Hello! I haven’t had the heart to blog much in this past year, and I’m sorry for that, but a friend of mine has been doing analyses of all the political parties and independents contesting the WA State Election this year, and they are very good.
Of particular note, my friend spotted that there are a handful of grouped independents in each Upper House seat with no online presence whatsoever, and in many cases, registered by the same person and the same email address. They appear to exist solely to funnel votes to specific microparties (Health Australia in Agricultural, WA Party in Eastern Metropolitan, Daylight Saving Party in Mining and Pastoral, Liberals for Climate – AKA Flux – in Northern Metropolitan, Liberal Democrats in South Metropolitan, Sustainable Australia in South West), which is apparently legal but is decidedly unethical in my book. Glenn Druery has been a busy boy… though to be fair, it looks like the Artists Formerly Known as Flux have also been significantly dodgy in their own right.
Anyway. You can find the index page for all the blog posts here: https://b-auspol.dreamwidth.org/7018.html, and if you are planning to vote in WA, I recommend it to your attention as an excellent resource. Especially if you don’t want to accidentally vote for a fake independent.
(Yes, I am personally offended by the fake independents! I am extremely fond of our weird and whacky and passionate independent candidates and I feel that they break up our otherwise dreary parliamentary monoculture nicely. Like wildflowers in a field of grass. Don’t give me fake wildflowers, Mr Druery. They make me sad.)
PS – The next exciting question will be whether or not I can post this to Facebook, since Zuckerberg and co apparently mistook me for a Proper Journalist and included me in their cull of useful websites last week. I would feel more special about this if they hadn’t also mistaken all sorts of other organisations, including a vintage clothing website and most of Australia’s Medical Research Institutes, for Proper Journalists too, suggesting that their bar for this isn’t very far. Don’t get me wrong – it’s an excellent vintage clothing website and our MRIs are doing fantastic work, but journalism isn’t exactly their raison d’être, any more than it is mine…
Thank you! Just what I need, nobody is advertising around here except libs and labour and I do like to vote in a less-than-random fashion.
Hope you’re keeping well!
You’re very welcome! Really, my friend did all the work here, I just wanted to make sure a few more people saw it!
Hi AA, glad it was helpful! There was far too many parties and candidates with obscured agendas around.
I went onto the WAEC site to check where my early voting centre would be and found that it’s listed as Kalgoorlie City Markets (perfectly logical spot, there’s lots of empty shops in there and it’s very central), but when I clicked to get it to show the map, it shows as DOME (a block further east and on the other side of the road). So I have to assume WAEC would like us to skip voting and go for coffee instead. And here’s me, don’t like coffee OR sausages. :-/
Vote, then get a nice hot chocolate and a slice of cake?