News of the World.
Jul. 19th, 2010 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pathology_doc1. Australia should consider an automatic electoral enrolment system and educate young people about the voting process, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young says. Over 70 per cent of the missing 1.4 million voters are young people, she told reporters in Adelaide on Monday.
The missing 1.4 million she refers to are those who are eligible to enrol but have not yet done so. I'm of two minds. It does seem stupid for the rolls to close on 8pm on the day the writs are issued - a week would be a more reasonable time, given that nominations for seats don't close for another fortnight. On the other hand, anyone who hasn't smelled an election in the wind in the last few weeks would seem either to be living in a cave or not to be firing on all eight cylinders, and in the latter case it's arguable that they probably shouldn't be voting.
Remembering to enrol to vote as soon as you're eligible (and to make sure that you're enrolled in the correct electorate and at the correct address) would seem to me to be a pretty good test of having sufficient brainpower in the first place to cast that vote in an informed manner. I'm all for altering the legislation to give people a little more time, but putting people on the rolls automatically seems to contain too much danger of putting people on them who don't actually exist or leaving people off them who do. At least we Aussies register purely as voters, rather than under a political affiliation, so nobody's tempted to knock voters off the roll in order to deplete one side or another of support (lest they shoot themselves in the foot).
2. More than half of Australian parents with children using online social networking services like Facebook and Twitter say the services are distracting them from their studies according to the latest Cyber-safety Research Report commissioned by Telstra.
There is some truth in this, but basically all it boils down to is an extension of "passing notes/talking in class" to the home environment, with the exception that there's no teacher there to bring the distracted ones back to their task. In my day, the academic race was won by those who could devote sufficient concentration to their studies to avoid such time-wasting frippery until the task they were actually there for was complete. Nobody's forcing them to Tweet or refresh Facebook fifty times a minute, and I can think of many occasions when being able to ask a colleague or teacher for pointers to homework help in real time would have been invaluable.
3. The Australian Greens have confirmed they have reached agreement with Labor over preferences for the August 21 federal election. Details of the deal will be announced later on Monday, just a day after Greens leader Bob Brown admitted he was 'at odds' with his own party over preference negotiations.
Then he should resign in protest and stand as an independent. The Greens practically always preference Labor, to the point where I feel they should just grow a pair and form a formal coalition.
Under the deal, the Greens will direct preferences to Labor in lower house contests in return for receiving Labor in the upper house race, paving the way for the minor party to hold the balance of power in the Senate in its own right from July 1, 2011.
Overseas observers, make no mistake - the Greens are NOT your typical centre-left "let's make sure we don't piss all over the environment" party. They're technologically ignorant hairshirt fanatics, with no understanding of what their policies would do to Australia if implemented without restraint.
The missing 1.4 million she refers to are those who are eligible to enrol but have not yet done so. I'm of two minds. It does seem stupid for the rolls to close on 8pm on the day the writs are issued - a week would be a more reasonable time, given that nominations for seats don't close for another fortnight. On the other hand, anyone who hasn't smelled an election in the wind in the last few weeks would seem either to be living in a cave or not to be firing on all eight cylinders, and in the latter case it's arguable that they probably shouldn't be voting.
Remembering to enrol to vote as soon as you're eligible (and to make sure that you're enrolled in the correct electorate and at the correct address) would seem to me to be a pretty good test of having sufficient brainpower in the first place to cast that vote in an informed manner. I'm all for altering the legislation to give people a little more time, but putting people on the rolls automatically seems to contain too much danger of putting people on them who don't actually exist or leaving people off them who do. At least we Aussies register purely as voters, rather than under a political affiliation, so nobody's tempted to knock voters off the roll in order to deplete one side or another of support (lest they shoot themselves in the foot).
2. More than half of Australian parents with children using online social networking services like Facebook and Twitter say the services are distracting them from their studies according to the latest Cyber-safety Research Report commissioned by Telstra.
There is some truth in this, but basically all it boils down to is an extension of "passing notes/talking in class" to the home environment, with the exception that there's no teacher there to bring the distracted ones back to their task. In my day, the academic race was won by those who could devote sufficient concentration to their studies to avoid such time-wasting frippery until the task they were actually there for was complete. Nobody's forcing them to Tweet or refresh Facebook fifty times a minute, and I can think of many occasions when being able to ask a colleague or teacher for pointers to homework help in real time would have been invaluable.
3. The Australian Greens have confirmed they have reached agreement with Labor over preferences for the August 21 federal election. Details of the deal will be announced later on Monday, just a day after Greens leader Bob Brown admitted he was 'at odds' with his own party over preference negotiations.
Then he should resign in protest and stand as an independent. The Greens practically always preference Labor, to the point where I feel they should just grow a pair and form a formal coalition.
Under the deal, the Greens will direct preferences to Labor in lower house contests in return for receiving Labor in the upper house race, paving the way for the minor party to hold the balance of power in the Senate in its own right from July 1, 2011.
Overseas observers, make no mistake - the Greens are NOT your typical centre-left "let's make sure we don't piss all over the environment" party. They're technologically ignorant hairshirt fanatics, with no understanding of what their policies would do to Australia if implemented without restraint.