I really was enjoying living in the land of policies that didn’t raise my blood pressure, but now we must return to the Outdoor Recreation Party, which also goes by the catchy name of Stop the Greens.
Already, we know so much about them…
The Outdoor Recreation Party does not have a Group Voting Ticket in the Senate, so we’ll be taking a look shortly at where others have preferenced them, but this also seems like a good time to raise the issue of connections between libertarian micro-parties. You see, as you might have noticed, there have been five parties in Victoria who didn’t manage to complete Group Voting tickets – The Liberal Democrats, One Nation, the Australian Republicans, Smokers Rights, and this party, Stop the Greens. With the possible exception of the Republicans, all of these parties are on the far right and have libertarian tendencies, and it’s actually very unusual to have registered parties failing to lodge tickets, because the advantage of having people able to vote for you above the line is absolutely huge. Apparently, the reason for this was that David Leyonhjelm, the registered officer for both Stop the Greens and the Liberal democrats, was responsible for putting in Group Voting Tickets for four parties in the Victorian Senate, and was ‘overwhelmed‘.
This is hardly surprising, as one usually has one registered officer per party. Crikey has written an article suggesting that the LDP, Smokers Rights, the Republicans and Stop the Greens are very closely linked, and may have been intended to funnel votes to each other, though clearly this did not work out in Victoria. (One Nation is apparently not part of this group – it’s just disorganised) Certainly, the evidence suggests that they are working together very closely, and it’s interesting to note that three of these parties were only registered in the last couple of months, and that Leyonhjelm was involved with both.
I’ll let you reach your own conclusions on that one, but it seemed relevant to mention it. We shall now turn to the question of who likes Stop The Greens enough to put them high on their Group Voting Ticket.
