voted

Well, I've filled in my ballots, and I even found an Australian to witness my postal vote envelope. Hopefully I'll mail the envelope either on my way home tonight or, if I'm not sure about postage, tomorrow morning on my way to uni.

I've already done a rundown of my house candidates (for Ryan), and this afternoon I did a whole lot of scouring for information on the web on the independents and more obscure parties running for the senate.

These were the notes I gathered, first for independents, then for parties. "????" indicates that I couldn't find any information on the candidates or their policies. The lack of comment about the policies of the major parties means that they seemed clear to me. Other factors I took into account were the preference listings from the ABC web site (far, far, far and away the best aggregate site for electoral information).

Note: these are my opinions, are neither impartial, objective, nor complete, and I only really expect them to be useful to people who know my politics and can use that knowledge as a subjective filter. You need to determine for yourself which way you should vote. If you take issue with a characterisation, email or comment and correct me; I don't consider myself an authority by any means.

terry rushton
- ????
- preferences to libs, nats, ffp, one nation
eamon coll
- CQU??
- preferences to libs, nats, ffp, one nation
selwyn johnston
- http://www.johnston-independent.com
- expensive water scheme
- zero net immigration
- anti-republic
- very conservative
susan harvey
- ????
gail duncan
- ????
- strange preferencing
kim mcintosh
- ????
- strange preferencing
pauline hanson
- if you're voting, you know who she is and what she stands for
- see enough rope interview
judy smith
- hanson's sister, running mate
hetty johnson
- single issue, child abuse activist
diana scott
- appears to be press contact for hetty johnston
darryl angus mcarthur
- ????
hassan ghulam
- immigrant (esp afghans @ nauru) activist and spokesman

non-custodial parents party
- as the name suggests
- largely single-issue, social conservatives
libs
- "lying rodent" brandis is a career politician, trood seems better
citizens electoral council
- protectionists
labor
- 2 good candidates (esp mclucas), the other sounds like bill ludwig's son
socialist alliance
- to the left what FFP are to the right
liberals for forests
- single issue moderate environmentalists
one nation
- ultraconservative
family first
- religious right
nationals
- new country seems more in the spirit of the country party
fishing party
- single-issue recreational fishing group
greens
- the drew-ids, difficult to find bios for 2nd and 3rd candidates
- activists, not legislators
hemp
- single issue, marijuana prohitibion
great australians
- policy-less nostalgic conservatives?
new country party
- as the name suggests
- not enamoured of NP relationship with Libs
- fairly conservative, but still basically centralist
australian progressive alliance
- the democrats without the baggage?
- newman seems a good candidate, the other is a kid
democrats
- candidates seem reasonable
- shame about current state of the party