re doing all this not to compete with the existing political blogosphere, or other Edemocracy initiatives. We think there’s a long way to go with online activism and democratic participation.

Rather, we want to contribute to the growth of alternative modes of political engagement, and alternative presentations of political information and participation. That’s because we recognise that existing media and parliamentary reporting, despite the best intentions, can often make the workings of our democratic institutions more, rather than less remote.

Have a look at the site. Our first theme on the action blogs is “Why I’ll be watching the Senate”, but you can contribute on any political topic you like, really, by going to our submission page. Oh and check out the best toy so far on the site, the interactive Senate map.

Let us know what you think – we’ve clearly marked it as being in a “beta” state, and we’d welcome any feedback. We’re planning a lot more features, and of course, the Reps is yet to come!