Write-On Campaign In Australia:"Reduce Immigration"
08/19/2013
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An Australian friend points out that there's an immigration protest campaign planned for the upcoming Australian federal election scheduled for September 7, 2013.

In Australia, the electoral system is different from both the American and British models, and they have a thing called a "write-on" campaign. As the Reduce Immigration Campaign page explains

In Australia we are allowed to write messages on blank parts of a ballot paper to convey our personal views. A write-on campaign encourages people to write the same message on their ballot papers so as to convey a consistent idea to scrutineers, staff of the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), other observers and the media when votes are being counted.

In many countries, this would be called a "spoiled ballot", but not in  Australia. The issue is legal immigration. For all the fuss made about illegal immigration to Australia, it's numerically small compared to the legal immigration, because Australia is surrounded on all sides by water.

Here's what the write-on campaign has  to say:

Reduce Immigration

A write-on campaign to reduce immigration to Australia

Australia’s annual immigration numbers have more than doubled between 1999 and 2013. Immigration contributes 60% of our annual population growth rate of 1.8%, one of the highest in the world. 

Bipartisanship across the major political parties has kept the idea of a lower immigration policy from becoming a real electoral issue, let alone the political reality. Both major parties are committed to high immigration, but this flies in the face of our environmental sustainability, social cohesion and cultural integrity.

Around 70% of Australians are concerned about increased immigration into Australia and our high rate of population growth.

The REDUCE IMMIGRATION write-on campaign encourages Australian voters to express their objection to excessive immigration and to influence our immigration policy by adding a message to ballot papers in elections. Click on the links below to:

Some frequently asked questions are answered on the FAQ page.[More]

An important point about this "write-on" idea is that it's can be done while voting for either party.

They say above that "Bipartisanship across the major political parties has kept the idea of a lower immigration policy from becoming a real electoral issue...".

This has been a consistent theme at VDARE.com. If the politicians of BOTH major parties agree, then there's no one to vote for to change things.

That's in spite of the fact that as they say above, 70 percent of Australians are concerned about increased immigration, which may include a majority of both political parties.

So in Australia, patriots on both the left and right sides of the political spectrum (John Derbyshire explains the factions here) can participate in a protest campaign without wasting any votes.

Australian readers take note!

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