Samuel's Blog

Election Poll: Week Three

After almost a year, we finally have a new poll. The plan at this stage is to have this poll repeated each week for the remaining three weeks of the election campaign. Results will be released on a week-by-week basis, with a full comparison of results on election day.

July 31st, 2010 at 07:34pm

Preliminary hot-to-vote card for the ACT

With the Australian Electoral Commission having today announced the candidates for the seats of Fraser and Canberra in the federal election, and the candidates for the ACT’s two senate seats, it’s time for me to publish a preliminary how-to-vote card. This is all subject to change, and a finalised version will be published either on election day, or once I have cast my vote if I decide to put in a pre-poll vote.

There are a few objectives in the how-to-vote card. Firstly, I acknowledge that for the House of Representatives at least, it’s a safe Labor seat, so whilst it’s important to try and replace Labor, it’s also important to try and reduce the margin and make it less safe for Labor if they do retain the seats. In the Senate, the main objective is to maintain at least one Liberal seat…the other objective is to keep crazy people like the Greens out of the Senate. The idea of a returned Gillard government with a Greens balance of power in the senate is downright scary.

Fraser
1. MILLIGAN, James Keith (Liberal Party) — obviously he must come first
2. HEDGES-PHILLIPS, Quintin (Secular Party of Australia) — I find a bunch of their policies to be quite scary, especially ones about climate change, mining taxes and illegal immigrants etc, but they have minimal chance of gaining enough seats in parliament to do much of anything, so I’d rather have them than the Labor party. He also has a job which I can respect (Television Presentation Co-ordinator…and he’s not an ABC person!) and isn’t a career politician, which is more than I can say for many people from the other parties.
3. LEIGH, Andrew (Australian Labor Party) — this is tough, do I put an economist with the poor sense to join Labor ahead of the business owner with the poor sense to join the Greens? In any place other than Canberra, the answer would probably be no, but I can’t risk giving the Greens enough votes to take the seat of Fraser. Without an incumbent, this is a real possibility, so as hard as it is, a Labor economist (hopefully one with more brains than Wayne “traffic jams cause inflation” Swan gets third spot.
4. ESGUERRA, Indra (The Greens) — she might be a business owner, but she’s a Green, and I can’t support the socialists and their global warming alarmism.

Canberra
1. JONES, Giulia (Liberal Party) — “Giulia with a G” would have been a great addition to the Legislative Assembly, so hopefully we can get her in to the federal parliament.
2. BRODTMANN, Gai (Labor Party) — Another case of “I’ll put Labor ahead of the Greens just to keep the Greens out”.
3. ELLERMAN, Sue (The Greens) — No comment required here.

Senate
The senate is tougher to work out because the field is, at first impression, quite poor. There’s a couple good people in there, but they’re the minority. I’m tempted to simply vote above the line for the Liberals here, because they’re the only ones who are worth a vote, but this exercise wouldn’t be much fun if I didn’t try to work out the order in which the remaining rabble should receive preferences.
1. HUMPHRIES, Gary (Liberal Party) — I like Gary personally, although I find him to be less conservative than I would like…this has probably saved him in the strangely left-wing ACT though. That said, he has been a good Senator and will be receiving my vote again. I was tempted to give him second preference and give the other Liberal candidate the first preference, as this tactic helped me to get both Jeremy Hanson and Zed Seselja over the line in the ACT election, but given the nature of the ACT, I can’t risk Gary missing out on his quota, and he must therefore get my first preference, with the other Liberal candidate receiving my runoff.
2. WATTS, Matthew (Liberal Party) — See above
3. GLYNN, John (Independent) — From here on, the field devolves significantly. I know almost nothing about Mr. Glynn, however if, like much of the ACT, he is relatively left-wing, at least he will be an independent left-winger rather than part of a socialist party machine, like all of the following candidates.
4. LUNDY, Kate Alexandra (Labor Party) — I chuck most of her pamphlets in the bin after spending a minute staring at them in bewilderment…but I’d rather have her stay in her seat, than see her displaced by a Democrat or a Green
5. CHURCHILL, Darren Mark (Democrat) — This is where I start getting desperate, trying to work out which socialist is less dangerous than the next socialist. Darren is a casual relief teacher…if I can keep him away from indoctrinating teaching children, well that’ll be something. I also think the Democrats are less dangerous than the Greens.
6. DAVID, Anthony John (Democrat) — If he can keep a Green out, that’s wonderful.
7. PARRIS, Hannah (Green Party) — Of the two Greens running in this race, Hannah has made less scary press statements.
8. MATHEWS, David (Labor) — David disqualified himself from getting a higher ranking in the preferences by dishonestly appearing in a photo of supportive locals in one of Mike Kelly’s (incumbent candidate for Eden-Monaro) pamphlets, and then tried to defend his position on WIN News last night by claiming that, as he supports Mike Kelly, he is entitled to be in the photo. David, you’re not a local unless you live in the electorate. The only reason you’re not coming last in the preferences is because of the scary woman who follows.
9. HATFIELD DODDS, Lin (Green Party) — I can’t believe that the Greens have found a local who is scarier than Kerrie Tucker. Kudos to them for doing so. Now can they please hide this person away in an office where we never have to hear from them ever again?

As I say, the order may change a tad between now and the election, but this is how I see it for now, and how I would vote if the election were to be held today.

Now that we have a finalised list of candidates, I’ll send some interview requests to the candidates who interest me. This will not be all of them…in fact it will probably not be most of them. I may expand my scope a tad and seek interviews with some interesting candidates from outside the ACT as well. Stay tuned!

Samuel

July 31st, 2010 at 04:18pm