Politics, Poetry and Reviews

Blog Hiatus during June

Just a quick note to say that I’ll now be travelling until late June, so there will be no more politics posts until I return just before the election.  I hope to quickly look at some of our independents then, assuming I am not completely jetlagged.  Maybe even if I am – in which case, be prepared for an even more idiosyncratic style of commentary than usual…

In the interim, you can still comment, but please note that I’m moderating all comments and will not be checking my email quite so many times per day as I usually do, so it may take a day or so for your comment to be approved.  I’ll generally approve anything that is not absolutely abusive, though if you are posting the same insults and not adding to the conversation, I will eventually cut you off.

I will also be closing comments on a handful of posts where the comments are getting contentious, or are pretty much all just insults with no informational content.  I am totally fine with people disagreeing with me, but if all you have to say is that I am stupid and biased, well, I never claimed not to be biased (in fact, I am pretty open about my biases), and as for stupidity, anyone reading this is probably clever enough to decide for themselves about my intelligence.

There are, of course, a number of small parties that will appear on the ballot paper which I have not addressed this time around – please refer to my 2016 Federal Election index page to find what I’ve written about them in the past – or visit their websites for yourselves!  You might be pleasantly surprised by them.  I really don’t know everything!

And please – enrol to vote.  Enrol to vote TODAY if you haven’t already – the rolls close at 8pm this evening, and I want to see all of you on them!

See you in five weeks!

15 Comments

  1. Gee Jen

    Have a great trip!

  2. Ruth

    Thanks Cate
    Find your summaries really helpful – enjoy your travel.

  3. Sandy Buck

    Thank you Catherine, I greatly enjoy these political posts. I love that you have the strength and ability to trawl through the information each group puts out there and summarise it.

    Enjoy your “hiatus”. I look forward to your return and whatever you manage to post then.
    Cheers,
    Sandy

  4. lsn

    Have a great trip and I look forward to jet lagged commentary. Heh.

  5. Simon

    16 Ungrouped independents in Victoria! You’re going to have fun when you get back

    All the rest are parties that I think you’ve already covered (Group B is the ticket of the no-longer-registered Australian Democrats)

    • Catherine

      Oh lord, I did not want to know that!!!

      • Simon

        Sorry to tell you that two of the “NSW Only” parties you chose not to review have turned up on the Victorian Senate Ballot:
        Renewable Energy Party
        Science Party (running a joint ticket with the Cyclists)

        Also that we have tickets from both Australian Christians and the Christian Democrats, who I always thought were the same party

        • Catherine

          Oh blast. At least they are interesting looking parties, but I’m not at all sure this will be possible to assess in the two or three jetlagged days I will have when I return.

          I think the two Christian parties used to be the same, but one is now Phelps and the other Lyle Shelton? But I’m not sure.

    • Catherine

      I absolutely refuse to go down this rabbit hole on a crappy cheap laptop with poor internet connection while travelling, but will certainly investigate these later… Thank you!

  6. Simon

    This guy found more links on the independents than I did, and wrote his own reviews
    Albeit his reviews are much less comprehensive than yours

    http://decryption.net.au/index.php/2016/06/20/who-the-hell-are-all-these-people-on-the-victorian-senate-ballot-paper/

  7. André

    Hi Cate, I’ve just finished my reviews of all the parties: http://axvoter.tumblr.com/

    I’ve posted everything I could find about the Victorian independents, which is in the three most recent entries at the time of writing this comment. I also reviewed every party running throughout the country and the Democrats, who are de-registered but one faction is standing as “Group B” in Victoria and another faction has a below the line indie in Queensland. Hopefully my links, as well as those from comments above, prove helpful if you decide to write anything on Victoria’s independents upon your return.

    Tomorrow I’ll post an index, and I also plan to review Love Australia or Leave, a vile party that sought registration a bit too late to make the ballots.

    and now I need to actually finalise my preferences…!

    • Catherine

      Awesome! I’ve just arrived back in Melbourne, and spent the plane trip writing up 14 of the independents, which I am trying to post this evening, before I succumb to jetlag. I shall look forward to reading your analysis when I am awake!

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