candidates

So, these are the candidates for my federal parliamentary seat of Ryan in the upcoming election:

• Percy Campbell, Family First Party
• Simon Ingram, Australian Democrats
  
• Michael Johnson, Liberal Party
• Neville Solomon, Citizens Electoral Council
  
• Paul Swan, Greens
• Victoria Chatterjee, Australian Labor Party

I can reduce it to four very quickly. The first is from the religious right. The fourth is from the protectionists, a group I thought had gone quietly into the night in the first half of this century. I can abide neither.

Normally, I'd probably vote Democrat, Green, Labor, Liberal, in that order. However, the Green candidate is, well, very green. In fact, he's still an undergraduate student. Its probably not fair to discriminate on the basis of age, but I can't convince myself that this person could adequately represent the electorate. Doubly vexing, the Democrat candidate is not much older, leaving similar doubts. The labor candidate doesn't fill me with confidence either, but at least she seems to have run some things and been involved in politics a bit. I cannot vote liberal, regardless of the candidate, because of what the current government has done to my country, and because its leader fails in any way to represent what I consider Australian.

Actually, this post is at least partly for my own reference, to consult when I get my postal vote form.