We don't discuss party politics, check the rules and regs please. Besides, no-one outside of your blistered rabbit-infested island knows who any of those people are. I thought that Australian prime ministers were chosen by throwing a boot full of kangaroo dung into the beer tent at the WollaWogga annual barbie



Edited by - Tawakalna on 9/15/2007 2:28:05 PM

**shuffles off with a new headache**

well, lets not let the topic go to waste.....i'm curious about Australia, and don't really need any info on the parties (i already know that both of them are socialist, one less than the other is all )

1. hows the whole election done there? anything similar to our electoral college, or is it actually democratic- 1man 1vote? are electronic voting machines making any appearances?
2. how often are presidential elections held?
3. Whats the usual turnout? Is turnout trending up or down?
4. if the queen of england objects to the winning candidate, could you have a special election at her request?

just joshing - you know how we united-statiens © love to charlie-horse the other colonials

(copyright. i invented this word just now because I'm sick of NWO globalist radical fiscal-anarchist libertarians and others lumping me in with canadians, mexicans, hondurans, nicaraguans, and the rest of the damn hemisphere. people always complain about our misappropriation of the word 'American', but who the hell did we supposedly steal it from? is there actually some country called America somewhere that wants its name back?? anyways, yes, i'm anti-SPP and NAFTA and CAFTA and NAU and i really hate being called a north american citizen and if i could choke the talking heads that do so on CSPAM and CNN=FAUXNEWS at regular intervals i really would, till the little blood vessels in their eyes popped. erm, ok that was a little more angry than i meant for it to sound, but there you have it )

Sorry Tawakalna, will this thread/subject need to be removed?



Apologies for those annoyed by this thread, I will take more attention into the rules and regulations of this site

not necessarily, M1, although strictly speaking it's a no-no, most people here know the ropes and we know how to behave ourselves. Party politics are very inflammatory so that's why we keep away from such things. Anyway I didn't even know who Kevin Rudd was/is - my list of Australians that I've heard consists of Paul Hogan, Rolf Harris, Skippy, Shane Warne, Elle McPherson, and a girl I used to go out with who lives in Parramatta.

In answer to CV's 4 th question - The Queen is correctly referred to as Her Britannic Majesty of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; she is head of state of the Commonwealth (but not necessarily of the individual countries thereof) and also Head of State of the separate Dominions (Canadianiana, Orstraylyuh and Noozee-land; Sith Efrika having not been a Dominion for generations now)

In theory the Crown has the power to dismiss the Prime Minister and/or government of a Dominion, but as precedent already exists in our own constitutional settlement, in reality such a power would never be used without being requested by the Prime Minister or leader of the majority political party. Also, the Queen's powers and perogatives in the Dominions are exercised on her behalf by the Governor-General who in practice is chosen by the Prime Minister of said Dominion and submitted to the Monarch for formal approval. I don't recall any case in recent history of a British monarch refusing to accept such nominations but the history of the colonies, even ostensibly loyal ones, is not discussed much in the mother country.

I believe that the Governor-General's powers in the Australian constitutional system are roughly equal to the Monarch's in the UK, but unlike here, where they are mostly a matter of convention and not statute, over in that rabbit-infested land they are explicitly stated, but it is the exercise of those statutes that is subject to convention.

bj - be quiet, you!

cv - moot point about electronic voting, since I now work for a firm (which shall remain nameless) that develops electronic electoral management systems, which I support the hardware and apps for. In some parts of the country, if it hadn't been for my hard-work fixing stuff the shtoopid councils couldn't get to work, there wouldn't have even been elections recently. Can you believe that some of these fools had voter data ready to go onto unsecured wireless networks and on usb sticks left just lying around - I kid you not! - naturally I plugged all those gaps where I could find them, and that wasn't even my job! <shakes head> electronic voting's a great idea but a lot of the people involved really need to improve their game. Needless to say, on the rare occasion I stoop to take part in our shambolic excuse for a democracy, I always do a proper vote on a ballot paper at the local booth.





Edited by - Tawakalna on 9/16/2007 4:41:10 AM

As much as I would love to comment on the latest developments in Australian politics and provide you all with my Words of Wisdom™, a rambling monologue would be against TLR's rules *sigh*. Just for the record though; I dislike them both!

KR's a union whore and JH is a corporate whore.
It's a lost cause really.

Aye, they are both poor choices, and I don't trust Rudd; he's dodgy. In any case, which is better? The religious left who says a lot, but will do little, or the devil we know who will probably do little as well?

I tell ye, I don't hold with this "Two-party Preferred" system; it doesn't seem equitable. The only reason it exists is to force people to vote for either Liberal or Labor (sic (don't ask me why it's American spelling, I have no idea)), as people keep refusing to vote en masse for the "minor parties". That's not a surprise however, as the other parties don't hand hundreds of millions of government funding to spend on advertising!