The leftward and other blatherings of Span (now with Snaps!)

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

If Span were Oztraaleean

Here's a grand test to discover where you fit in the Australian political system. (Hattip: Idiot/Savant, who is 94% opposed to traditional Australian values!)

If I were Australian I ought to vote for the Greens (96% preference) and I'd sit on the Far Left of their spectrum overall*. No surprises there. I think I'd rather eat my ballot than vote for John Howard. (Certainly I'd be less likely to get indigestion if I did.) However I was only 67% opposed to traditional Aussie values. The results state that a high positive result in this category is equivalent to the positions held by the "Christian Right."

It's different from many political tests, as you have to indicate a preference - even the undecideds are tainted towards agree or disagree, which I think is a good idea, unless you are truly apathetic or indecisive (in which case you probably wouldn't do such a test in the first place).

The hardest question for me was this one:

Protecting the environment is more important than providing social welfare services to people in need.

I think it's a false dichotomy. There are ways to make sure that you tick both of these boxes, and I'm definitely in favour of pursuing those first, before making trade-offs.

Unlike other online tests I've done lately, this one has 50 statements to answer. And I really liked their caveat:

This page was designed for fun. If you are unhappy with the results, do not
worry about it too much.


*For those wishing to send their own results to others, or put them up on their blogs, you need to click on the link near the bottom of the results page that gives you a permalink. I didn't and had to redo the whole thing, with the result that I am now 0.9% less in favour of the Greens.

5 comments:

Rich said...

I'm
100% opposed to traditional Aussie values. A lot of people would consider that the values in question are imported from the US and are not traditional to Australia at all.

There are quite a few false dichotomies there apart from the one you pointed out.

For instance, the question about inflation/unemployment. I consider that high inflation leads to economic stagnation (sometimes called stagflation) and thus raises unemployment anyway - look at 70s Britain.

Stephanie said...

I'm still trying to workout why I'm a Democrat. Must be my lack of traditional values which puts me at odds with the ALP.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure about eating your ballot before voting Howard though Span, they are bloody huge because of the ranking system/all the different races and shit load of parties (including a larger than expected nutter party contingent).

Anonymous said...

While I came out as 96% opposed to traditional values, I couldn't see any questions there about traditional Aussie values. Those would start something like, "You have one last can of 4X left, and your mate is on fire..."

Single Malt Social Democrat said...

http://www.ozpolitics.info/blog/index.php?page_id=206&id=78d097ca20f27e8ec34a9d318875e305

Here's mine...im 88pc Green, which is all fine. the thing that shook me to the core was my 25pc rating for one nation. good god.