GetUp wins High Court challenge re electoral roll. As we hit the button, news to hand that activist group GetUp has won its High Court constitutional challenge, against the Howard-era laws that close the electoral rolls on the day that writs for an election are issued are invalid. The Australian Electoral Commission will now attempt to contact about 100,000 Australians to inform them they are entitled to vote at the August 21 election. GetUp argued that the laws effectively disenfranchised young people. Before the 2006 changes, people had seven days to enrol to vote or update their details after writs for an election were issued. The amendment brought the cut-off for new enrolments forward to 8pm on the day writs are issued, and to three days later for those on the roll who need to update their details.

A 22-year-old Tony Abbott in his own words. Possum Comitatus alerted our attention to an audio file uploaded by Kate Doak, from the University of New England — the operations manager of UNE’s radio station Tune FM. Kate has pulled from the archives of old Radio UNE an interview the station did with Tony Abbott in 1979, back when he was president of the Sydney University Student Representative Council. She writes on the Tune FM website:

Tony Abbott has always been a magnet for controversy, so you can imagine my surprise when an interview from his studies in 1979 at the University of Sydney was found within TUNE! FM’s archives early last week. Given that I’m a sucker for history (even though I hate politics), I fired up the old reel-to-reel tape machine and settled down for some aural pleasure. As an amateur historian, what I heard didn’t disappoint.

Listen here:

audio

More ads? Show us the money. Apparently LNP supporters are none-too-happy with their party’s campaign efforts in Queensland. According to the Beaudesert Times, local supporters have expressed concern the party is not doing enough to counter claims made in ALP advertising. LNP supporter Barry Dittman raised the concerns with Nationals leader Warren Truss and LNP president Bruce McIver at a campaign function in Beaudesert on Monday. When challenged again about the need for the LNP to run more ads, McIver responded by telling supporters “if you want to see it stop, write us a cheque”.

Meanwhile, also in the Beaudesert Times, Truss makes this good impression: “There is a saying that you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression, well they made a bad first impression and they want us to forget about it. What we have got to do is make sure they don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.” — Tom Cowie

Labor gives up on Bowman. “Has ALP dumped seat of Bowman?” asks the local newspaper, the Bayside Bulletin.  MP Andrew Laming won the seat for the Coalition by just 64 votes in 2007, making it the most marginal electorate in the country But the BB complains it’s difficult to provide balanced coverage in the current campaign thanks to the absence of action by the ALP. Certainly it’s hard to find even a sign  from Labor’s Jenny Peters, while Laming’s face is plastered on billboards throughout the electorate.

BB says several high-profile Liberals have been on show to support Laming, including Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Christopher Pyne and Julie Bishop in the past fortnight. Wayne Swan launched Peters’ campaign, Bill Ludwig got some coverage when he campaigned with her and the paper says it wasn’t told but it understands Craig Emerson did some door-knocking with Peters. — a Bowman resident and Crikey reader.

Refugee report card. Refugee advocates the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre have released their election report card:

asrc

They’ve also landed the golden tonsils of Jack Thompson to voice their latest campaign video.

The word on JA. I’m a Bennelong voter. I met Liberal candidate and ex-tennis star John Alexander last night, and I wasn’t impressed at all.  The guy was a bore, and repeated the dreary Liberal mantra about debt and infrastructure and population.  I saw in his campaign dodger that he’d fight to build the north-west (Sydney) railway and complete the Parramatta-Chatswood railway — when I put it to him that one couldn’t be built if the other happened and that railways need government borrowings because of their inability to guarantee profits, he was evasive about fighting for it.

Moreover, three State Lib MPs (Greg Smith and Victor Dominello and Anthony Roberts) were present, and they just ranted about over-development and overriding local councils.  Worse still, Smith spoke about the need to extend the Epping-Parramatta railway, but when I asked him if the Liberals would commit to it, he dithered — I could only take it as a “no”.

I’d thought that a high-profile person such as Alexander would be more fiesty and passionate about what he’d fight for, but on at least one score, he was no less of a ditherer than other Liberal politicians (and wannabes). I didn’t vote for either the Liberals or Labor last time, and now I don’t relish the choice of the drunken sailor or Ebenezer Scrooge. — Crikey reader Warren Grzic.

Where’s the Libs in Lingiari? You would be forgiven if you thought Warren Snowdon was the only candidate here in Lingiari. His are the only posters around the town and his are the only information pamphlets in our mailboxes. Seems the Country Liberals haven’t even bothered to put up posters of their candidate Leo Abbott. — a Lingiari resident and Crikey reader.