I don’t have time to read all of this!
The Basics
Website: https://www.vote1localjobs.com.au/ (warning: insecure page, and I think it might be out of date anyway)
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/vote1localjobs/
Themes: Western Victoria. Which, since they aren’t running in Western Victoria, is not very useful. Seriously, I have no idea what they stand for or why they are on the ballot.
With friends like these…
The Group Voting Ticket
Vote 1 Local Jobs is only running in Northern Metropolitan (lucky me!), and their ticket looks pretty middle of the road. They preference Fiona Patten’s Reason Party first, followed by Labor, followed by Hudson for Northern Victoria, the Liberal Party, and the Australian Country Party. The Greens show up at 32-36, which is not a ringing endorsement. At the food of the ticket we have the Liberal Democrats, the Australian Liberty Alliance, the Democratic Labour Party, the Victorian Socialists, and last of all, the Animal Justice Party.
This looks to me like a party that is somewhat left of centre, but a bit scared of anyone who is further to the left than they are. Putting the Liberals and the Country Party up so high suggests that they are not averse to more right-wing parties. Frankly, in this electorate I doubt their votes are going to get much further than the ALP, so what they do after that may not matter very much.
The Body Politic
Policies, Snark, Terrible Theme Songs and Other Observations
So this is a bit of a strange one on a few levels.
First, their website doesn’t really work. It has an expired security ticket, so God knows what I’ve just done to my computer by clicking through there. Secondly, I’m not sure if it has been updated since 2014. Thirdly, their party leader, James Purcell, has copied their about page to his main page – and not updated it there, either.
But strangest of all, everything I can find about Vote 1 Local Jobs is about Western Victoria, and the only place they are running candidates is in the Northern Metropolitan Region. Why on earth would you do that?
(The candidates, by the way, are Nathan Purcell and Aaron Purcell. I suspect a family relationship. And no, I haven’t been able to find out anything substantial about either of them, either. What is this madness?)
Vote 1 local jobs has no slogan, unless you count their party name. Their goal in 2014 was to win the fifth senate seat from Western Victoria, with the goal of getting the government to pay more attention to that region. Presumably their goal in 2018 is to do the same for Northern Metropolitan? I don’t think this is likely to happen, since they are literally not campaigning anywhere at all.
They have one list of policies on their front page, and a different, but overlapping, list once you get to the policies section. These are not organised people. I am judging them.
So. they want to reduce payroll tax from country businesses, by increasing it in metropolitan business. That’s going to play well in their new, metropolitan electorate which, by the way, is not an especially wealthy one.
They want to overhaul the childcare system to make it more flexible for workers, including home-based childcare, half-day childcare, and more flexible hours.
They want to protect agriculture – again, a pressing issue in Melbourne’s Northern suburbs, seriously people, get your act together! – and say no to coal seam gas, free trade agreements and foreign buy up of farmland. OK, well, that might play well in the more hipster regions of Northern Metropolitan, where we don’t like coal, or big corporations.
They also want investment in agriculture training.
They would like to invest money currently spent on the Grand Prix on railways and roads for Western Victoria. Now, see, if they ran that policy in South Eastern Metropolitan, where I have several friends who really get very tired of the Grand Prix each year, they might get some traction.
They want to increase funding for education, including TAFES and Universities in regional areas, and discount HECS for country students.
They want to lower the driving age to 17 for apprentices and trainees while they are working.
They want to relocate more government departments to regional areas.
And they want to encourage people to buy local. Including governments.
Oh, and on their other list of policies, they support camping and fishing in public reserves.
And that’s about it. Look, if Vote 1 Local Jobs isn’t going to take their campaign seriously, why should I?
I suppose the rest of you deserve better, however, especially after putting up with me for this long…
So, my analysis of this political party, aside from feeling that it couldn’t organise its way out of a paper sack, is that it’s a nice rural party that obviously got lost somewhere (perhaps due to poorly maintained signage on country roads) and wandered into Northern Melbourne. It’s not amazingly good on the environment, it has some nice ideas about infrastructure and opportunities for country Victoria, but I have no clue what it plans to do for Northern Metropolitan, and I don’t think it knows either.
What a sorry note to end on!
I’ll be doing a few more posts over the next few days – a summary post, with links to other blogs that I find useful; my own personalised How to Vote Card; a quick look at the independents running in Pascoe Vale; and, almost certainly, word clouds for the various political parties, because I have found a site that will let me feed entire lengthy policy documents into a wordcloud and then customise the colour and shapes, and I have been wanting to play with it all week.
In the meantime, thank you for joining me on this journey – and remember, vote wisely, and vote below the line. Because seriously, the preference deals this year are just ridiculous.
As long as all you’re doing is reading the site, you’re likely fine. Now, if they were selling silly campaign hats and you bought one, I might become worried about your credit card details. And since you are blogging about what you found on the site, you personally don’t seem to be very vulnerable to the idea that Nefarious Hackers might have been snooping on the chatter between your machine and their server. (Now, if you were a very Family Values!! politician, and the website were the sort of thing that Family Values politicians are against, then you should be very worried.)
Good to know. (I wish they were selling silly campaign hats – at least they’d be campaigning…)
“Vote 1 local jobs has no slogan, unless you count their party name. Their goal in 2014 was to win the fifth senate seat from Western Victoria, with the goal of getting the government to pay more attention to that region. Presumably their goal in 2018 is to do the same for Northern Metropolitan? I don’t think this is likely to happen, since they are literally not campaigning anywhere at all.”
As it happens, James Purcell has decided not to recontest his upper house seat, and is instead contesting the South West Coast electorate in the lower house against the sitting Liberal candidate. His sons, as in 2014, are contesting Northern Metro for unclear reasons – in 2014 Purcell told Crikey that he had an “interest” in Northern Metro but I’ve no idea what that might be, nor do I feel I could reasonably speculate.
Also there is a 2018 election page on Purcell’s website (which appears to be doubling as the party’s website now, though it also has some outdated 2014 material): https://www.jamespurcell.com.au/about-us/about-james-purcell/
By the way…
“At the *food* of the ticket”
Is that a sausage sizzle, perchance?
Just my obsession with feeding people coming to the fore… thanks, I’ll fix.
An excellent Blog and good read.
Thank you…
Glenn Druery
Hi Glenn,
Have to say, I wasn’t expecting you to show up in my inbox! Thanks for your comment.
Since you are here, and since I’m not above being opportunistic, I have a question for you. I haven’t been following the preference stories very much, because I’ve had my hands full reading all the various policy platforms, but of course I’m aware that you have brokered (is that the right word?) group voting ticket preferences for quite a lot of parties at this election (Thus, it must be said, driving me a little bonkers trying to decipher who is actually allied to whom).
I’m wondering how this works – specifically, how is it possible to come up with preference deals that are going to be beneficial to all the parties you are working with when there are clearly more of them than there are places in the Upper House? It seems as though this couldn’t be possible, but presumably if everyone knows you are brokering multiple deals and still goes ahead with it, they must see something in it for them?
And, hey, since I’m already being cheeky here, I have to ask – what outcome are you hoping for, in terms of small parties and the upper house at this election? Do you have favourites? Or just a yen for more independent and possibly slightly deranged voices in the upper house?
Yours with much curiosity and nosiness,
Catherine
Hi Cate,
I’m happy to chat with you directly.
Glenn
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
Just leaving this here…
http://www.starobserver.com.au/news/national-news/victoria-news/victorian-equality-roadblock/155292
Ugh, that’s unpleasant. Thanks for the info.