It's a matter of conscience

When you take away the party politics, it is interesting to see how the voting can change. The RU486 'conscience' vote in the Senate yesterday demonstrated just how different the vote can be when you take away party loyalties. Of course, we have a party-based parliamentary system, and I am not suggesting that conscience votes are the way forward. The fact is, come election time, it is most often the party that people vote for, and to a lesser extent, the candidate. It would, however, be nice to see more use of this conscience vote they speak over, as a means of allowing completely independent consideration of important moral questions, with very significant implications. For many issues that arise, party ideology is just not relevant.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, I would love to see a comparison between votes counted for a normal party-based vote, and a count taken from an anonymous conscience vote on the same issue. I wonder what the outcome of issues like IR, Telstra, anti-terror laws and VSU would be under a conscience vote. Again, I am not suggesting the conscience vote is necessarily the ground truth for these issues. Having politicians vote with their conscience does not necessarily imply better representation of the public's wishes. In fact, it could be argued that conscience voting is less representative, given it places the opinion of one person, rather than an elected body, on an entire electorate. Of course, each electorate can loby their member, write letters and demonstrate their view - they can even vote them out come next election. Ultimately though, it is one person's assessment of an issue being taken as that of the whole, and this may not always be the most representative, or robust way to vote on issues.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about a conscience vote is the insight you get into where a particular politician places themselves in the political spectrum. The Senate's vote on RU486 yesterday certainly drew a different line to the usual party-lines on a Senate vote. Senator Andrew Bartlett provides a complete break down of the Senate vote.

Regardless of the pros and cons of conscience voting, I am personally just glad to see our politicians actually have a conscience, and that it can be called upon every now and then to sort things out when the parties would prefer not to.