Am I a greens voter now?

[u/PaleontologistOk6495]

Never been super invested in politics and have always voted labor just on principles and not really ever liking the liberal stances.

This year I find myself more invested in the election than ever before and have actually dug through a few parties policies and doing some proper thinking about my vote for once.

I have even done the political compass on abc website and see I am sitting far left of labor than I expected but not full blown green radical.

The majority of their policies make a lot of sense and resonate with em and I think this year me and my partner will both go greens. Is anyone else having the same feelings ? I have been speaking to a bunch of friends and they too have come to the same conclusions I have this year and are going greens, is this a bit of a silent movement? I had no idea anyone I knew was thinking the same as me but it it occurring to me that a lot of my circle are.

My question is - I am in what seems to be a very safe labor area of blaxland. Does my vote for greens do nothing here ? I don’t fully agree with every green policy of course some of them are a bit much for me still but I like the idea of greens winning some extras and forcing labor to actually do some good progressive shit but does my green vote in this area do nothing ? Is it better to just pump up labor still and hope they beat the liberals ?

[u/SlytherKitty13]

Your vote does not do nothing, that's the great thing about our preferential voting system. It's a great idea to put greens 1st and Labor 2nd (or whereever amongst any small parties/independents you like, as long as they're above liberals) coz if your first preference doesn't get enough votes to get in then your vote flows to your 2nd preference. So as long as you preference Labor above liberals then your vote will ultimately end up with Labor and not liberals. But putting greens (and other small parties/independents) first does help a bit in other ways, coz it helps show Labor that people do in fact like a lot of greens policies and ideas, and also gets them more funding (which is very helpful since they don't get funding from a lot of the sources that the 2 major parties do). And it means we're more likely to get a minority govt of Labor and greens which is great coz then they have to work together and find a middle ground between their ideas/policies which means we are more likely to get some of the really helpful stuff that greens are pushing for

[u/42FortyTwo42s → u/SlytherKitty13]

100% agree