The Big Switch continues to deny the Socialist Alliance its environment credentials

by Dave Riley

It has been reported here before that the Big Switch had a exclusionist policy for its election monitoring that didn't include parties outside the mainstream. After a bit of protest that may have changed a little --although the extent of that change is confusing (as the whole site is confusing).

So consciously excluding the Socialist Alliance from the site was an issue first up.The core attempt has been to deny the SA its environment credentials despite its high ratings elsewhere.

(To be fair, the BigSwitch is not alone in that as the SA's Climate Change Charter (pdf) is the most radical on offer at this election. So that while the SA's policy platform may be the best response to the Climate Change emergency -- with the sharpest targets and the like -- a section of the more mainstream environment movement wants to obscure the fact that that is the case.)

Then we get this fracas so that on the week of Walk Against Warming (which the SA is building actively around the country) BigSwitch pulls the SA off the site as a tech fix!

(Needless to say, no one requested that the SA be removed from the site!)

Email to Tricia Phelan
Dear Tricia
It has come to our attention that the big Switches Rating of Socialist Alliance's policy on Climate Change is 0 out of 5 which is incorrect. The Big Switch gave one of our candidates (Tim Kirschler) a rating of 5 which should apply to Socialist Alliance as a whole. Could you please adjust this BEFORE the Walk against Warming as people will be checking out the website and be given incorrect information

thanks
Margarita Windisch
Victorian Socialist Alliance SenateCandidate

To which Tricia Phelan has responded today:

Thanks for your email Margarita.

We have removed the SA from our site, as requested by the party,(!!!-DR) whilst this gets sorted out. The problem is that party ratings work in a different way to candidate ratings, and our site is technically unable to do what we need it to do. We are working on rectifying this asap.

All the best

Tricia

While The Big Switch is a simply awful site to navigate around, running web pages for the coalition that backs Big Switch isn't rocket science and given the long standing exclusionist approach of The Big Switch I urge all readers to protest the situation by email to Tricia Phelan at campaign@thebigswitch.org.au.

So that due process is followed in this matter.

And let's hope that BigSwitch can rectify this problem real soon...