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There are much more important issues on the social agenda in Australia than marine parks and hunting for fucks sake. I will vote on those issues, looking at making Australia stronger in Infrastructure and international competitiveness, along with a better standard of living.
I disagree Tom as tolerating the proliferation of Marine Protected Areas sets a very worrying and potentially dangerous precedent for ALL Australians. It is validating the right of minority groups (in this case the green movement) to remove the rights of others for a purely ideological reason, absent of scientific justification and lacking any sort of rational appraisal or thought for the future affects this might have (aka if we ban fishing, where do we get fish from, etc).
Where does it end? I can guarantee that it will not be with marine protected areas. What about with how an ETS is implemented? Do the rantings of a few hysterical green crusaders have more POLITICAL weight than the corporations, employees, stakeholders, shareholders, people with super, etc? In just about every political area (from immigration to religion, law enforcement, education, healthcare, taxation and so on) immeasurable damage could be done to our country by bowing to pressure from minority groups.
Labor and the Greens say bending over for vocal minority groups is the way to go, the Liberals say it is 'if it suits me' (eg policies on border control, gay marriage, etc). To my knowledge, very few minority parties even adopt a rational/scientific approach to policy making (most seem founded on a community ideological niche be it Family First, One Nation or Climate Skeptics), S&F appears to be one of them. Take for example their policy on spearfishing in marine protected areas (yes it is a convenient example), their argument is that if it does not pose a risk to the purpose of the park (ie unintended killing or damage of certain habitat and creatures), restrictions are unwarranted. No other political party seems capable or advocating this sort of responsible approach to political decision making...
The reality is that there are very few issues in this election (unlike last election with WorkChoices and so forth). The Liberal election message is that 'Labor is shit,' Labors is; 'no we're not.' Both are 'promising' fiscal conservatism, to repay debt incurred through the GFC and to 'stop the boats,' historically you would assume that there will be an IR agenda from both parties (although both know they are on thin ice after WorkChoices). Aside from that, both will be pandering for the popular vote, if they think that lies in championing the pleas of various extremists to gain support while the majority are indifferent or silent, that is exactly what they will do. The recent 'stop the boats' bull!@#$ is case and point.
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The jobs of 20 odd million Australians are more important than anything else.
Of course they are, but lets take a longer term look at this; what happens when the Greens force the Governments hand in implementing an economically damaging ETS? What happens when farmers no longer have sufficient water for irrigation, when our domestic and coal export industry are dead, when power dependent industries such as aluminium, silicon (a critical component in solar cells), iron, copper, zinc, etc can no longer compete globally, when our timber industry is gone, when corporate taxes to fill budget gaps soar even higher pushing domestic business offshore, the list goes on...
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