Last Word: Show strength in numbers

CHARLES WOOLEY: We should all vote for a Tasmanian Senate Group, or at least for independents who genuinely want to advance the cause of our state.

Are Tasmanian representatives in the Senate looking out for our best interests of just the interestest of their parties? Picture: GARY RAMAGE

NOW that a double-dissolution election is upon us, it is timely to return to the notion I suggested last year that we should all vote for a Tasmanian Senate Group, or at least for independents who genuinely want to advance the cause of our state.

That is to say we should not vote for the Senate candidates foisted upon us by certain faceless men (I doubt there are many women) hidden deep in the conniving machinery of the Liberal and Labor parties.

The Senate, as I explained, was never meant to be a creature of the political party system. It was designed to represent the states, in particular to protect the less-populous states such as Tasmania, which has only five seats and no real voting power in the House of Representatives. It was in the Senate our constitutional founders protected our state interests.

Wisely, they gave us the same number of representatives as the bigger states. With only 500,000 people, we have the same number of senators as New South Wales with 7.6 million people. Rightly so, because without those 12 fearless Tasmanian senators to pursue and protect our state’s interests in Canberra, where would we be?

That’s an ironic rhetorical question, folks.

We would be exactly where we are now: off the map, politically ignored and totally disregarded. That is because the sorry truth is we don’t have 12 senators fearlessly representing our state. Instead, they timorously represent those faceless men who draw up the party how-to-vote ticket which too many of us for too long have mindlessly and slavishly followed. Secondly, they represent the party and its strategies and ambitions.

Canberra is a remote and different world where our representatives quickly forget the interests and ambitions of the folk who sent them there. Rarely might they ever pause to give fleeting thought to us, the Tasmanian voters (poor fools) who put those overcompensated, over-superannuated, overentitled senatorial backsides on the seductive, plush red benches of the upper chamber.

Not that our senators lack enthusiasm. Oh, how fiercely and passionately they represent self-interest. I’m not sure they all love their jobs, but I do know they love the money, the conditions, the pompous self-importance and all of those trailing lifelong perks for which you will so kindly pay forever. The promise of almost guaranteed employment and generous superannuation ensures your representatives will never speak up on your behalf against the interests of the selectors or the party. If they do, they will get dropped down the voting ticket at the next election. Horror of horrors, they might have to find a real job.

The dissolution of both Houses of Parliament and a new system of voting provides a rare opportunity in the Senate to clean out the stables and get rid of all the political time-servers in one hit. A double dissolution doesn’t happen often – only six times since Federation – so don’t miss the chance to take your revenge and at the same time restore democracy in the Senate.

This time you don’t have to vote for the candidates of their choice. This time it can be your choice.

In the past, my fellow Tasmanians, we have been too easily duped into voting above the line and thus allowing the political party plotters to effectively cast our vote. With a Senate ballot paper the size of a tablecloth and seemingly hundreds of candidates, it was tempting to vote the above-the-line party ticket just to get home in time for dinner.

I must admit, I once spoiled my ballot paper and embarrassingly had to ask for another one. Voting below the line, I got confused by cunningly numbering every candidate backwards just to make sure I put you-know-who last.

No chance of such a stuff-up this time.

Now you can vote below the line for only 12 candidates, one to 12 in order of your preference. It is almost too easy.

So remember the behind-the-scenes cynicism and chicanery of the party machinery. Remember how the ALP in Tasmania dumped a most creditable woman down to the unwinnable end of the ticket to elevate a union official most of us had never heard of. And how the Libs similarly dumped a serving Federal Minister and gave the No.1 spot to a backbencher whose Machiavellian skills are widely admired and feared.

The political party machine men will disagree with me, but you are not idiots. So prove it. This time you don’t have to vote for the candidates of their choice. This time it can be your choice.

Someone once said, “Don’t vote. It only encourages them”. I say you should vote, but with the Senate you should vote below the line. Choose 12 good men and women instead of rubber-stamping the above-the-line selection the major parties have so arrogantly chosen for you.

It is understandable as Tasmanian voters caught between the House of Representatives and the Senate, with neither of them doing your bidding, that you would be doubly disillusioned. But just think for a moment of our state represented by 12 non-party senators intent only on our benefit rather than on their political careers. With, likely, the balance of power in the Senate, think what those dozen senators could accomplish for their people.

The scary thing is you can actually achieve this. You don’t even have to be courageous. All it takes is 12 strokes of your pen in the privacy of a polling booth.

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