b_auspol

Liberals For Climate - The Flux Network (Flux)
https://voteflux.org/

To celebrate Flux getting their name change past WAEC, let us discuss the other party this year making a last minute name change.

Flux were originally formed to contest the 2016 federal election. They are one of two microparties (the other being Senator Online) who have essentially the same platform: what if you could just directly vote on what your representative senator does? I think everyone has, at one time or another, fantasised about ensuring that your representative does what you want. Flux promises you a way to do exactly that.

Personally, I’ve always eyed both of these parties askance, as I’m a boring person who’s wedded to the idea that we live in a representative democracy and if I’ve voted for someone to represent me in parliament, I’d like them to actually do the job, not outsource every decision back to me in what’s effectively a mini referendum. There’s a reason we have representatives. It’s to make it easier and faster to decide what to do. Does everyone remember how long, shitty and awful the marriage equality postal survey was? Yeah. That’s why we don’t make legislation that way unless it’s a super serious matter (which is why it takes a referendum to amend the Constitution).

Flux, being even more cynical than I thought them to be, have decided that, despite their single policy being “we don’t make the policies – YOU DO”, to change their party name for this election to “Liberals for Climate - The Flux Network”, with "Liberals for Climate" being what is listed on the ballot paper. It’s a stunt. They actually outright acknowledge on their website it’s a grandstanding stunt; here are their official reasons: “It is a political statement which draws attention due to one of the most contentious topics of our time - the politics of climate issues; and it speaks to people feeling unrepresented by the policy decisions of the major parties.”

Personally to me it speaks to their desire to access the sweet sweet power of preference harvesting via confusing low-attention voters who look for “Liberal” on the ballot and mark one in the box, but what do I know? Oh wait, Antony Green has also done multiple studies on this effect and there is a notable increase in the proportion of Liberal Democrat votes every time they are listed above/to the left of the Liberal Party on a ballot.

Flux (because I’m not dignifying them by using the name they likely plan to abandon about 30 seconds after this election finishes) go on to explain the difference between what in Australia are known as “small l liberals” and “big L Liberals”, because they want to make a point that the Liberals are not liberal. Congrats, folks. Yes, there is a difference. Look, if the concept differences between liberal values and Liberal values are a new one for you, my posts are probably not where you should start, as I tend to assume you have a working knowledge of Australia's two major parties if you’re interested enough to be reading this.

Flux, to give them a modicum of credit, actually go on to explain exactly how group voting ticket preference harvesting works, because telling people how they plan to rort the system is clearly the best way to solve group voting tickets and expose the corruption in the main parties. They claim this is an experiment, and by openly informing people of what they’re doing, that they feel this is not a deception or misrepresentation. This is COMPLETELY disingenuous, given the voters they hope to obtain votes from are those who are confused or mistaken by their name change.

If you’re still confused about how Flux even works in practice, let me quote their exact explanation: “Flux is a gateway Australians can use, to participate directly in parliament, making the need for trust in elected officials a thing of the past. Elected Flux MPs and Senators give up their autonomy and use their votes in line with the outcomes produced by the Flux ecosystem; an ecosystem comprised of ordinary Aussies like you.”

There are also comparisons about how you wouldn’t use a “400 year old operating system”, and so we shouldn’t be using a parliamentary system designed in the 19th century. Personally I think this comparison is fundamentally flawed (operating systems are specifically designed to last on a timescale of a few years. Parliamentary systems are set up to work on a timescale of centuries, and have built in features to allow evolution).

Basically, it’s an app that lets you vote on polices you care about by giving you a chance to voice your opinion on every single bill that comes before parliament. You can also give your proxy vote to another person, or trade your vote with someone else for their vote on another issue, if you feel particularly strongly and want to express this. The elected Flux MP/Senator follows the opinion of whatever gets the most votes. Now I am a boring person, as noted, but do you have any idea how many bills come before parliament every year?

I have no problems with any MP or Senator inviting opinions from the public when they are unsure on what the public perception is on an issue. Or from people contacting their representatives about issues they care about. I actually encourage this! Jacqui Lambie occasionally invites open opinion on particularly controversial issues and her staff have put together some really interesting analyses of the general thoughts people have.

Note that word. Staff. It takes a lot of well paid people a lot of time to actually read the contents of bills, read proposed amendments, suggest possible changes and do all the investigation work involved in making a decision about a policy on how to vote. Yet Flux just wants to outsource this work to the most opinionated extremes of the Australian public, because the people who feel the most strongly about whatever this bill says are the ones who are going to turn up to vote on this app, and to trade for more voting power on issues they care deeply about.

Essentially, they want to mobilise a troll army and drive more factionalism in politics.

You know what I hate about US elections? Or really, any elections not with compulsory voting? The amount of time and effort that is wasted on get out the vote, just getting people to express an opinion. And you want people to have to do this for EVERY SINGLE BILL THAT COMES BEFORE PARLIAMENT?

Pull the other one.

Honestly the thing I’m most surprised about is that I didn’t see the word “blockchain” anywhere in their explanations. I suspect they’re hiding it, ready to spring it on me at some later time. You can just tell they’re libertarians.

Any Predictions?

We do! Presumably the VOTEFLUX people would have a response determined by public vote through their app. Couldn't see that going wrong at all.

So cynical, we are. Even more cynical than Flux are about the name change. Flux have not expressed an opinion on COVID on their website as far as I can tell.

Is this party trying to kill me?

No. They’d need to have a policy first.

Is this party trying to harm me?

Only in terms of “tearing my hair out over their techbro ‘brilliant idea’ of how to fix democracy”.

Conclusion

This is a cheap, cynical ploy from Flux to try and get more votes because currently, for some reason, not enough people seem to think their brilliant “let’s just crowdsource it” solution to coming up with policies is the right way to go about representing a community. So they’re going to try tricking less-tuned in voters into voting for them.

I would put these hucksters below the actual Liberals on the ballot. They’re still ahead of the right wing nutjob faction, but only because of the likelihood that crowdsourced opinions will probably not be quite as awful as say GAP’s position on most things. But who knows?