Wikileaks Party Making Questionable Deals In Attempt To Win Senate Seat

An anonymous reader writes "The Brisbane Times notes that 'Julian Assange's Wikileaks Party has come under fire for directing its preferences to the Shooters and Fishers Party and the white nationalist Australia First Party ahead of both major parties and the Greens in the NSW Senate race. Australia First's policies include reducing and limiting immigration and "abolishing multiculturalism." The chairman of Australia First, Jim Saleam, is a former neo-Nazi who was convicted in the late 1980s of organizing a shotgun attack on the home of an Australian representative of the African National Congress. WikiLeaks candidates in NSW include human rights activist Kellie Tranter.' The Wikileaks Party blamed the outcome on administrative problems. This is drawing further criticism."

Comments

Re:Why wasn't this leaked by Wikileaks?

[LordLucless]

Preferences are public knowledge. It was out in the open - how do you think people know about it? Investigative reporting? In Australia? Heh.

All minor parties are teaming together

[Yynatago]

No surprise here. All the minor parties are doing the same thing. The Australian sex party is preferencing Pauline Hanson's Australia First Party ahead of Greens.

Re:All minor parties are teaming together

[Liam Pomfret]

No surprise here. All the minor parties are doing the same thing.

Some parties are. Not all of them. The Pirate Party in particular opted out of those deals, and allocated preferences according to a vote of the membership. The party has also published its preferencing process online, which you can read at http://pirateparty.org.au/2013/08/18/preferencing-statement-for-federal-election-2013/

Below the line

[batkiwi]

Anyone who is actually voting for wikileaks will likely be well informed and voting below the line anyways.

For those not familiar with australian voting, we have preferential instant runoff first past the pole voting.

You can either vote "above the line," where you select ONE party, and that party decides how your preferences fall if they don't win a seat, or you can vote "below the line," where you number individual candidates "1, 2, 3.....".

Re:White countries for everyone.

[GumphMaster]

Australian Aborigines have never been of white skin. Only 2.5% of the Australian population is Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander (down from 100% in 1787) but were not counted for federal government purposes until 1967 when Section 121 of our constitution was amended. The top five ancestries are English, Australian, Irish, Scottish, and Italian making up more than 68% of the respondents (http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2011/quickstat/0?opendocument&navpos=220) The last overtly "White Australia Policy" legislation favouring white-only immigration was not dismantled until 1973.

Re:Hunters and Fishers

[MichaelSmith]

They are the Australian gun lobby (like the US NRA sort of) and not regarded very well. I always put them last along with the "fathers who don't want to pay child support" and the anti immigration groups.

Re:Again and Again

[Liam Pomfret]

What does this have to do with Assange directly?He is only one of 7 wikileaks candidtates, and he is running in Queensland.

Incorrect. Assange is running in Victoria. The Wikileaks Party isn't fielding any candidates in Queensland whatsoever.