Q: Please give a brief introduction of yourself

A: I am a 32 year old environmental lawyer, working in the non-profit sector with Queensland communities concerned about their local environment.

Q: If you win the seat what is the first thing you would like to achieve?

A: My top priorities if elected would be improving the public transport option for Mt Coot-tha residents (and scrapping all the urban freeway proposals in the electorate) and getting a mandatory renewable energy target into Queensland law including good rebates and feed-in-tariffs for households to encourage the use of solar energy.

Q: What are your plans for election day?

A: Tomorrow I will be visiting all the polling booths morning and afternoon to meet voters and also thank (and feed and water!) our volunteers.

Thanks Larissa for finding the time to respond to our email.

I’m curious whether DS4SEQ really has the support across Queensland that our site poll suggests, or whether a large number of DS4SEQ candidates and campaign staff/volunteers are active online and happen to be voting in our polls which gives a skewed result.

Have your say in our comments below. Does DS4SEQ really have your vote? Tell us why, or why not! If you are a DS4SEQ candidate or campaign member please disclose that in your comment.

Something I noticed straight away here in the Bulimba electorate is a difference in the literature each party has sent out.  Normally your local candidate is pictured alongside the party leader with some kind of supporting statement about how that leader is confident the candidate will work hard to serve local voters.  Paul Walker’s flyer is a good example of that.  The LNP candidate is shown with leader Lawrence Springborg behind him in classic leadership pose.

The ALP candidate has taken a slightly different approach.  Di Farmer’s flyer has her standing alongside Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.  Now granted K-Rudd is also a local and obviously fairly popular with local voters (or popular enough to win the seat in the last federal election).  But I haven’t received any Di Farmer/Anna Bligh flyers in my letterbox yet, despite receiving two of the Di Farmer/K-Rudd flyers so far.

How is your local ALP candidate promoting themselves?  Alongside Premier Bligh or alongside Prime Minister Rudd?

ALP leader Anna Bligh said:

Well, I think he should talk to the media more if he wants to get the best possible vote – Source

I agree.  In fact I figured Mr Platt would have more time on his hands to answer the QldVoice.org email Q&A that all the other candidates have been too busy campaigning to respond to.  Mr Platt’s contact details on the ECQ website are hidden behind the same media gatekeeper as all of the other ALP candidates, but fortunately the ALPQ website has his direct email address listed.

Looking forward to his responses!

A quick look at the Courier Mail’s election section answers that pretty quickly.  While most coverage is given to the two major party’s leader’s campaigns at least three stories are given prominent placement for Pauline.  The trouble is that none of them are about her positions or policies, they are all about the alleged nude photo scandal that has popped up during the campaign.

That is a lot of coverage for an independent candidate.  That in itself would be encouraging if it was substantitive coverage and not gossip about what is potentially a manufactured scandal with no truth behind it.

There are many independent candidates running in this election and none of them are receiving this kind of media coverage.  Perhaps they are not fortunate enough to have some nude photos floating around, or perhaps they aren’t savvy enough to fake such a scandal as has been suggested of Pauline.

One of three things is true here:

1. The scandal was manufactured by the alleged ex-boyfriend and the Courier Mail has fallen for it and considers it newsworthy and relevant enough to the election to cover it in depth.
2. The scandal was manufactured by Pauline or her campaign staff and the Courier Mail has fallen for it and covered it in depth.
3. The pictures are real and the Courier Mail thinks 30 year old nude pictures taken in private are relevant enough to the election to cover it in depth.

Meanwhile I’m sure some substantitive, issue-based campaigning is going on as the two major parties campaign across the state.  On the other hand, the Courier Mail is still giving a lot of page space to the mugshot of the ALP candidate who can’t be bothered campaigning in his electorate.  Must be a pretty slow election for the media.

Over the course of the event, I spoke with party staff members, volunteers, a federal member, local councillor and many of the party faithful. Probably the greatest surprise of the evening was the truly eclectic representation of people in attendance. That has always been both the true spirit and vulnerability of the ALP – the wide variety of people and position it represents. This was reflected in a complaint I heard from another member’s staff, who told me he was frustrated with the lack of cohesion of message between the ALPQ, the campaign and what was happening on the ground. Obviously he felt that this was the reason that the “message” wasn’t able to get through, and therefore the Galaxy Poll results.

I said yesterday that I was waiting for the excitement of this campaign, and tonight I felt it in the grass roots of inner city Brisbane.

With a humourous lead in by Jim Soorley (previous Lord Mayor of Brisbane), the sitting Federal Member who represents my electorate, Arch Bevis and my local councillor David Hinchcliffe – I learnt a lot about Grace Grace. Probably the greatest surprise was that she was one of the two “rebels” who organised protests against the Iraq war, back when everyone thought invading was simply a grand idea. This revelation really took me aback and made me smile as I had no notion that was her. But enough of my love affair with my local member.

Naturally today’s Galaxy Poll results were mentioned – more than once. The ongoing themes on this topic were:

• I would rather be them than us with the numbers
• I would rather be us than them – period
• There can be no protest vote
• It is up to every single person to make sure ALPQ gets over the line

When I heard Grace Grace talk about the ALPQ policies, suddenly they weren’t just convenient sound bites, but well thought out ideas with real outcomes. When she said that she was all about jobs (don’t get me started on the differences between work and jobs – I am looking at you, Mr Springborg) I must admit that my cynicism clicked into overdrive, but I was pleasantly surprised. Commitment to the infrastructure projects, traineeship programs, 3000 green jobs, payroll tax cuts, and not slashing support and direction out of the public sector sounded pretty damned good. To be honest it was like I was watching MSNBC and FoxNews at the same time – Dichotomous views. Here we seem to have the best of both solutions from the US. Whether this was intentional or no I don’t know, but it should work.

Will the ALPQ win? Will Anna Bligh buck the trend and be the first elected female leader? Will the National Party win back Queensland (the LNP really is the National Party with a sprinkling of Liberal seasoning so you don’t notice the meat)? Two weeks till we find out.

But to close on a happy note -

My favourite part of the evening happened moments after a photo was taken of Grace Grace surrounded by Jim Soorley, Arch Bevis and David Hinchcliffe.

“This one’s for Facebook!”

In a media release [link to .pdf], DS4SEQ expresses delight at the number of candidates who nominated. From the media release:

“The electorates to be contested are within the South East Queensland region and extend from the Gold Coast throughout Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast and as north as Hervey Bay. We believe this to be a fantastic feat, given that DS4SEQ has only been a political party for 3 months.”

The party is promoting itself as “a party for all of Queensland”, not just for the South-East portion of the state, and feels that its policy “is a compromise that respects the needs of regional and rural Queenslanders, while also giving fair consideration to the view of the majority of residents in South East Queensland.”

With regard to how the party recommends voters fill out their voting cards, DS4SEQ is not running a ‘Just Vote One’ campaign. Voters are urged to vote 1 for DS4SEQ and then preference the other candidates in their electorate based on their personal choice.

The full list of candidates is here.

The blog of DS4SEQ Party Leader, Jason Furze, is here.

You can interact with DS4SEQ on social networking site, Twitter, here.

His campaign launch in the streets of Beaudesert was the expected media circus. Kissing shop dummies, letting ladies grope his “chassis”, etc. My favourite moment was a guy in a motorised scooter telling him “you’re a complete idiot. Goodbye.” and scooting off. It became obvious in the last couple of days that his tilt at government was sponsored by lad’s mag Zoo Weekly, with the publication supplying the obligatory bikini-clad blonde bimbos for Capper’s first street walk and his t-shirt. The whole circus, however, has gone awry with no one actually signing Capper up as a candidate for the seat by the 12 midday deadline yesterday.

Capper blames the mag: “they were organising everything”. The mag haven’t said a thing, or even made mention of it on their website (the most I could find was a side poll yesterday – who would you vote for? Pauline Hanson or Warwick Capper?). Perhaps the results of the poll made the publisher’s of Zoo rethink their advertising budget going to support a guy that most of their online readership wouldn’t vote or cross the road for – ok, they may cross the road, but only to punch Capper in his tanned face.

The truly puzzling thing about Capper’s reason for attempting to run is some of his comments. He’d offered to star in ‘another’ adult film if elected (that’s enough for anyone NOT to vote for him); he’d offered to swap his BMW for a Hummer if elected (huh?!); and had simple ideas when it came to actual policy. Trying to drum up some attention for your new coffee shop is one thing; toying with the electorate is entirely another.

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If you’re interested in finding out who is standing in your seat, or anywhere for that matter, check out the candidates list on the ECQ website.

The DS4SEQ party has now released their candidate list, running candidates in 32 electorates from Ashgrove to Yeerongpilly (although unfortunately not in Stafford, where I would definitely be voting for them if I could), and you can visit their website for the full list.

The party operates on a single policy – “To have Daylight Saving Time introduced into the South East Queensland region under a dual time zone arrangement.” (Source)

It’ll be interesting to see if a single issue party can draw the attention of the voting public, but with that many candidates, I’m sure this won’t be the last we hear of the DS4SEQ.

This morning, at her official campaign launch, she was asked if she had become a serial campaigner, a fairly legitimate question after a failed attempt in 2004 to run for a state seat, and a failed attempt in 2007 to run for the federal Senate , where she received just 4.3% of votes (Source)

Her response? To compare herself to Abraham Lincoln.

“I’d suggest you go and have a look at the number of times Abraham Lincoln stood for Parliament – to stand up for what you believe in.”

Source

Now, I’m no expert on American politics, but even I know off the top of my head that America doesn’t actually have a Parliament. And a quick look at Abraham Lincoln’s Wikipedia page reveals that while he did indeed run for a lot of things, most of his campaigns were successful.

Not bad for a campaign that is barely a day old.

As if the seat of Beaudesert wasn’t already about to become a circus, ex-AFL football star Warwick Capper has announced he will also contest the seat, and challenged Hanson to an election day cook-off. And, since his campaign is being sponsored by men’s magazine Zoo, his campaign launch will feature “a bevy of placard-carrying bikini girls.”

Source

Up here in Queensland, we cop a bit of flack for being a bit redneck, a bit backward, a bit country bumpkin. People of Beaudesert, you have a chance to prove the critics wrong – send these two joke candidates packing, and let’s make sure this election is about the issues, and not the drama.