Well, here we are then. Malcolm Turnbull has his trigger for a double dissolution, and indications are that he is going to pull it in early May, for an election date of July 2, or, just possibly, July 9.
Before you get any further into this post, there is something you need to do. Yes, I’m being prescriptive about this, but I’m assuming that if you are here and reading this, it’s because you care about voting.
So first of all, please visit this link and make sure you are currently enrolled to vote at the right address and in the right electorate and with the right name. If you are not there, you can enrol online or through your local post office. You can also update your details online.
According to the AEC website, the electoral roll closes 7 calendar days after the writs are issued – that is, after the election is declared. If you are not enrolled at this point, you will not be able to vote, and you will also not be able to change any of your enrolment details after this point.
(I could have sworn it was three days only, but I can’t find information about this. My advice would be to get your enrolment sorted now – you lose nothing by being a little more organised, and you don’t want to risk losing your vote if I’ve got this wrong.)
Sorted?
Good.
Now for the announcement.
As you know, I usually spend the two weeks leading up to the election feverishly reading and reporting on the policies of every party on the Senate Paper (and not sleeping). That’s not going to be possible for me this year, because I’m going to be overseas for five weeks from May 24th – and I am not going to spend my hard-earned long-service leave reading and writing about politics. Sorry.
Apparently, close of nominations can be anything between 10 and 27 days after the election is called, so the earliest we could possibly know who is on the ballot paper will be May 16.
My plan is to create, as early as possible, a list of all parties who are running in this election, with links to their websites. I’ll also link to anything I’ve written about them in the past. And then I will do my level best to write about all the brand new parties and independents between now and the election. If, by some very unlikely chance, I have time, I will return to update the posts I wrote in 2014 about existing parties.
I’ll also be writing a post sometime in the next week or two about the new Senate Voting Rules, so that you know where you stand with those. (Not today, though, because I have laryngitis and my brains are made of marshmallows.)
I apologise for the reduced service this year – blame it on Malcolm Turnbull’s impatience! If he’d stuck to a proper electoral term and an election in September or October, there would not have been a problem…
Congratulations on your long service, Cate. I hope you have a wonderfully relaxing holiday.
In the past you’ve sometimes included links to other bloggers and political commentators – is there anyone you would suggest following in your absence?
I will miss your thorough analysis and objective comments for this round. (Bugger MT. *shakes fist* )
Hi Elle,
Thanks for your kind words! Yes, I will certainly try to find bloggers who are doing similar things during this election, and I do intend to spend the next couple of weeks writing about as many new tiny parties as I can, once I have completed my other writing and work commitments. The tricky part is that most people are only going to get started after I’m already travelling, and I really want to try to ignore politics while I’m overseas, not least because I find it hard to read just one or two articles, and I want to be focusing on the places I’m staying and the people I’m catching up with, not on a particularly prolonged election campaign!
You may have noticed that I’ve already set up a page for the 2016 election, with lists of all the parties I can find at the AEC and their websites, and I’ll update that as soon as the rolls close, so you can start a little bit of your own research there if you are super-keen!