Links to leftwrites

Two significant posts on Australian left group blog leftwrites yesterday:

1. the story of a man abducted off the street by police in Melbourne.

2. the story of the disgraceful and obscure preference deals being made in the Victorian state election.

1. is of course a very worrying story. One wonders how many people who were actually involved in the protests have been picked up in this way and what has happened to them. It is absurdly unnecessary to behave this way post-protest, but of course the cops are pissed off about the whole thing, so it's hardly surprising. Nevertheless, this kind of treatment is unjustifiable even given the premise of a need to persecute the protestors – it's summary punishment meted out by the police.

2. is somwhat less exciting, at least for me, but we need to break out of our NSW-centric perspective on this blog. Australia's preferential voting system ought to make it fairer, but the ability of parties to trade their votes with other parties badly undercuts this. Of course, the parties' contempt for their electors is not confined to the electoral process, and indicates a deeper malaise that really ought to see people refusing to vote for them at all.