Showdown at Dutton HQ. When a lone protester arrived outside Peter Dutton’s office on Tuesday morning with a ‘Dutton Dumped Dickson’ sign he found himself under attack from about 30 blue-shirted Dutton supporters who poured out of the MP’s office. The mob, including Dutton staffers clearly identified by their badges, indulged in a 20-minute tirade of abuse featuring epithets such as ‘abortionist’, ‘atheist’ and ‘thug’. The former rugby union second rower found the tirade, coming largely from young males who acted like they had been picked on at high school, somewhat amusing.
When a group of WorkChoices protesters arrived, the Dutton staffers and their hangers-on went into a frenzy, hurling abuse, invading personal space, abusing people as ‘thugs’ and attempting to incite. Later it became apparent why the Dutton rabble was so upset: Tony Abbott was supposed to visit Dickson and do a shopping centre walk-through with Dutton. Apparently, the visit had to be aborted when the Liberal campaign realised that there were protesters in the area, and Abbott was sent to Bowman. — an anonymous Crikey reader
The Greens explain… The Greens have elected not to preference the ALP in Warringah — apparently, the Manly Daily reports, a decision based on the relative merits of the two parties. But according to this memo it seems more to do with a theory that by not preferencing they are assisting the election of Lee Rhiannon to the Senate…
Greens preferences in Warringah:
Information for Greens members & supportersThe Greens are recommending voters give their preferences to the ALP ahead of the Liberals in more than 50 marginal seats around the country. This will have a much greater impact on the election outcome than our preferences in Warringah. Ever since the Greens formed, Labor has been telling us “you have to give preferences to us because – otherwise you are supporting the Liberals.” Actually we are disappointed with both the big parties on many issues, especially Climate Change.
Our decision to give Warringah voters an ‘open ticket’ how-to-vote and advising them to make their own preference choices, rather than recommending they vote one way or the other, was carefully considered to get the best outcome overall.
The Warringah electorate is inherently conservative, as reflected by voter patterns over a very long time. At the 2007 Federal Election Abbott polled approximately 54% (a majority of primary votes, without preferences) and Hugh Zochling polled half that at about 27%.
By not directing our House of Representatives preferences, we are likely to increase the number of conservative leaning voters who care about the environment and social justice to vote Greens in the Senate. That is what we can most contribute here in Warringah – getting Lee Rhiannon elected is not a foregone conclusion and we need all the Senate votes we can get.
By not directing preferences we:
- make no likely difference to the House of Representatives result in Warringah
- make no difference to the election result for Julia Gillard
- increase the likelihood of getting extra votes for Lee as Senate candidate
- send the ALP a gentle message that they cannot ignore climate change, back down on a mining tax and ignore Greens policies on a host of other things and still expect us to direct our preferences to them without question.
And remember… It is the individual voter that decides where their preferences go. What they write on their own ballot paper is what counts (not what any How-to-Vote leaflet suggests).
When democracy becomes socialism… The Queensland Liberal National Party’s website contains some interesting YouTube videos. A viewing of an Anna Bligh/Julia Gillard conspiracy theory trailer leads to a suite of informational videos from the…err…vocal Larry Hannigan, who accuses Gillard (who he pronounces “Jillard”) and Michael Kirby of “treason” due to something bizarre relating to the Australia Act in the 1980s. “The Crown has been removed!” Hannigan rails. “Because while you sit down you’re not protecting your children … you have to apologise to your children for handing them over to the UN!” A further slide explains his reasoning: “Global democracy is in fact International Socialism”. Nice to have the official LNP imprimatur. — Andrew Crook
Gillard the ‘bush pig’. Talkback radio comes into its own during election campaigns as the heartbeat of voter-land. We thought this exchange on Canberra radio 2CC yesterday was particularly entertaining:
CALLER: …before the bush pig prime minister called the election…
PRESENTER: You see, you just lost all credibility whatsoever by being …
CALLER: …no, I haven’t lost all credibility…
PRESENTER: What a horrible thing to call an individual, a bush pig.
CALLER: Well she’s a friggin’ lying Communist.
PRESENTER: You’re a disgrace, just piss off.
Bulldozing the message… I have no idea whose bulldozer this is or who it is advocating we vote for, but they’ve parked it right outside Don Randall’s office in Kelmscott, Western Australia. — Crikey reader Graham
Ciggies back, but pokie addiction remains. Lovely to hear Julia Gillard ripping into the Liberals today for accepting big tobacco donations. This would be the same Julia Gillard who yesterday visited a distribution centre owned by Woolworths, Australia’s biggest pokies operator with 12,000 machines. Woolies donated $20,000 to the ALP in 2008-09, but that was just the start of Labor’s pokies industry donations.
Clubs NSW gave Labor $85,000 in 2008-09 and $203,000 in 2007-08. Then you have the Australian Hotels Association which gave more than $200,000 in 2008-09 alone, not to mention the party’s own Canberra Labor Club which handed over more than $1 million in the first two years of the Rudd-Gillard government. Given Australian has the lowest smoking rate in the world and the highest gambling rate in the world, it seems hard to fathom why Labor treats these two “sin industries” so differently when it comes to political donations — Stephen Mayne, independent no-pokies Victorian Senate candidate
What’s happening in your electorate? Send your tips, sightings and propaganda to boss@crikey.com.au
Poor Senator Fielding has obviously gotten sleepy while sending an email, nodded off and had a nap on the keyboard.
Hey I guess you aren’t aware that that message can be decoded and even though you’ve put “To: XXXXXXX” in the article I now know the email address of who it was sent to because it contains an unsubscribe link at the bottom.
The main part of the message decodes as follows:
With the election campaign in full swing, it is now time to make your voice heard and ensure that the Government puts families at the top of its agenda.
Over the past few weeks, I have been campaigning on key issues such as:
• Housing affordability
• Accessible and affordable childcare; and
• Making our streets safe again.
These issues have been ignored by the major parties for too long now, and we need a strong voice in the Senate that will stand up for families and put your family first.
Family First is the only party that can hold the government to account and stop them from breaking their election promises.
That’s why it’s essential that Family First get re-elected in the Senate – so we can continue to bring common sense and balance to the Senate.
However, to do this, we need YOUR HELP.
Family First is looking for volunteers to help us during the campaign. There are all sorts of ways you can help, whether it be just an hour of your time, or a whole day.
For those of you that would like to become more involved and ensure that the Greens don’t grab the balance of power in the Senate, please email your contact details to senator.fielding@aph.gov.au and someone from our office will be in touch with you shortly.
You might also be interested in a video we released describing how voting in the Senate works.
http://bit.ly/91emmJ
The video shows why the final Senate seat in Victoria is going to come down to a battle between Family First and the Greens and what it’s so important how you vote this election.
Regards,
Senator Steve Fielding
Leader of Family First
I applaud Steve Fielding’s conservation of natural resources through the thoughtful base64 encoding of email communication. If everyone did this there would be no need for the NBN at all!
bWFueSB0aGFua3MsIHN0ZXZlIQ==
It looks like most of Australia missed the election campaign highlight ie: the melee at Dutton HQ. No doubt the Keystone Cops would’ve felt quite at home.
Hmmm…strangely Steve Fielding’s Base 64 encoded message has disappeared from the website (but not email) archive?
Anyway, for anybody still none the wiser, Steve Fielding’s message either was not properly encoded by Fielding’s email application, or was not properly decoded by the email application being used by the recipient (it’s impossible to be certain which with the limited fragment supplied). Base 64 encoding is a ubiquitous technique used by electronic mail to accurately deliver the text, images and other files included in an email message to the email application being used at the other end.
There are a plethora of online Base 64 encoder/decoders, Google turned up this one for me: http://www.motobit.com/util/base64-decoder-encoder.asp