Climate change and the election: who to vote for?

This is a post that I was not going to write. But I think at this point I have no choice. I am recommending a vote for the Greens in both the House and the Senate. And in terms of preferences, my strong feeling is that neither major party should be preferenced. While not preferencing them in the House is impossible, it is possible to leave the two major parties unpreferenced in the Senate if there are 20 candidates. This is because the rule is that you have to preference 90 per cent of the candidates. So, if there are 20, you can leave two spaces blank.

This is, however, only really possible in the ACT and the Northern Territory, as there will only be two candidates from each major party. Given that there will be 6 candidates from each major party in the states, it might be a little difficult to dump all of them - there would have to be 100 candidates. But you can at least preference them in the reverse order to that which they tell you to on their how-to-vote cards.

Note that your preferences are not determined by other parties unless you let them. If you vote above the line in the Senate, then sure, the party that gets your vote will decide where your preference ends up. If you are not lazy, however, and can spare the time to write a few numbers in boxes, you get to decide where your preference goes. It astonishes me how many people do not understand this point - the fault of the media, I guess, and of parties who want others to believe that they decide preferences.

So: vote Green. And do not preference the major parties, except in reverse order.