Blah. Blah blah. Blah blah blah.
See : Beyond Voting.
Left
Socialist Alliance: Sean Brocklehurst for Pascoe Vale and Sarah Hathway for Geelong; Stephen Jolly (Socialist Party) for Richmond. Also, Joseph Toscano (Anarchist Media Institute/Libertarian Workers For A Self-Managed Society) for Frankston.
Right
John Carbonari’s Wig (Australia First Party) for Bayswater; oodles of right-wing Xtians in umpteen other seats. (Oh, and Paul Madigan is running as an Independent in Hastings.) Sadly, One Nation is not fielding any candidates, but in Queensland Pauline Hanson is today re-assuming leadership of the failboat.
I made a list of far-right candidates who cracked a thousand votes:
* Wayne Knight in Broadmeadows
* Melanie Vassiliou in Clarinda (currently at 967 votes, 63.7% counted)
* Noelle Walker in Dandenong (picked up DLP votes)
* Peter Simmons in Mill Park
* Trent Schneider-Johnson in Thomastown
* Rodney Le Nepveu in Yuroke
* Imad Hirmiz in Yuroke
And some interesting independent candidates, who are NOT far-right:
* Jamie McCaffrey in Northcote. Lower-house candidate for the Gotye party.
* Sean Brocklehurst in Pascoe Vale. Best performing Socialist Alliance candidate.
* Stephen Jolly in Richmond. Best performing (only?) Socialist Party candidate.
* Clarke Martin in Sandringham. Check out the makebaysidebetter.com.au website, I would vote for him.
Sean Brocklehurst got 1260 votes (3.22%), which is the closest any SA candidate has come to getting their deposit back for ages. It was certainly a big improvement on what they got in Brunswick last time (1.11%). Steve Jolly got 3407 (8.50%) in Richmond, which is a slight dip from the 8.66% he got last time.
The big phenomenon this time was the drive to get the Liberals out. Labor benefited from this, big time. This is especially because Trades Hall mobilised thousands of unionists to door-knock in marginal seats. Trades Hall is intending to keep these people mobilised, because they realise the unions were ripped off badly by Labor after the 2007 Federal election. It will therefore be interesting to see what happens when Trades Hall and the Labor Government have a serious argument – as happens at least once a term when Labor is in office.