How to not get tricked by election promises!

Welcome to Finance and Fury, the Furious Friday edition

This is a continuation from this week’s Say What Wednesday episode, in part one on Who to vote for? Check it out here.

Part 1: Political culture Tribalism 3 main parties policies and promises Today: How to tell the difference between promises and policies? Break down how votes tend to end up with 2 parties How to tell a promise from a policy? Every promise focuses only on the outcome Look at if the policy proposal is stating an outcome versus how it will be done Example: “Uni should be free” – how is this achieved? The breakdown is the difference between dialectic and rhetoric Rhetoric - language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect, but which is often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content. Dialectic - discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned arguments – but truth requires facts/information Social media and the spread of disinformation makes rhetorical very powerful Look at the Russian collusion of the election in the US Scott Morison targeted by social media accounts affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party Comedy is used as a subversive tactic Subversive tactics are used to pass policies with positive rights: Previous episode on positive rights Negative rights make it illegal to do something to you, positive rights make it legal to force you to do something Healthcare as an example: Nobody can stop you from seeking medical treatment vs medical treatment is covered by the taxpayers. Someone is forced to pay for it, falling into the positive right territory. Rhetorical statements get used in regards to something being free or human rights Labor website Liberal website One relies on policies and the other relies on rhetorical statements The how or focus to achieve an outcome is very important What are the polls saying? Polling in Australia is more accurate, as it is compulsory to vote Current polls suggest Labor will win, but now not so much But what about the Primary Vote? Why can a party with more votes end up losing? Preferential voting: Does your vote count? What you think about your vote is important The number of formal votes a party needs is 50% + 2 systems of preferential voting House of representatives – box with a number in order of preference Senate – above the line and below the line voting Above the line: preference a party Below the line: number all individual candidates How does preferential voting work? The full distribution of preferences is used to calculate the two-party-preferred statistics Your vote isn’t wasted How do we vote for our PM? We don’t, we vote for a member of a party and they chose the PM Summary: Break down of messaging used in campaigns Evoking emotional responses versus focusing on outcomes Every vote is important and does actually count

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