Friday 14 September 2007

Your form guide to the Williamstown by-election

As a mild diversion from all the holiday planning, we have the Williamstown by-election tomorrow. This was prompted by the somewhat sudden resignation of the Steve Bracks back in July.

Given that this the safest ALP seat in the state, the result is more or less a foregone conclusion. The Libs and Nats aren't even bothering to field candidates. Presumably they've got better things to do, like . . . um . . . what do state opposition parties do again?

Like most state elections, this one will be fought on voters' perception of the parties at a Federal level, and on a couple of issues utterly meaningless outside the immediate area. Here, those issues are the deepening of Port Phillip Bay (which will lead to more ships and hence more trucks in local streets) and the re-opening of the underpass at Yarraville station.

And the candidates are:

Wade Noonan - AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY

Clearly the hot favourite, and notable for putting the most propaganda directly into our letterbox. Also notable for prompting the most anti-ALP propaganda, from the likes of the Maribyrnong Truck Action Group and Blue Wedges, a group opposed to the bay deepening, which the ALP supports.

Janet Rice - THE GREENS

They're in with a chance. They've certainly had the most creative campaign. The other morning a group of them (what's the collective noun for a group of Greens? A branch?) dressed up in 1940s gear and handed out copies of the Williamstown Line timetable from 1940. The point was that there are now 28% fewer trains in peak hour than there were back then.
One of them was a dude in a Jimmy Stewart suit, dippin' his lid to the ladies. Which was nice

Vern Hughes - DEMOCRATIC LABOR PARTY

The DLP are a somewhat obscure group of social conservatives that were big back in the 60s and 70s, and have recently made a resurgence. They manage to simultaneously piss off both left-wingers like the Greens (by opposing gay marriage and abortion), and right-wingers like the Coalition (by opposing economic rationalism).
They claim on their website that this makes them politically central. But this is a little like saying that a comfortable temperature can be maintained by standing too close to a fire with ice up your bum.

Veronica Hayes - FAMILY FIRST

We haven't heard a peep out of Family First during this campaign. They're clearly using this as a training ground on how to deal with election loss.

And finally, Nathan Tavendale, Catherine Cumming, Vivienne Millington, Wajde Assaf and Janis Rossiter - THE INDEPENDENTS.

Campaigning from these guys has been almost non-existent.
Presumably they think it's not worth the effort.
They're probably right.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was reading your comments about the by election. The Party canidates have no orgional ideas of their own they are towing their respective party lines. Congratulations should also go to the TWU for getting their first Member in Parliment the only reason this was the case was a deal was done behind closed doors to placate the TWU. The Greens attempt was a complete joke along with the DLP and family first.

Now the independents were much more intresting Nathan Tavendale had his own web site www.nathantavendale.com and from the look of it showed true spirit and professionalism bringing new ideas and highlighting shortfalls in the area but was relativly unknown.

Catherine Cumming - Was a populist with very broad and emotional issues brought to the campaign to bad some her platform did not say how she was going to address these issues.

Vivienne Millington:- Local buisnesss owner she would have made a good local member campaign was also run quite professionally we may possibly see her seeking election in 2010.

Wadje Assaf- if at first you dont succeed try and try again this guy was promising higher pensions and not much else to bad pensions are federal issue.

Janis Rossiter- A seasoned campaigner from one of the local councils played the game well wouldnt tell people her age i think she was more concerned with wooing the Yaraville voters as council elections are not far away for that area.