I know the blog has been pretty dead lately, but I have some new profiles for the 2010 federal election guide up to read and comment upon. You can read profiles now for the Victorian Senate race, Denison and Franklin.
The Greens tonight chose their candidate to run for the Bradfield by-election later this year. The Greens have chosen Susie Gemmell, who was the Greens candidate for Bradfield at the 2007 federal election and the overlapping state electorate of Ku-ring-gai at the 2003 and 2007 state elections. Gemmell is an advisor to Greens MLC and Senate candidate Lee Rhiannon. Her media release announcing her candidacy in 2007 said:
In 2004 Susie began working with Greens MP Lee Rhiannon in the NSW Parliament. Prior to this she worked in the IT industry as a software designer, trainer, documentation writer and project manager. She holds a Bachelor of Communications (UTS) and has also worked as a journalist and computer teacher. Susie is currently studying post-graduate Environmental Studies at Macquarie University.
Update 17 September: I posted this a few days ago but took it down when I realised I had posted it before they were planning to announce.
You might have noticed that I haven’t been posting much on the blog over the last few weeks. One of the main reasons is that I have been working on a new project for the blog. I’m launching the first stage of that project today.
Basically I plan to do profiles of each House of Representatives seat and each Senate race before the federal election. Each profile contains various information about the seat, including candidates, history, and maps of polling booths. Most importantly, each page includes a comments thread. I wanted to post these profiles early to give people a place to discuss the lead-up to the campaign in each seat.
It’s taking me a long time to write the profiles for these seats, so I decided I would launch the guide in an unfinished state. So far I have written profiles on the NSW Senate race and seven House of Representatives seats, the two each in the ACT and Northern Territory and three of Tasmania’s five seats. I will post updates as I write more profiles over coming weeks and months.
Of course, each profile will change over the next year after it is first written, in particular the sections listing candidates and the political situation are expected to change as we get closer to the election. I encourage you to post any information in the comments thread for the relevant seat.
The Swedish Pirate Party has risen to prominence in the last few months after they managed to break into the Swedish political mainstream, polling 7% at the June European Parliament election, which saw the party elect a Member of the European Parliament. The Pirate Party agenda has since spawned dozens of political parties across the Western world, including one seeking registration here in Australia.
