In every election, common mistakes are made by the public, and not just in the sense of dropping your pencil or allowing the prime minister to get hold of your baby. The greatest error we make as a voting populace is in allowing ourselves to become so obsessed by the foreground that we ignore the crucial details in the background, like a tourist so taken with his holiday snaps of Uluru he doesn't notice the murder taking place behind his wife.

This is exactly what happens when we focus exclusively on the major parties, and the admittedly gripping and romantic death-struggle between their leaders. It's important to remember that an election campaign goes much further than this, since our system of democracy - designed as it is to avoid the tyranny of the majority - is not just about the most popular party assuming total power and crushing all opposition. It is also about the most unpopular party holding the most popular party to ransom in pursuit of its deranged niche obsessions. And thus, the Athenian ideal lives on. But given the potentially awesome power that can be wielded by minor parties when they hold the balance of power, I feel it's appropriate at this juncture to take a good hard throbbing moist look at the minor parties in play in this election, in order that you may be better informed about which party will make you feel the most morally superior to your fellow human beings while voting.

The minor party causing the biggest kerfuffle this time around, of course, is The Greens. Led by the mysteriously charismatic Dark Prince of Biodiversity, Bob Brown, the Greens have in their short history grown from a slightly annoying single-issue party into a much more annoying lots-of-issues party that regularly acts as a "thorn in the side" of the majors. The big parties can't stand the Greens, for several reasons:

 They serve as a painful reminder of the days when the majors themselves were filled with idealism and hope for the future and had yet to degenerate into cold-hearted focus group-driven husks of humanity.

 They refuse to compromise their principles, which is widely seen in Canberra as cheating.

 They appeal to young people, which frustrates major party politicians, who can't seem to connect with the youth no matter how many Damien Leith concerts they attend.

 They're always complaining and can never see the funny side of things like boat people and illegal wars.

So, should you vote Green this year? Certainly, if you're the sort of person who hates modern economies and baths. As noted by experienced political scientists such as Andrew Bolt and Steve Fielding, Greens policies include building heroin injecting rooms on every street corner, and forcing everyone to cook food over a candle. The question is whether we are willing to pay this price just for a smug sense of self-satisfaction and a series of increasingly outlandish fantasies about Sarah Hanson-Young. I mean,every street corner? It seems a bit excessive.

But there is no doubt that the Greens are the party to vote for if you want real action on climate change, the legalisation of gay marriage, an improved national public transport network, and enormous clouds of ganja smoke billowing out of Parliament House 24/7.

But if sacrificing all moral standards to the false god of environmental jihad isn't your style, there are many other options for the minor party connoisseur. The Nationals, for example.

The Nationals are probably the most adorable of the minor parties, due to their touching belief that they are a party. Watching the Nationals in action is rather like watching a little boy dress up as his father. Just as everyone can see that that suit is far too big for the little tyke, everyone can see that the Nationals are clearly not a party, but a sort of holding pen for Liberals who have drunk too much paint. But the Nationals keep on, calling themselves "the National Party", holding meetings and preselecting candidates just like real grown-up politicians. It's so sweet you want to take a photo of them and show it to everyone on their 21st birthday.

The one big selling point of the Nationals is their personality, also known as Barnaby Joyce. Joyce is the public face of the Nationals, and is well-known and well-liked for his reputation of being a "plain-speaking man of the people", which is another way of saying that he gives the impression of having a possum living in his brain. But he encapsulates the raison d'etre of the Nationals, which is to represent the interests of the ordinary bloke on the land, the bloke who's suspicious of modern, newfangled ideas like "political correctness" or "social media" or "literacy"; the bloke who's more comfortable out among the cattle than reading The Monthly; the bloke who longs for a simpler time, when men were men and women were lightly bruised. The Nationals' policy platform is to stand up for rural Australia and make sure that they're properly represented up to the point when this contradicts Liberal Party policy, at which time it will be quietly abandoned.

So should you vote for the Nationals? Only you can answer this question. The first step is to ask yourself, do I smell like manure? This will have a strong bearing on your final decision.

Of course, there is a "third force" among minor parties. Which, since the first one was the third force to begin with, makes it a fifth force. This is Family First, a party formed several years ago when a group of public-minded citizens got together and said, "Hey, why isn't anyone in our society sticking up for the disenfranchised heterosexual Christian white males? When do they get a fair go?"

Not that Family First is a party only for Christians - anyone with horrible taste in music and a terror of the unknown is welcome. But it is true that the guiding light in all FF's policy decisions is "What would Jesus do?" As it has turned out during the tenure of Family First Senator Steve Fielding, Jesus would mainly make lengthy, incoherent speeches while periodically bursting into tears, putting on fancy-dress, and revealing hitherto unknown disabilities. But then, FF's strength lies in its very unpredictability. It's a constantly moving target in the parliamentary duck-hunt, dodging and weaving, crying and rambling, blocking legislation and denouncing pornographers left right and centre.

In short, Family First is the party of choice for all those who combine a strong religious faith with a burgeoning prescription drug habit. Should you vote for them? Well, if you like politics with a spicy soupcon of bizarre stunts and random bigotry, or if you're a nihilist who only votes ironically, go for it!

Of course these are not the only minor parties on offer. There is the Shooters Party, who are campaigning on a platform of shooting things. There's the Natural Law Party, who will, if elected, appoint a team of flying yogis to rule the nations, in order that we might finally get the government we deserve. And there's the Citizens Electoral Council, who are committed to ending the fraud of globalisation and providing generous subsidies on aluminium foil.

Should you vote for any of these little battlers? That's entirely up to you, but the important thing is that you realise you have real options in this election, no matter how unconventional or radical or laughably idiotic they might appear to people of sense. And whatever way you vote, you should give thanks for our superbly designed electoral system, which gives the marginalised and chemically imbalanced a much-needed voice in public discourse.

Remember, when alone in that little booth, a vote for a minor party is never wasted. Pretty stupid maybe, but never wasted.

Ben Pobjie is a writer, comedian and poet.