Victorian State Election 2018: Meet Bobby Singh

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

Facebook page for Bobby Singh: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003227085250
Themes: Unclear, but somewhat conservative.  Employment and cost of living seem to be areas of interest.

With friends like these…
The Group Voting Ticket

As an ungrouped independent, Singh doesn’t get a group voting ticket.  But it’s interesting to see where he has been placed by others. His best billing comes from Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party, which puts him at 11th, after Chawla and Lee, the Aussie Battlers and the other ungrouped independents.  Chawla and Lee put Singh at 24, but beyond that, he’s not getting much love.  A lot of the parties in South Eastern Metropolitan seem to have decided that Independents are far too much like hard work, and have stuck all the ungrouped independents last or near last on the ballot.

The Body Politic
Policies, Snark, Terrible Theme Songs (how can I be this far into the project with no theme songs?) and Other Observations

Sometimes, the mindset of our independent candidates is difficult to fathom.  For example, if I shared a name with someone who was recently convicted on multiple counts of fraud, I would probably make some sort of effort to create a website or other place with my name (and maybe even my policies) on it, so that the first thing people found when they Googled me wasn’t this.  Or, alternatively, this.

But evidently, I just don’t think like a would-be-independent politician.

So.  The Bobby Singh who is actually running for election in the South Eastern Metropolitan Region is almost certainly Jatinder (Bobby) Singh, not Baljit (Bobby) Singh.   I say ‘almost certainly’, because that’s the Bobby Singh whose Facebook page is full of political memes and ads attacking Daniel Andrews.  It doesn’t actually say that he is running as an independent candidate, but since he has previously run in SE Metropolitan as a Palmer United Candidate, and prior to that as an independent candidate in Lyndhurst in the Federal Election, I’m reasonably confident that I’ve found the right person.

But what does he stand for? I hear you ask.

Well.  Singh is an auto-mechanic who formerly owned his own business in Dandenong.  Judging by his Facebook page, he really doesn’t like Daniel Andrews.  He clearly feels that Andrews is way too soft on terrorists, excusing them by saying we are all racists for saying mean things about them.  There are a lot of memes about respecting fallen soldiers and how they gave their lives for our liberty.  And there are news articles about Nigerian Christians being slaughtered by Muslims.  So clearly he’s sitting on the more conservative / reactionary side of politics.

Aha!  And I have now found his online flyer, which says he is a voice for ‘Cost of living – Unemployment – Jobs – Environment’

And… that’s about all we get.  I found an interview with him on SBS, from when he stood as a Palmer United candidate in 2014, but unfortunately, it is in Punjabi, a language I do not speak.  I’m linking to it anyway, in case someone reading this does understand it.

I also found another 2014 interview with him that was printed in the Guardian, but it is not entirely illuminating:

“I run a small auto-technician business in Dandenong and have been in the area for 25 years. I’ve seen the Holden factory close and many manufacturing businesses disappearing. The cost of living is increasing too, and I don’t see a great future for our children.

“I was a candidate for the party in the federal election last year. I was invited to put in an application for the state election about six months ago.

“Clive Palmer is one of the most generous men, who wants to do something for ordinary people. But I’m not standing for Clive, I’m standing for the party. He’s the one funding the party and he has a lot of input and is giving us a lot of financial help, but we are all doing as much as we can financially and emotionally.

“We are launching our policies on Sunday and I don’t really know what they are, but we are against the sale of public assets and we oppose the privatisation of the Port of Melbourne. I haven’t got much other information but a lot of people have had input into them [the polices].”

I…. feel that if you are going to stand for a party, it would be a good idea to know what the policies are?

But it does underline the fact that cost of living and employment have been issues Mr Singh has cared about for a long time.

OK, you know what?  I’m rebelling.  There have been absolutely NO terrible theme songs for any political parties yet this election, and I’m feeling fed up.  If I’m going to have to trawl through dozens of pages to find the correct Bobby Singh because he doesn’t have an easily-identifiable online profile, then the least I should be getting out of this is a theme song.

Or at least some music.  Because, as you may have gathered, I’ve been at this all day.

The posts are going to slow down a bit now, because I have a friend coming for dinner, and after today, any posts I write will be from scratch rather than having been drafted ahead of time.  So I’m going to leave you now with some music I found when I was searching for Bobby Singh on Google.  It turns out that if you Google ‘Bobby Singh Australia’, one of the first things that comes up is this rather fantastic tabla player.’

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tyb1ykLktE]

Hands up who would rather vote for tabla-playing Bobby Singh than any of  the other candidates or profiles I’ve profiled today?