Assange Stands 'Real Chance' of Election In Australia

Okian Warrior writes "Various new sources are reporting the results of a recent Labor Party poll, indicating that Julian Assange would be elected to the Australian senate, should he choose to run. From the Sun Daily article: 'Controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stands a real chance of winning an upper house seat in his native Australia if he presses ahead with plans to stand for election, a poll showed Saturday. A survey conducted by the ruling Labor party's internal pollsters UMR Research and published in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper showed 25 percent of those polled would vote for the whistleblowing website chief.'"

Comments

If Julian Assange gets elected

[FudRucker]

i will sell everything i own and move to australia because it is the last western nation with a little redemption left in it

Re:If Julian Assange gets elected

[Ihmhi]

I'm just concerned an "Australian" kangaroo will "spontaneously" explode in some American city, and then before the ink on the infrastructure rebuilding contracts is dry we'll be flying upside-down C-130s and invading down under to "liberate" them from a "terrorist atheist criminal dictator".

Man, the fucked up thing is that the Australians aren't even the most dangerous thing on the continent. We'll probably lose a couple hundred guys just to the local wildlife.

Re:If Julian Assange gets elected

[njen]

Actually, he hasn't been officially charged yet.

Re:If Julian Assange gets elected

[Asic Eng]

Well, Germany now has the Pirate party represented in it's fourth state parliament (Berlin: 15 seats, Saarland 4 seats, North_Rhine-Westphaliav 20 seats, Schleswig-Holstein 6 seats). They are polling at 11% for the federal elections.

One senate seat doesn't seem like all that much...

Re:If Julian Assange gets elected

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Man, the fucked up thing is that the Australians aren't even the most dangerous thing on the continent. We'll probably lose a couple hundred guys just to the local wildlife.

Well yeah, even the kangaroos have stinger missiles.

Re:If Julian Assange gets elected

[Gadget_Guy]

I hear Bill Clinton wants to move there and run for office.

It wouldn't work, I'm afraid. He would have to be an Australian citizen to stand for office, and I have heard that Bill Clinton was actually born in Kenya.

Re:If Julian Assange gets elected

[dwywit]

Um, the aboriginal people of Australia, to the best of my knowledge, have never had a treaty with the crown. So there are no such things as "aboriginal treaty rights". Sure, successive governments, their bureaucracies, farmers/squatters, rednecks, and others have trampled all over aboriginal people and their traditions, beliefs, and moral rights - but there's never been a treaty to break. The maori people of New Zealand have a treaty, but not the aboriginals of Australia.

Re:If Julian Assange gets elected

[Jeeeb]

OTOH, if it treats its citizens like it treats the koalas (q.v. recent PBS Nature episode) and aborigines and rainforest, maybe it's not that great. Only 15 million people and all that real estate, and still they manage to screw up the best parts.

There's 22 million people in Australia.

As for the rest of your quote I think you might be talking about historical treatment of these things. Yeah Koalas were hunted till about 1920. Now days they are a protected species, with large wildlife sanctuaries and facilities dedicated to nursing injured Koalas and rearing orphaned Koalas to release them back into the wild.

Aboriginal people were treated terribly historically. They were denied the vote and treated as second class citizens until the 1960s (remind you of some other places?) Now days traditional land rights are acknowledged. Aboriginals are given special treatment under the welfare system. And there have been public apologies by several Prime Ministers for the various ways they were mistreated.

I'm not sure of the history of rainforests in Australia but before you go running your mouth you could have at least done some precursory research on conservation efforts in Australia. Firstly the Green party is the 3rd largest political party in Australia and you'll find vast areas of national parks and state parks across Australia. Over 10% of Australia's land mass is national parks. That's an area bigger than Texas.

Re:If Julian Assange gets elected

[Dantoo]

While most television aired in the US undoubtedly manages to portray foreign events deeply, fairly and truthfully, there may have been one or two liberties taken in the report referred to.

No Aboriginal treaty/treaties exist in Australia therefore crapping over them becomes ridiculously hard. There is a song about "Treaties" that was very popular though. It proclaims the need for a treaty such as that exists between the Maori and Pakeha of New Zealand. View here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7cbkxn4G8U
Rainforest around suburban Sydney hasn't existed in general since the local glaciers melted 20k years ago.
One State Government comparatively recently spent 30 million dollars gently de-sexing koalas to reduce their numbers as local over-population was severely degrading the natural environment. Others have spent far greater amounts constructing tunnels and overpasses for them for them to use in post-arboreal nocturnal perambulation (walkabouts).

Perhaps there is a point here in that if the Aboriginals were to be encouraged to go back to eating koalas (lack of predators leaves only disease and habitat as population controllers) there'd be more chance of cultivating rainforests around the suburbs. Note for Man vs Food fans: Koalas are rumoured to have a strong eucalyptus flavour that disagrees.

Disclaimer: I currently live in a suburb that has many koalas happily harvesting the local sclerophyll forest. They are common in this locality. We have internal plumbing to crap upon and this makes up for a lack of treaties to disrespectfully soil.

Re:If Julian Assange gets elected

[TapeCutter]

We had some grizzly bears, the fucking crocs ate 'em.

Re:If Julian Assange gets elected

[Chemware]

Actually, Australian kangaroos are pretty nasty ...

There's a story around about how a Australian helicopter simulator was being demonstrated to some US colleagues. After doing a few passes over some nice rural landscape they were very surprised when some of the kangaroos below pulled out a few shoulder-mounted SAMs and started shooting. They were even more surprised when they were "hit", and crashed and burned.

It turns out that when the software engineers created the kangaroo objects they did so by cloning some soldier objects, and then just changing the uniforms. They forgot to change some of the more aggressive behaviours.

Re:If Julian Assange gets elected

[overbaud]

"Few koalas live outside Australia, but the U.S. government designated the animal as endangered in response to a petition filed by animal-protection groups. The Australian government, which bans hunting and commercial use of koalas, sees no scientific evidence that it is likely to become endangered anytime soon." http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/05/0510_020510_TVkoala.html So basically the US who have no idea what is going on in Australia BOW DOWN TO SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS and list it as endangered. Meanwhile in Australia in certain areas Koalas are so prolific they are hurting their environment. As for the rain forrest MASSIVE amounts of Australian rainforest is protected. I can only guess what the BS in PBS stands for. You're a dick. If you really want to get pissed about something try the Japanese hunting wales for 'Research Purposes'... or better yet fix your own country first.

"Internal Poll"

[DesScorp]

Because they'd never lie about his chances in an attempt to drum up support. Oh no, that would never happen.

Immunity

[koekebakker]

Would this grant him political immunity? ;-)

Re:Immunity

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Sad really when you think about it. Citizen Assange can be set up, framed and generally gone after with impunity. Politician Assange, dearie me no, he's important! Might cause an international incident!

The system is so broken.

Re:Government allegiance & perception of indep

[Sique]

Because WikiLeaks can only publish material it gets. If they don't get material about Russia and China, they can't publish it. WikiLeaks doesn't actively go for material, they just offer a platform to publish it.
If you want something about Russia and China published on WikiLeaks, go, get the stuff and publish it!

Re:Ouch

[BatGnat]

Residents of the U.S.A. elected George W. Bush; how could he be worse than that....

And you call us 'batshit insane'?

Re:I dont think so..

[sco08y]

from memory he has a criminal record for hacking in Australia yeah?
you cant be in parlment with a criminal record...

Nope, only a handful of convictions (treason, bribery, etc.) are disqualifiers from Oz parliament. His main problem would be he'd have to renounce any dual citizenship.

If they do vote him in, the beauty of democracy is that it thoroughly rewards masochistic voters.

No

[Sycraft-fu]

There's no such thing. You are thinking diplomatic immunity. Diplomatic immunity is granted to any accredited diplomat working in the host country. It also can be, and is, granted to politicians visiting on official state trips. However it isn't something that happens by magic. It is granted by the host nation, meaning the nation the person is in.

What's more, it can be waived. If a diplomat commits a crime the host nation can ask the parent nation to waive immunity. Depending on the relationship between the nations, this can happen. An immunity waiver isn't up to the diplomat, it is up to their government.

So even if immunity applied (it wouldn't since he was never granted it) Sweden could ask the Australian government to waive immunity on the rape charges. Australia probably would.

It is not this magic shield that protects any politician people seem to think.

Re:Here comes the begging for campaign donations

[TapeCutter]

Pauline Hanson was the last ideologue to mishandle campaign funds, she was jailed for it. This is not the US, the guy with the most money is not the automatic winner here. Our politicians benifit greatly by pointing out fraudulent behaviour by their enemies to the federal police, if they are not prepared to take it to court then they are simply preaching to their own choir and nobody else takes it seriously.

Having seen the bombardment of political ads in the US I was stunned as to how nasty they get. At least the politicians here put some effort into their bullshit and attempt to make a reasonably civil and coherent argument in their advertising. I look at some of the attack ads in the US and think to myself; "the attacker must think I'm an idiot", I thought the same thing when they put Palin up for VP. Republican's treated their suppoerters as morons by selecting a village idiot as a VP candidate, they deserved to lose.