Just wondering what the strategy should be for this.
Obviously running a candidate would be a huge undertaking, if nobody volunteers who’s actually from the region, it’d be impractical to ship someone in. Barnaby/The Nationals still would have won, he just lost on a technicality.
New England appears to be open to free-thinking, given that it was Tony Windsor’s seat as an independant in the past, but he has quit politics and said he’s not going to run. Tony was a mixed bag, with some of his views good (rent seeking, carbon tax, improved services in country, NBN, farmers rights against mining companies) and some bad (against SSM, pro death penalty) but it does show that people of New England would care about some of our policies.
There is a lot of national attention on just this one seat, which is perfect for a minor party to focus their resources on, as it gets the name out there to the whole country.
Perhaps look into Independent Rob Taber as an endorsement or potential alliance. He seems decent. Big on Solar, and other points of view seem mostly in line with us (some different opinion on First Home Owners/Superannuation).
Unless there is a local support group, there isn’t much to be gained from it. We ran in the Canning By-election in 2015 which was useful. We had (@poedgirl) a candidate, it was in Perth so had other members who could help out. It was a good experiment, we tested our campaigning capacity and did okay.
Without the active members and a candidate there isn’t much to be gained from participating in by-elections. I don’t think we should endorse anyone. It is a waste of time and energy. Instead we should be campaigning on our platform. It is what we exist to bring into being.
Slight segue, Bennelong by-election has been called to be on the 16th of December. Given it’s an inner Sydney city electorate, there’s better chances we have members there who could contest.
There’s going to be a lot of stiff competition in Bennelong, as there is already in New England even though not many of these parties even ran in New England the first time and their candidates are shipped in.
If we don’t do it, I’m sure there will be more by-elections or even a full election to come out of this mess.