Indigenous Voice to Parliament

[stui magpie]

In summary he's saying what I've been saying all along, Albo has screwed the pooch.

[swoop42]

I just put up with the awful Waleed to listen to senator McKenzie making so much sense.
No.

What's your problem with Waleed?

A Muslim Australian that should know his place?

A Muslim Australian that doesn't fit your negative connotation?

Waleed is a fantastic example of assimilation, a child born in Australia to Egyptian parents, one who respects his Muslim faith but also loves his aussie rules, cricket, plays the electric guitar, is married to a white woman who converted to Islam, is a trained lawyer and has worked hard for his success.

He's about as progressive as a practising Muslim can get and yet that still isn't enough for some.

[pietillidie]

Rundle’s back from his sojourn in the naughty corner at Crikey and delivering some home truths:

The way it looks at the moment, the Voice is going the same way as Brexit.

That makes zero sense, though I can't be bothered signing up to read the whole article so you'll have to fill me in.

Brexit was proposed by the far right and it won, whereas now everyone knows it was idiotic and Johnson and co are on the nose accordingly. So, it's not going the way of Brexit at all, unless he thinks it's going to win and people will later regret their vote.

Anyone with half a brain knows a referendum targeting the benefit of a tiny minority will lose. Throw in a free TV and holiday for everyone else and it might have a chance. But this has no immediate or obvious popular windfall, readily falls prey to fears of loss, and arouses culture warriors, conservative business, old money and old land.

It's miles too easy to complicate and question, and is therefore guaranteed to lose a referendum 100% every time. It's virtually the inverse of Brexit: the benefits are not easily grasped, whereas with Brexit the costs were not easily grasped.

Correct me if the rest of the article says otherwise, but Rundle is always tempted by the old Marxian left omnipotence delusion: if good policy loses it's because the centrists are too uppity, unlike the Real Working Class [TM].

The same kind of turkey here supported Corbyn and Brexit from the far left. These are people whose fundamental indignation is not poverty and opportunity, otherwise they'd spend more time trying to understand business and the economy. Rather, they're upset that, as superior moral and intellectual beings, they don't even control of the left anymore.

Brexit was infinitely more sinister than this. A bunch of creeps cajoled a spineless PM into holding a referendum that trapped the country in a bipartisan vote, heavily weighted to the ballooning elderly population, giving people a chance to kick the system and swallow nonsense without the slightest hope of grasping the consequences of an extraordinarily vast and complex change.

In contrast, the Voice is not sinister in the slightest. It's just dumb because it's tied to a referendumb. Far, far better to have mapped a bipartisan approach that tested possibilities and built a proof of concept over time, rather than asking a yes-or-no question that requires perfect answers and zero complexity in advance, with no perceived self-benefit.

How these things work is really not that complicated.

[think positive]

I just put up with the awful Waleed to listen to senator McKenzie making so much sense.
No.

What's your problem with Waleed?

A Muslim Australian that should know his place?

A Muslim Australian that doesn't fit your negative connotation?

Waleed is a fantastic example of assimilation, a child born in Australia to Egyptian parents, one who respects his Muslim faith but also loves his aussie rules, cricket, plays the electric guitar, is married to a white woman who converted to Islam, is a trained lawyer and has worked hard for his success.

He's about as progressive as a practising Muslim can get and yet that still isn't enough for some.

nothing to do with any of that, i just cant stand him!

or nicole kidman! dont get much whiter than her!

Don’t get me started on Jennifer Anniston.

And any player that ever played cricket for Australia! Hate em all! Scumbags!

you know its actually possible to dislike a person for other reasons besides race.

[David]

[David]

And as if to prove my point, here's a headline from an opinion piece in The Guardian yesterday:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ed-to-know

If you don’t know about the Indigenous voice, find out. When you do, you’ll vote yes

It's the complete failure to comprehend good-faith disagreement that's the problem here, I reckon. And I think it's the arguments from Lidia Thorpe and others on the left that put this arrogance in even starker light: is the reason they're not voting yes simply a sign that they "don't know" as much as Yes voters? Or is it actually possible to do the research and disagree?

[stui magpie]

My view of that so-called "cultural elite" is that they believe so clearly in what they believe that they can't understand how anyone intelligent could possibly disagree with them.

The 2 main side effects of that is the snide insults toward people they consider too stupid to understand and the complete inability to articulate a clear and compelling case for their views.

As you said above and as I've said many times before, you'll never change someones mind by insulting them. More likely you'll just quiet their voice but harden their resolve.

And of course it's possible to do the research and disagree. The more you read about it the more questions you could have which Albo and the Yes campaign can't satisfactorily answer.

The tactic to basically say "Trust us, just vote Yes and we'll figure out the detail later" has backfired royally.

[pietillidie]

^That's the tiniest fraction of the real problem.

Basically, you have sects with the psychiatric equivalent of oppositional defiance disorder in a rapidly changing world. They're confused and enraged, and harnessed by malicious media and political entities, being pushed further outside the economy in the process.

The anger is being directed at conspiracies, imaginary entities like the 'woke elite' and random minorities as a proxy for people not being able to cope with global change, and not being able to get at the real elite (multimillionaires-plus and old wealth). Like all blind anger it's completely irrational, so it regularly opposes its own good, whether that be supporting policies to its own detriment, opposing efforts to help it, or belittling the STEM-based information economy that sustains contemporary productivity and civilisation at large.

This anger and resentment wrecks everything it touches, hence the Iraq War, Brexit and Trump, and on, further damaging itself, in turn making it angrier and more resentful, pushing it even further outside the mainstream economy.

That's essentially the definition of an apocalyptic cult of destruction. Don't forget, history is significantly about such groups killing others, causing destruction, cutting down progress, and ushering in dark ages.

The world wars and post-war welfare state helped diminish its effects, but the decline of the rural economy and rise of large urban centres and the STEM economy pushed it outside the mainstream again, even as it maintained historical political power (weighted votes and electoral colleges). The growing elderly population, itself a product of the STEM economy, has further bolstered its electoral clout.

Importantly, efforts to mark off the STEM economy or knowledge economy as part of some 'elite' are absurdist because there is no other kind of economy anymore. Every indirect job is underwritten by the STEM economy. Whether it's the trades, retail, construction or warehouse work, its all downstream from STEM, whether that be material science, software engineering, digital technology or soon enough AI.

So, the misunderstanding of the world runs incredibly deep. Not a single investor or business leader I've ever heard believes otherwise, yet these really outdated ideas about the economy somehow persist culturally. Sorry folks, you're all part of the STEM knowledge economy now, like it or not.

Everyone knows you can't reason with cults. The more you try, the more the oppositional defiance is encouraged.

That's no one's fault; it just happened like that. The world and economy aren't going to change to cater to such outmoded or imaginary notions; civilisation would collapse if we tried. So, the only hope as with all cults and cult members is that reality eventually dawns.

One way that might happen is if geography and economics eventually catches up without isolated groups. Plenty of young people leave these cults and escape into the big, bad world, so the hope is that the pressure eventually dials up and the culture changes as mistakes like Brexit become self-educational.

Meanwhile, let's not forget the two-party system, much like yes/no referenda, grossly exaggerates differences. Much of the talk about these things is trapped in that two-sideism. The problem is the both the far right and far left think those boundaries are real life, along with whatever 'woke elite' or 'queer culture' is conspiring to control society this week.

The proliferation of such completely imaginary mentalisations, entirely divorced from reality, turbocharged by the internet and an ageing electoral cohort, are exacerbating the political problem, making this voice and its nonsense far louder than it should be. Entire cable channels and newspapers are built around this stuff, as if it really does exist.

There's absolutely nothing anyone can say in any known nice way, using any known technique or logic, to deal with that sort of dissociative nonsense, so I expect instability for a while yet. As I say, the more you talk to a cult the more it doubles down. People have to work out it's better to stop hitting themselves in the head with a hammer all on their own.

The idea one can change the grand structure of things is part of the far left, old Marxian omnipotence delusion. If only we were to think like old leftists, build more cars in Australian factories the old-fashioned way, and of course put old unionists in charge, that would fix the problem!

[Jezza]

Things are going well for the Yes campaign.

Yes = 38% (-3)
No = 53% (+5)
Undecided = 9% (-2)

https://twitter.com/GhostWhoVotes/statu ... _&ref_url=

[think positive]

My view of that so-called "cultural elite" is that they believe so clearly in what they believe that they can't understand how anyone intelligent could possibly disagree with them.

The 2 main side effects of that is the snide insults toward people they consider too stupid to understand and the complete inability to articulate a clear and compelling case for their views.

As you said above and as I've said many times before, you'll never change someones mind by insulting them. More likely you'll just quiet their voice but harden their resolve.

And of course it's possible to do the research and disagree. The more you read about it the more questions you could have which Albo and the Yes campaign can't satisfactorily answer.

The tactic to basically say "Trust us, just vote Yes and we'll figure out the detail later" has backfired royally.

Hehe,I can name a couple of those here, although I don’t know about cultural elites, only in their minds!

I hate people talking down to me, I don’t do it and I expect the same, I walk away these days, not worth my time

[think positive]

Things are going well for the Yes campaign.

Yes = 38% (-3)
No = 53% (+5)
Undecided = 9% (-2)

https://twitter.com/GhostWhoVotes/statu ... _&ref_url=

awesome!

[David]

More on this tick/cross beat-up that some people have been getting exercised about:

https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2023/0 ... osses.html

The basis for counting ticks as formal and not crosses is Section 93 (8) of the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984 which states "Effect shall be given to a ballot paper of a voter according to the voter’s intention, so far as that intention is clear." This is what is known as a savings provision - it recognises that while not all voters will follow the verbatim instructions on the ballot paper exactly, some of those who do not follow the instructions may express a clear intention. Counting such votes helps all voices be heard in a multicultural society with a range of levels of education, English language skills and electoral understanding, but can create controversy about what votes are clear or are not clear.

Examples of votes that could be saved under such provisions include but are not limited to:

* cases where the voter writes Yes or No but disobeys the instruction to write the word inside the square
* cases where the voter clearly attempts to write Yes or No but fails to do so, eg they use a pen which runs out of ink partway through writing the S in Yes
* cases where the voter instead of writing Yes or No writes a variant, either in English or in another well known language
* cases where the voter instead of writing their intention uses a sticker or a stamp to communicate it
* cases where the voter starts writing one answer, changes their mind, crosses it out and writes another
* and cases where the voter uses an unambiguous symbol.

The AEC has long-standing legal advice to count ticks as Yes and crosses as informal - the latter except for cases involving multiple questions on the same page of ballot paper, where ticks for some and crosses for others would mean the crosses could be counted as No. A tick appears to clearly indicate approval even if the voter has failed to follow the verbatim instructions on how to display that approval - no one so far in the debate has demonstrated any reason why a tick should be considered differently to "Yep!", "Absolutely", "Ja" etc. However a cross is ambiguous - firstly because crosses are often used to check-mark applicable boxes on government forms (something that is in fact becoming more relevant not less in the electronic age where it is often the default form of check-marking in software) and secondly because a cross is used to signify voting for a candidate in many overseas elections with multiple check-boxes.

What we do know about the rate of ballots being marked with a cross is that it's very small. The 1999 Republic and preamble referendums recorded only 0.86% and 0.95% informal, and that is a total including blank ballots, "scribble", illegible and otherwise ambiguous responses as well as crosses; I would expect the cross rate would have been below 0.1%. (There is no indication I'm aware of re the tick rate, but if I find one I will add it). In the 2016 House of Reps election - sadly the last for which the AEC has thus far published an informal ballot survey - the combined rate of ballots ruled informal because they contained at least one tick or cross was 0.39%, but that would have included voters who did not use a tick or cross as their primary response. Far from steadily rising with increased ethnic diversity as might have been expected, that rate had fluctuated in the range 0.39% to 0.65% without a clear pattern in elections between 2001 and 2016.

In conclusion:

There has been much outrage from the No side based on the idea that the invalidated crosses are their votes that are being stolen from them. Given the evidence that the number of invalidated crosses is so negligible, this seems more than a little bit precious in a referendum format where historically the double majority requirement has given No an average leg-up of about 3%. Peter Dutton's claim that "It gives a very, very strong advantage to the ‘Yes’ case,” is very, very, very, very silly.

No reliable evidence has been presented that No is being disadvantaged at all. Given that a cross is an ambiguous and apparently very rare response, it is possible that more voters who use a cross in fact intended to vote Yes than No, and that Yes is being disadvantaged by the counting of crosses as informal compared to if they could be counted based on some kind of Dr Mind Reader assessment of what each individual cross-marker meant. And furthermore, cross-users who intended No would have to be much commoner than cross-users who intended Yes for the exclusion of crosses to unfairly advantage Yes by more than including crosses as No would unfairly advantage No. (Assuming all cross-users intended one or the other, a 75-25 split would be required).

What the No side seems unwilling to admit here is that there is a genuine asymmetry in how reliably a tick or a cross might be taken as saying something. A potential solution would be scrapping the savings provision or amending it to disallow symbols, but (i) that would increase the informal voting rate (ii) the No side has had ample time to propose that and hasn't done so.

[think positive]

For (mates with) sake how hard is it to print 2 boxes?

It’s clearly a con In The yes vote favour.

[stui magpie]

I thought the paper wasn't going to have check boxes and you had to write either Yes or No in the box.

In fact, you do.

https://www.aec.gov.au/referendums/vote ... paper.html

So what's all this tick cross bullshit?

[David]

So what's all this tick cross bullshit?

Kevin Bonham explains all of this comprehensively in the link above, but, in summary, it's a savings provision intended to capture incorrectly filled out forms where the voter's intention is still clear. In that case, a tick is seen as equivalent to a "yes" (because it can't be interpreted any other way) and can be counted accordingly, whereas a "cross" is seen as informal because its meaning is ambiguous (i.e. many forms require you to mark a box with a cross to say "yes").

Because most people will follow instructions and write "yes" or "no" as clearly stated on the form, all of this affects a tiny percentage of the vote, probably something in the realm of 1 in 1000 ballots. What's happened is that Dutton and others on the "No" side have pulled out this longstanding referendum rule and tried to cast it as a government conspiracy.

For (mates with) sake how hard is it to print 2 boxes?

It’s clearly a con In The yes vote favour.

Except that it's been the rule for referendums for decades and has absolutely nothing to do with benefiting or disadvantaging the "Yes" case this time around.

As for the pros and cons of using two boxes rather than one, Antony Green points out an issue that has previously arisen with that method here:

https://twitter.com/AntonyGreenElec/sta ... 1543244864

1. Below is the two-box referendum ballot paper used at a NSW referendum held in conjunction with the 1991 state election. It caused such an increase in informal voting at the general election that the Commonwealth one-box format is now used.

2. You'll note that the instructions are to tick one of the boxes. As for the Voice, there were savings provisions. A single 'X' counted as a tick if used, a tick and a cross in different boxes counted the tick, and numbering 1,2 counted 1 as a Yes.

3. The problem with this ballot is that ticks and crosses are not used on Australian ballot papers. On most ballot papers a tick or a cross is informal. But in NSW with optional preferences, a Court had ruled that ticks and crosses could count as a one. But ...

4. Before the 1991 election, the Greiner government legislated to overrule the court's decision on ticks and crosses. The electoral law was changed to declare that a tick or cross could not be interpreted as a one. Which is where the referendum proved disastrous

5. So the NSW lower House election had ticks and crosses informal, but the two-box referendum ballot paper instructed voters to use a tick. And many voters, assuming the law was rational, also used ticks and crosses on their lower house ballot paper.

6. Lower house informal voting near tripled from 3.3% to 9.3%, the highest on record. In the four seats with only 2 candidate squares, like the referendum ballot, informality was between 13.9% and 23.5%, disgraceful levels induced by the referendum ballot paper.

So next time I'm asked why we have a single box referendum ballot with yes/no as the method of voting rather than a two box ballot, the 1991 NSW Referendum is the explanation.

As Bonham points out in his blog post, the bottom line is that all of this stuff is incredibly arcane and intricate, and most people (including the politicians whose job it is to make these laws and had ample opportunity to change this before this referendum) couldn't care less about it 99% of the time. But there are people whose jobs it is to care about this stuff and to make our voting system as efficient and reliable as possible, and this is what they've come up with.

So if you're unhappy about how the ballots looks in this referendum and feel that one side is being treated unfairly, then I think you have an obligation to read up on why it's been designed the way it has and to consider what issues there might be with your own preferred system. Because nothing in this world is perfect.