I don’t have time to read all of this!
The Basics

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/KMECBallarat
Themes: Education. Vagueness.

With friends like these…
The Group Voting Ticket

As an ungrouped independent, Karl Pongracic doesn’t have a group voting ticket of his own.  But it’s sometimes illuminating to see how others see our independents.

In this instance, however, there isn’t much to learn.  He’s scoring worst with the hard left parties, who are all putting him 40th or later out of a possible 46 places on the ticket, with the exception of the Greens, who put him 25th.  He’s faring slightly better with the right wing parties, but he’s usually still somewhere in the 30s. His best result is being placed at 13th by Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party, but Hinch seems to like all the independents, so that doesn’t tell us much.

The Body Politic
Policies, Snark, Terrible Theme Songs and Other Observations

Karl Pongracic and his wife Jeannette are own the Ballarat francise of Kip McGrath, a professional tutoring business.  I’m not quite sure whether Pongracic is a teacher himself, but he is, at least ‘committed to providing a positive and supportive learning environment that boosts every child’s confidence and self-esteem to help them achieve their personal best’.  So that’s a fine start.

His Facebook page is mostly about his tutoring business, but a few posts down he has the following statement:

I am running as an independent candidate with my main objectives to improve Education, Policing, Government Housing, Benefit Recipiants and Infrastructure.
So, on the 24th of November, Vote for me for Change.

As I do not have any allegiance to any political party, you need to put 1 under the line for me, Pongracic, Karl Jozef and then the preference of your choice. (that’s of course if you choose to Vote for me).

 

(… is it mean of me to notice that the owner of a tutoring business who is big on education, particularly ‘English, reading, spelling, comprehension and maths’  can’t spell ‘recipients’ and appears to have a tenuous grasp of grammar?)

Look, this is not a lot to go on.  I’m guessing he has some pretty strong feelings about education funding, but what these are is anyone’s business.  Having ‘policing’ on this list suggests a somewhat conservative stream.  Government housing could go either way.  Benefit recipients… the phrasing does suggest that his problem is likely to be with the people receiving benefits, not the benefits they are getting.  Infrastructure just tells us that he is an independent…

But really, without more information, this is very much speculation.  Maybe he has a passion for community policing.  Maybe he doesn’t like the way the Federal Government picks on welfare recipients.  We just don’t have enough information to know.

(Or perhaps he is just following his own Facebook meme that ‘the best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see’.  I’m looking, alright, but I’m not seeing a lot.  Perhaps I need tutoring?)

He does seem to care a lot about teaching, though.