ArticlesThe Australian Federal Election is this weekend.
Let me tell you who I won’t be giving my first preference to in the Lower House this election.
I won’t be voting for Labor.
I won’t be voting for Liberal.
I won’t be voting for the Christian Democratic Party.
I won’t be voting for The Greens.
Let me explain why.
I will probably never meet my local representative during this term. Who I will meet, over and over again, are the people who represent them; the people who they directly appoint; the people who are appointed by the systems those people put in place; the people who are appointed by the systems that those people put in place, and so on.
Do the politicians’ political leanings, pleasant demeanor or nice hair really impact me nearly as much as the feedback systems that they are capable of installing to ensure that the civil and public servants that I do deal with are competent, effective and compassionate?
How can I judge a candidate on these leadership skills? It is hard.
One way is to look at the behaviour of their volunteers. After all, if candidates are unable to instill the values of respect for the public, integrity and responsibility for their actions in the minds of their biggest fans – the volunteers – then how can I expect them to instill those values in the general population of the public service?
Now to the crux of the test. I have a sign on my letter box. It requests that I only receive addressed mail. It doesn’t use disparaging terms like “junk mail”. It is polite, and says “please”.
Yet, I repeatedly received junk mail from each of the above parties.
I don’t want to hear sophistry rationalising why election material isn’t really “junk”; not only do I not use the term on my letter box, I want to support a party that is capable of considering the perspectives of others. There can be many legitimate reasons why I don’t want to receive such mail; I shoudn’t have to remonstrate; my wishes should simply be respected.
I am not complaining here about the copious quantity of posted election material I received. (The Liberal Party encumbent was responsible for the vast majority of that, but I didn’t track it as carefully this campaign.) I have at least some defence against that; I can have posted mail redirected, or request that I be removed from the mailing list.
Maybe I am grumbling over something that seems petty. The stake here – my first preference vote – isn’t worth a lot in any case.
However, I simply don’t want to vote for a candidate that can’t even persuade their volunteers to think for a second about respecting the clearly explained wishes of the public. If their systems aren’t respectful of the public when their nearby staff are merely dropping off leaflets in the neighbourhood, I cannot trust them to have systems ready to run a government.
Comment by John Y. on November 23, 2007
I hope you will forgive my ignorance, but I would just like to confirm a bit of terminology: When you say “mail,” are you referring to anything that shows up in your letter box, whether put there by the postal service or by any passerby? If so, then is “posted mail” the subset of mail which is delivered through the postal service? Is “addressed mail” the same as posted mail? The subset of posted mail which names you specifically as the recipient (rather than CURRENT RESIDENT or OUR FRIENDS AT)?
Comment by Julian on November 23, 2007
John,
Yes, mail is everything in my letter box.
Yes, posted mail is anything delivered by Australia Post.
“Addressed mail” is the same as “posted mail”. It is a term used on letter box signs to avoid the value judgement of “junk mail”. (I do not wish to insult your flyer, nor do I wish to give you the opportunity to declare it “not junk” and therefore valid.)
Some signs will actually say “Australia Post mail only”.
While I am clarifying: In at least some parts of the USA, the letterbox out the front of your house is used for incoming and outgoing mail. (That is an alien concept to most Australians.) I have heard that this changes the dynamic for junk mail, because it may get picked up as outgoing mail, and the contents of the letter box are the property of the government, and so junk mail is illegal. I don’t know whether to believe in such a utopia. 🙂
Other clarifications for foreign citizens. To maximise confusion, the Australian Liberal Party is the name of our major conservative party. For the Lower House, we use a preferential voting system. So my protest is largely futile; the effective influence of my vote is not determined by who I put first. It is determined by which of the two major parties I put higher at the bottom of my preferences list.
Comment by John Y. on November 23, 2007
Indeed, the letter box (we use the term “mailbox”) is typically used both for incoming and outgoing mail here.
I do not know the actual laws regarding flyers stuffed into a mailbox by someone not working for the official postal service, but it’s certainly common to receive them, especially during election season. I’ve also had some show up at my door (attached to the knob with a rubber band, or wedged into the outer screen door, which I leave unlocked), which avoids any possible legal issues surrounding mailbox contents.
Residents of many apartments, condominiums, and dorms have a built-in defense against these unwanted papers, which is that their mailboxes are in locked clusters, and thus only authorized deliveries can be made to those boxes. (They can still get stuff hanging from doorknobs.)
The term that was actually the most jarring for me (and I need to emphasize that it wasn’t that jarring) was “mail,” which I reserve for posted mail. That is, if it’s not through the post, I don’t call it mail. I’m not confident my usage is universal throughout the country, but those like me use the term “junk mail” to denote only those unsolicited solicitations (the most common by far being credit card offers) delivered by the postal service.
It wasn’t actually difficult to understand what you were talking about, but I wanted to be sure, and now I am.