The Frauding of Votes? - Softcover

Amy Macgrath

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0958710430 ISBN 13: 9780958710435

Publisher: H.S. Chapman Society, 2001

Synopsis

How did I happen to write this book? By accident. I had written up an old story I knew, about old clashes of arms leading to fraud and forgery in union elections 50 or more years ago. I launched it under the title of The Forging of Votes. Far from launching myself into the world of old people with old memories far off-stage from the action of modern political theatre, I found myself precipitated into a new world with new troubled memories very much onstage. This was the new world of recent parliamentary elections. I heard yarns and stories of election rivalries, challenges and rorts. The Blue Mountains Macquarie was bedevilled with electoral melodrama. Nearby electorates were beset with marginal seat crises and firebombing of electoral offices. Character assassination of exceptional vehemence and dubious logic waged against rival candidates. The assassination of John Newman in Cabramatta. New versions of the old vicious left-right war of ALP branch stacking Where was the sustained debate on our electoral system that seemed warranted by all these ripples on the surface of our indifference? I, like everyone else, had my head in the sand. I went to the Library to bone up on fraud and forgery in elections. I found almost nothing. In general a thunderous silence or rejection. Election fraud in Australia? Impossible! It couldn't happen here. I found disbelief rife among those who want to believe this New World of ours a Utopia free of the vices of the Old World left behind. The truth is it never has been. It has always been the creation of all manner of refugees, among them terrorists, rebels, dynastic poachers and rustlers, prisoners but also men who braved the most hostile reaches of this land to transform it into a land admired world-wide. I, affiliated in early years to the ALP, but now of no political party, who cannot be accused of running with the Liberals, Nationals, the League of Rights or any 'isms' such as feminism.

About this edition

• Publisher: H.S. Chapman Society
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0958710430
• ISBN 13: 9780958710435
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 232