Sunday 15 August 2010

Australia Votes - Compare the policies

Australians will vote in the Federal election on the 21st August.  I wrote in my last post (here) about the Checklist that the Australian Christian Values Institute has developed to compare the major parties contesting the election. I was critical of the checklist because:
  • It is simplistic and reductionist
  • It omits many policy areas of significance
  • The assessment of the parties seems to be arbitrary and inaccurate

A more useful tool is the website that has been created by the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL).

The site is called 'Australia Votes' and attempts to compare the key policies of the major and minor parties. The greatest advantage of this site is that it simply presents parallel information from the various parties in key areas; for example:

  • Homelessness and housing affordability
  • School Funding
  • Access to assisted reproductive technology (ART), IVF and surrogacy for singles and same sex couples
  • Climate change
  • Freedom of religion

Of course, you will still need to sift through the words of the parties to make a judgment about what they are planning to do (and there is plenty of 'spin'), but the advantage of this resource is that you can assess the policies of the parties for yourself.

Other resources & links

'Dispelling Myths About 'Boat People' HERE
'How Should a Christian Vote' Michael Jensen (& John Dickson) HERE

4 comments:

psychodougie said...

hi trevor,

i was a little upset to see a link on the ACL website to the horridly short-sighted ACVI check-list you mention. i worry people will be overwhelmed with the info on their site, see the link, and follow that instead. i do wonder why they would link there!

cheers
doug

Trevor Cairney said...

Hi Doug,

Nice to hear from you again. I hadn't noticed the link to the checklist (I still can't see it) which I critiqued as you know in the last post HERE. I would have made comment on it if I had. Thanks for pointing this out. But exactly which page is it on?

Trevor

psychodougie said...

it's at the bottom of this page. they do have the caveat Please note that ACL does not necessarily endorse the content of these websites. yet i wonder why they added it at all!

Trevor Cairney said...

Thanks Doug. Yes, they may have been better not to provide the link. The ACL resource that they developed themselves has much more credibility and usefulness than the 'Australian Christian Values' checklist.

Trevor