This is happening. Game of Mates author and crusader against corruption Dr Cameron Murray is contesting South Brisbane. As someone who has provided invaluable resources and reflects PPAU principles and values, I think it is our duty to endorse and support him in unseating the deputy Premier. Fellow Pirates, what say ye?!
Not only would the move be highly beneficial for QLD, but the additional publicity, potential connections and support we could build in Brisbane could be very beneficial for the PPAU. It sounds a win-win-win to me.
This is great Jesse. Do you have a non paywalled link of the Courier one?
Weāve endorsed at least one non-Pirate candidate in the past - Scott Ludlam in WA-2013 (we didnāt stand a candidate, although we did stand @Fletcher and @poedgirl in the rerun in 2014).
Iād say thereās no reason we canāt, although it might be courteous to ask first.
Sorry, it was a temp non-paywall for me when I got it from the Facebook post comment here:
Cool. Iāll formally propose it at the next NC meeting, and then should we be willing to go ahead I would be happy to personally email Cameron on behalf of the PPAU to see if he would accept our endorsement and support.
It might be awkward politically given itās also āthe Greens most winnable seat in QLDā and will likely be hotly contested, but weāre a party of principle, so I think it would be wrong for us not to endorse him. If it pisses off a few QLD Greens thatās their problem.
There are actually 3 (or 4, but theyāre only putting effort into 3) āmost winnable seatsā, of which South Brisbane is one. Going off four-party-preferred Senate results from last year thereās about a 2% or less margin between the Greens and Labor in those four (inner-city) seats, but Laborās senate performance in Qld last year was super soft compared to their 2015 primaries - up to 11 points lower. @JakeSchoermer could also comment, I guess
Why wait on something like this? I kicked off the topic by email internally to see if we want to move forward on that idea now
Something I just realised: The other politically awkward thing is that Sustainable Australia has a really strong anti-immigration stance.
Reducing net immigration back to around the original 70k p.a. (about half of what it currently is) doesnāt seem āvery strongā to me, if anything it sounds centrist in the context of existing policy vs Hansonās āZero Net Immigrationā.
Itās hard arguing thatās a radical policy when 70-80k p.a. was status quo from post WW2 until Howard.
From what I understand about them they say itās not on race grounds but of their ideology of not growing the country very much (or changing things much) from where we are now. Not Growing isnāt really covered in our Pirate principles one way or the other, itās just a difference of opinion on how to make the world ābetterā. I personally wouldnāt want to support SA outright but Iām not against standing with them on common interests, and corruption in p politics is a BIG one, and they are winning some high profile personalities to be on their side.