Money Voices Votes
Money Voice Vote
As a kid in Scouts I use to play the Rock, Paper Scissors game.
Big and Powerful Money + Voices
That game is not so much different to the Democracy Game for voters wanting to influence governments. Influence is important because all democratic governments are influenced by some people or organisations. In Australia it is mainly big business that influences politicians. Business wants government policies and laws which increase the profits of those big businesses. That is what enables their CEOs to draw salaries of up to a few million dollars a month. They earn Money from supplying the Australian people with goods and services. They use it to make political donations to political parties and candidates. Some might call that “bribes”.
Big Business also links Voices to the money by engaging multi-million dollar professional lobbyists, They prowl the corridors of parliament persuading the politicians to do what big business wants. The threat of facing multi-million dollar media campaigns against politicians at election time is ever-present.
None of the big Business Corporations get to vote in elections.
So how can ordinary Aussies hope to compete? They don’t have that sort of money in their individual bank accounts and they don’t tend to get together to fight political campaigns.
Votes
What the people have that Big Business and professional Lobbyists don’t have is their votes. Votes are what get people elected to parliament and parliament determines what government do. The people hold all the aces, but to exert influence, they must show those aces. But how? How can one individual or even a group of individuals influence Parliament to decide what the government can do?
Fortunately, some 40 years ago, one of the best kept secrets in our Australian democracy was launched onto the scene. Invented by a young couple and their two children, they called it a Votergram. The name came from the ultra-brief Telegrams which used to convey important messages along the wires from one person to another. Telegrams were much faster than snail mail.
The founders did not really have any comprehension of the impact their invention would have. It’s aim was to enable individuals and community groups to solve personal problems. These might include an urgently needed bed in hospital, operation or respite care for a relative. They soon discovered that it could save a major hospital like Hornsby from closure by a government hoping to profit from a sale of the land. When Votergrams halted a proposal for every Australian to carry a Government ID card, the secret was out.
Low Profile
Nevertheless, Votergrams keep a very low profile. That is because Votergrams are just very strategic and persuasive mechanisms to inform politicians. They reveal in an extremely effective way, what is wanted by the voters so that the MPs can do it. Votergrams give all the credit to the MPs who so justly deserve it. Votergrams do not want the credit. They just want the outcomes for the Australian voters.
Votergrams work because politicians really do like helping people when asked properly and they depend on votes for their careers.
Voices too
Voters have one other string to their bow. Not only does each voter have a vote to exercise in favour of or against a sitting politicians or political party. They have a voice to encourage other voters to do the same. Of course some seats are so safe that changing a few votes would make no difference to the election result. But in a marginal electorate the margin of the winning candidate is between 0.01% and 10%. There is every chance of swinging the result against one party’s candidate in such an electorate. During a campaign that reduced the road death toll by 70% the Minister for Transport was not interested in road safety. So the campaigners campaigned in a marginal seat on the NSW Central Coast and the government lost that seat in Parliament. Then the minister became interested in road safety. The Roadwatch voters had used their own votes in their own electorates and their voices to influence the votes of voters in a marginal electorate.
Power of the People
The ordinary every day Australian people can us their Votes + Voices to wrest control of their democracy from the Big Business and it’s Professional Lobbyists. The people control the vast majority of 17 million votes. The very rich in Big Business control about 5% of the votes.
In most cases when an individual wants to get government doing something, one or two Votergrams will get the job done. Have a look at the wins page on the Votergrams.au website for a tiny glimpse of what has been achieved. Votergrams have ensured that Votes + Voices are far more effective in the hands of every day Aussies than Money + Voices in the hands of Big Business. Votes beat money hands down every time. The money donated is only used to buy votes, but votes are already owned by the voters themselves.
Power of the individual
Fairness and justice are easy for individuals to obtain when they use Votergrams to work with their elected MPs instead of using protests against them.