Greg SPIRAL OBJECTIVE Loses Record Collection To Fire …

Posted on October 11, 2013 by @ndy

Very sad … I remember encountering Greg/Spiral Objective mail order sometime in the early ’90s thru an ad in the Green Left Weekly(!). Thru his distro (and label: 1991–2000) he helped introduce me and countless others to a world of punk and hardcore musick, firmly rooted in a commitment to social justice and solidarity with a range of local and global projects.

The fire that destroyed the Black Cockatoo Arthouse (Park St, McLaren Vale, South Australia) and which housed Greg’s collection took place in early September but I only read about it now via Rest Assured zine …

(Details on how you can help Greg and Black Cockatoo Arthouse get back up on their feet are available via Rest Assured.)

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Volksfront Australia : Back With A Bang!

Posted on October 10, 2013 by @ndy

Huh.

On white supremacist forum Stormfront, bonehead Chris Smith has announced the reformation of Volksfront, the neo-Nazi skinhead gang originally formed in the US in 1994, and established in Australia about a decade later.* The development is curious as Volksfront in the US announced its dissolution just over a year ago, in circumstances which remain somewhat obscure, but may be connected to the mass murder by neo-Nazi skinhead Wade Michael Page in August, and increased attention from the US government. Rose City Antifa:

believe that the announced dissolution of Volksfront should be treated with some caution: Volksfront has auto-dissolved once before, in 1998, when members of Volksfront in Portland including Krager were under increased police scrutiny and decided to take apart Volksfront as an above-ground organization. Volksfront then publicly resurfaced in 2001 after three years underground. Randal Krager also made a December 2004 announcement that he had given up leadership of the organization, but was soon enough back as the head of Volksfront. The latest Volksfront announcement may therefore mainly be made out of political convenience. It is possible that key Volksfront activists will continue to work as an underground network, as there is precedent for this in the organization’s history.

Note that prior to this point, VF has operated only in NSW, and a gentleman’s agreement has existed between it and the boneheads belonging to the Southern Cross Hammerskins, restricting VF’s activities to that state. Presumably, the two gangs have arrived at a new understanding. (Smith runs the Anti-Antifa Australia blog and distributes neo-Nazi propaganda via the Heathen Noise website.) Otherwise, VF has worked in close cooperation with Welf Herfurth’s ‘national anarchist’/New Right groupuscule in Sydney, and these ties would appear to remain fairly strong.

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Sado-workism: the new culture of work in Australia [Boris Frankel]

Posted on October 2, 2013 by @ndy

Gillard snubs UN on single parent welfare, The Australian (AAP), March 4, 2013 | PM’s pay to crack $500k as part of MP salary rise, Stephanie Peatling, The Sydney Morning Herald, June 13, 2013.

Former prime minister Julia Gillard defended her controversial changes which moved single parents off their pension and on to the unemployment benefit Newstart, but she accepted Newstart was “too low”.

“I am going to stand up for it as a decision of the government I led,” she told journalist Anne Summers in Melbourne on Tuesday night.

It was the second major interview Gillard had done in as many days explaining her prime ministership, its policies, her leadership battles with Kevin Rudd and issues around gender. Summers also interviewed her in Sydney on Monday night. Both sellout audiences were overwhelmingly supportive and mostly women.

~ Julia Gillard defends single parent benefit change, Gabrielle Chan, The Grauniad, October 1, 2013

Sado-workism: the new culture of work in Australia: since the late 1970s, Australia has witnessed the reinvigoration of a type of sadism in the workplace as decision-makers have restructured key socioeconomic and cultural institutions and practices.

There are important moments in history when people say ‘fuck work’ and assert their right to be lazy. The late twentieth [?] century French anarchists understood this well. They were combating the tyrannies of the new factory system and the deification by the church and state of labourers who toiled 15 hours a day for their masters. The growing parliamentary socialist movement also tried to gain respectability by creating an image of the working man as an upright, hardworking family man who obeyed the law and never beat his wife. In response, the anarchist Elisée Reclus proclaimed:

He who commands becomes depraved, he who obeys becomes smaller. Either way, as tyrant or slave, as an officer or as an underling, man is diminished. The morality which is born out of the present conception of the state and social hierarchy is necessarily corrupt. Religions have taught us that the fear of god is the beginning of wisdom, whereas history tells us that it is the beginning of all servitude and all depravity.

Shortly after, the French Socialist Albert Metin visited Australia to observe not anarchism but the new ‘working man’s paradise’. What has changed since Metin’s visit? Certainly not wage slavery. This remains the fate of most Australian employees. However, because of unemployment, today’s anally retentive employers are less likely to hear their workers tell them to ‘stick their job up their …’. Compared with before the 1980s, hours lost to strikes have also plummeted dramatically. For example, in 1994 there were 560 industrial disputes, the lowest number since 1940. A decade later, in 2003, there were 642 disputes; although this was 82 more than in 1994, this was still a very low number compared with the 2000 to 2800 industrial disputes each year between 1969 and 1976. It is not that more strikes are good in themselves; rather, they are a barometer of a whole range of aspects of industrial relations–from how organised workers are to the harmoniousness of workplaces to the general political climate (hostile or sympathetic towards striking). Australians’ working hours per week and hours of unpaid overtime are now among the highest in the OECD. Over a quarter of the workforce works more than fifty hours per week and 64 per cent of employees work either on weekends or at night. Also, according to the Job Futures/Saulwick Employee Sentiment Survey of 2002, 47 per cent of full-time employees work an average of 7.9 hours unpaid each week.

Much more, however, is at stake than mere numbers of hours worked. The workplace of paid employment is the last frontier. Significant numbers of households –though still a minority–have, in recent decades, undergone limited democratisation in terms of the sharing of tasks and decision making. In contrast, the sphere of paid work has gone backwards. It is the citadel of sadomasochism. While gender, race and other cultural signifiers remain important, paid work is perhaps the primary definer of social identity, social power, income and meaning. Everything else in Australian culture–children, art, community and love–is now secondary. For example, a recent report by Ruth Weston and colleagues on fathers, long working hours and family wellbeing found that only 33.2 per cent of the full-time employed fathers worked 35 to 40 hours (‘standard’ hours), while 21.8 per cent worked 41 to 48 hours, 23.6 per cent worked 49 to 59 hours, and 21.4 per cent worked 60 hours or more. Meek policy proposals for ‘family friendly’ workplaces are feeble substitutes for the radical questioning of the role and place of work that was common in earlier years, and is more desperately needed now.

For decades, radical socialists, anarchists and feminists were the principal critics of work in capitalist societies. After all, the sadistic heart of capitalism–money capital–cannot beat without labour power, both past and present. The labour of previous workers is stored in the machinery, buildings, commodities and infrastructure of capitalism which they helped make. Dead labour now dominates living labour as business people increasingly dispense with their workers and turn instead to the gifts of dead labour–technology. What Marx saw happening in the 19th century capitalist use of machinery was elementary compared with recent developments. A truly dramatic phenomenon is currently underway: whenever it is cost-effective and possible (in terms of production and customer relations), businesses are expelling living workers and replacing them with ‘dead labour’ (that is, new technology) or part-time labour. The great transition from labour-intensive workplaces to capital- or technology-intensive enterprises is only in its initial stages.

Continue reading →

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2013 Australian federal election : FINAL results [LEFT/RIGHT]

Posted on October 2, 2013 by @ndy

The AEC has released the FINAL results for almost all the Lower House elections:– I’ve updated the results for (far) left and right candidates for the Australia First Party, Australian Protectionist Party, One Nation, Progressive Labour Party, Socialist Alliance, Socialist Party and a handful of independents. See : 2013 Australian federal election. How did the far right fare? (September 12, 2013) & Lenin At The 2013 Australian Federal Election (September 22, 2013).

See also : Unpopularity contest: The election wooden spooners, The Sydney Morning Herald (AAP), September 27, 2013.

In other news, the Wikileaks Party is mourning the failure of first preference choice Wayne Dropulich of The Australian Sports Party to gain a seat in the Senate and celebrating the defeat of the treacherous Greens party Senator Scott Ludlam. See : Palmer United Party claims three Senate seats, while Greens senator Scott Ludlam misses out, Judith Ireland, The Sydney Morning Herald, October 2, 2013.

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Posted on October 1, 2013 by @ndy

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antifa notes (september 26, 2013) : Lakota grandmothers, Craig Cobb, Martin Fletcher, Paul Innes, Golden Dawn yadda yadda yadda

Posted on September 26, 2013 by @ndy

Well I was simply going to post some blah on Facebook but then I remembered I had a blog and then I thought hey why not post the blah here?

So …

Mark Zuckerberg asks ‘What have you been up to?’

And the answer is, inter alia, I’ve been laffing at a photo of antifa grandmas in North Dakota (US). Here they’re pictured with a flag they ‘captured’ and subsequently burned.

The flag was taken in Leith, ND, where a handful of nazis are trying (against opposition) to establish what’s sometimes termed a ‘Pioneer Little Europe’: basically, a White enclave. Spearheading the effort is a Canuckistanian nazi named Craig Cobb. Cobb was previously responsible for publishing a website called podblanc (founded in April 2007). Since closed, it featured all the usual nazi shite you’d expect, most notoriously, perhaps, a gruesome video titled ‘Execution of a Tajik and a Dagestani’, which documented the murder of two men by a neo-Nazi gang in Russia. (Also involved in the project is the National Socialist Movement, an outfit of Hollywood Nazis whose sole Australian representative was once Carl D Thompson, a former editor of the One Nation newspaper.)

Curiously, podblanc was once heavily promoted, along with a range of other racist, fascist, White supremacist and neo-Nazi propaganda materials, by a local (Sydney-based) White supremacist named Martin Fletcher on his website Down Under Newslinks (aka ‘Australian Nationalist Resource’: “Tracking Non-White Crime and Events Affected by Immigration”). In the intervening years Martin has removed much of this material from his site, and is currently the ‘Vice Chairman and Website Administrator’ for the Australian version of the ‘Party for Freedom’, an anti-Muslim micro-party modelled on Geert Wilder’s Dutch example. Like a number of others who’ve made the transition from blaming The Jew to blaming The Muslim for all of the world’s many problems, Martin has yet to give a satisfactory account of why he found Nazism so appealing.

Another Australian identity associated with Cobb’s project in North Dakota is Paul Innes. For several years Paul was the moderator of the ‘Down Under’ segment of Stormfront, the world’s leading site for White supremacist ideology; currently, moderating duties are shared between the (Melbourne-based) leader of the neo-Nazi groupuscule Nationalist Alternative and some other bloke. Innes got a little police and media attention back in early 2009 for his plans to establish a ‘Pioneer Little Europe’ in the Perth foothills. More recently, police have charged several Perth men for distributing nazi stickers.

Finally, Dr Cam and I have interviewed an anti-fascist activist about the activities of Golden Dawn in Greece (Athens) and Australia (Melbourne); the interview will be broadcast tomorrow on 3CR at 5.30pm.

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Lenin At The 2013 Australian Federal Election

Posted on September 22, 2013 by @ndy

Last week I took a look at the election of September 7 and how the far right fared. While results have still to be finalised, here’s a brief account of the material verdict of history enacted upon the candidates for the far left. Note that the CPA did not stand any candidates at this election, nor did the CPA(ML), SAlt or TP; the Sparts denounced everyone else on the PSEUDO-left in this handy leaflet.

Communist League

In a move that shocked many most some me, Ron Poulsen of the mighty Communist League elected not to battle for the seat of Blaxland this year, choosing instead to fly the red flag in the NSW Senate. As a result, Ron received 148 votes [FINAL], or 0.0003 of a capitalist quota.

Progressive Labour Party

Technically speaking, the PLP didn’t run a candidate this election, but supported Susanna Scurry in her attempt to snatch the seat of Newcastle. In the end Susanna scored 1,026 class-conscious votes (1.20%) [FINAL].

Socialist Alliance

SA stood seven candidates for the Lower House and a Senate ticket in NSW.

Liah Lazarou in Adelaide scored 980 votes (1.07%) [FINAL] and came last of six candidates. Corio (VIC) has been confirmed as a decidedly un-Christian location, with Godless Communism (aka Sue Bull: 680 votes/0.75%) [FINAL] beating both the Australian Christians’ and Rise Up Australia candidates (550/0.61% and 364/0.40% respectively). In Fremantle, Atheistic Socialism done OK too, Sam Wainwright beating the CEC (131), APP (205) and RUA (416) candidates: his 743 votes (0.85%) [FINAL] leaving SA in striking distance of Family First (0.93), Katter’s Australian Party (1.22) and Australian Christians (1.34%). In a crowded field of eleven, Liam Flenady gained 377 votes (0.44%) [FINAL] in Griffith (QLD), Socialism proving to be more popular than Stable Population (165/0.19%) but not much else (including fundamentalist Christianity). In Newcastle, Zane Alcorn (616 votes/0.72%) [FINAL] proved too popular for the Australian Independents (367/0.43%) but no others, including the fascist Australia First Party. Peter Boyle in Sydney done a bit better: his 614 votes (0.70%) [FINAL] forcing independent Joanna Rzetelski (602/0.68%) into last place but also confirming that trainspotters are a force to be reckoned with the Bullet Train for Australia candidate seizing 793 train-conscious votes. Finally, in Wills (VIC), Margarita Windisch got 1,024 votes (1.13%) [FINAL], and placed last; Clive Palmer, Family, Sex & BEER proving to be marginally more attractive than Marxism.

In the race for a Senate seat, the SA team gained 2,728 votes, or 0.06% [FINAL], a decline of 0.50 on 2010′s efforts, a little less than half the number received by the Carers Alliance (5,498/0.13) but more than Senator Online (Internet Voting Bills/Issues) (2,502/0.06), Australian Voice (2,587/0.06), Australian Protectionist Party (2,424/0.06), Building Australia Party (2,309/0.05), Non-Custodial Parents Party (Equal Parenting) (1,357/0.03), The Australian Republicans (1,932/0.04), Socialist Equality Party (1,800/0.04) and the Uniting Australia Party (2,187/0.05).

Socialist Equality Party

The Leadership Of The World Socialist Movement stood candidates for the Australian Senate in NSW, QLD, SA, VIC and WA. In NSW The Leadership got 1,800 votes (0.04%, a decline of 0.05) [FINAL]; in QLD 1,642 (0.06) [FINAL]; in SA 2,857 (0.28) [FINAL]; in VIC 2,332 (0.07, a decline of 0.25) [FINAL]; in WA 1,155 (0.09%) [FINAL]. In total, OVER 9000!!! voters recognised the world-historical mission of the International Committee of the Fourth International to smash global capitalism and achieve the full material and spiritual liberation of the toilers and exploited through the socialist revolution.

Socialist Party

Hamstrung, like the other socialists, by a lack of access to millions of dollars in campaign funding, the SP’s Anthony Main gaining a semi-respectable 1,140 votes (1.35%) in Melbourne, proving to be slightly less popular than SEX! but more popular than independence, families, Clive Palmer, stable populations, democratic labour, animal justice, bullet trains, Christian fundamentalism and secularism.

Otherwise, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty examines the dilemmas of the Australian election here, while Socialist Alternative’s Louise O’Shea claims that SA is the only principled left party what run here, scandalously ignoring the CL, PLP, SEP and SP candidates.

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Pavlos Fyssas (Killah P) : Antifascist murdered by Golden Dawn in Athens

Posted on September 18, 2013 by @ndy

[Update : Account in English on Athens Indymedia here; The Greek Neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn – No Pasaran?, Interview with Dimitris Psarras, the author of the Greek “Black Book of Chrysi Avghi (Golden Dawn)”.]

Last night 34 year-old Pavlos Fyssas (a/k/a hip hop artist Killah P) was stabbed to death by a nazi in Piraeus, Athens. Revolution News:

Late last night a group of 25 members of the Golden Dawn chased and murdered a thirty four year old man. He was watching a football match with his girlfriend at a cafe in Amfiali, a neighbourhood of Pireus when he was attacked. One of the assailants is described as a “known Golden Dawn associate”. One person who was holding a knife (the alleged murder weapon) was arrested by police, and according to information, admitted the crime, but there are more perpetrators. The victim was a locally known MC and an anti-fascist activist. There is a demonstration called on the spot where the murder took place, today at 18:00 local time.

Several months ago Golden Dawn opened an office in the Melbourne suburb of Oakleigh.

See also : Man (34) dies after being stabbed by neonazis, EnetEnglish.gr, September 18, 2013.

Note that in Australia the Australia First Party — which recently took part in the federal election — considers Golden Dawn to be kindred spirits. A former member of the Australian Nazi party, AF party leader Dr Jim Saleam was convicted of organising a shotgun assault upon the home of an ANC member in 1989 — he also has convictions for stealing, defacing walls, being in possession of a prohibited article and receiving and obtaining money by a false statement. The AF HQ in Tempe was also the scene of a murder when in 1991 Perry Whitehouse shot dead Wayne “Bovver” Smith.

The murder took place on Hitler’s birthday.

+++

Australia First Party welcomes Golden Dawn office to Melbourne
PRESS RELEASE:
February 12 2013

The Australia First Party has welcomed the decision of the Greek Golden Dawn party to open an office in Melbourne.

While there are no official links between the two parties, there are clear parallels of ideology and politics.

Dr. Jim Saleam of the National Council of Australia First Party said today:

“The priority of Golden Dawn is clearly to locate expatriates and others who have a deep concern both that the economic crisis of Greece can no longer be solved within the economics and politics of globalism, that relatives and friends are suffering from the recession brought on by a corrupt regime – and that the immigration crisis threatens the very make up of Greece itself.

But Australia First Party observes that the official political position of the ‘Greek community’ in Australia is liberal, globalist, multiculuralist and so forth. Golden Dawn’s presence will in our estimation, crack it open.

The Rise of Golden Dawn

The immigration question generally will do that. It is necessary that this occur both for Golden Dawn’s immediate purpose and for our own long term interest as Australian nationalists.”

A member of Australia First Party of Greek origin explained to Dr. Saleam “that Australia isn’t the Australia I came to and Greece isn’t the country I left.”

Dr. Saleam added:

“Many of the older migrants I have come across in my political work have despaired as much of Greece’s immigration disaster as they have of Australia’s. Many have family grown on the soil of Australia and have felt lost amidst the multiculturalism here which is really a cover to divide Europeans from each other and from the native-Australian, whilst a policy to open Australia to the Third World was pursued. They feel their families here have been betrayed by the multiculturalists.”

Australia First Party urges that Greek expatriates support Golden Dawn financially and otherwise to contribute to its political victory.

Dr. Saleam concluded:

“As Golden Dawn’s work develops amongst people of Greek origin here, it will fire them to do something for the old-country, but they will inevitably look at their new-country and its future. More amongst their native born families will this sentiment be found. Golden Dawn will contribute to masses of these people finding their way to the nationalism of the Australia First Party.”

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antifa notes (september 15, 2013) : Australia First, Blood & Honour/Southern Cross Hammerskins, Golden Dawn, Right Wing Resistance NZ (RWRNZ) …

Posted on September 15, 2013 by @ndy

The neo-fascist Australia First Party (which the Wikleaks Party preferred to the Greens in the NSW Senate race) took part in the federal election last Saturday. Results for the party were negligible, with some small segment of its votes presumably siphoned off in the direction of other right-wing micro-parties. Despite making a solemn vow, party fuehrer Dr James Saleam (535/0.65%) failed to capture the seat of Cook from the capable hands of Scott Morrison, while the party’s best result appears to have been obtained by Lorraine Sharp in Riverina (1,165/1.43%). Final figures will not be available for some days yet. (You can read an interview with AF candidate for Bennelong Victor Waterson here.)

In Greece, AF’s comrades in Golden Dawn (Chrysi Avyi/Χρυσή Αυγή) have drawn some further media attention (Teh Grauniad) when several days ago a gang of perhaps 30–50 GD members armed with clubs and other weapons attacked a smaller group of ‘leftists’ (members of the Stalinist Greek Communist Party KKE) in the port city of Perama (see : ‘Golden Dawn thugs attack KKE members in the neighbourhood of Perama; 8 seriously injured’, Occupied London, September 13, 2013). Apart from its ferocity and size, I’m unsure how significant the attack is as, contrary to Teh Grauniad, GD frequently attacks their political opposition (especially the anarchists). It may, however, be that this is one of the most violent (?) attacks they’ve launched thus far against Greek Communists, and therefore constitute an escalation in their battle from the usual cast of immigrants, queers and anarchists to more ‘mainstream’ elements — and a demonstration of their growing confidence in both their own strength and the ability of the Greek political establishment to protect them from some of the less palatable consequences for their actions.

Closer to home, word on the street is that Golden Dawn have recently opened an office in the Melbourne suburb of Oakleigh, having drawn some significant financial support from a local Greek businessman as well as attracting a small number of local Greek yoofs to their banners, first raised publicly back in early 2012. In response to GD’s implantation, Greek-Australian antifascists have been keeping busy, among other things establishing a blog titled, appropriately, ‘Greek Australian Antifascists’. It contains a useful guide to GD, outlining the party’s bullshit politics and deconstructing its fascist and neo-Nazi agenda in ’10 Myths about Golden Dawn (or why golden dawns bring black days)’.

Elsewhere in Melbourne, on Saturday September 7, boneheads celebrated Blood & Honour’s 20th anniversary by throwing a party and inviting various others nazis to join them. According to a bonehead on Stormfront, the special guest * invited on stage for the event was the UK band Brutal Attack, featuring crooner Ken McLellan. Like any musician, Brutal Attack’s Ken McLellan wants to be heard. Only, what he wants people to hear are self-described “white power” anthems with lines like “This is the Final Solution / Our turn / They’ll burn.” (Racist Music Goes Digital, Spin, December 23, 2008.) Ken’s band got some mileage in The Independent back in June when it played a nazi muzak festival in Italy; note that Ken and Attack appear to have had less luck when they tried to play another nazi gathering in North Carolina back in 2006, Ken being turned away by US Customs.

Speaking of nazis (and er, Mormons!), Kyle Chapman’s latest political vehicle ‘Right Wing Resistance New Zealand’ has supposedly also set up shop in Australia. Fingers xed the t-shirt salesman’s venture goes as well as it did in Sweden …

A final note: ‘Smashing the fash: fascism in Australia’ (Rafi Alam, Honi Soit, August 30, 2013) is an interesting examination of Australian fascist politics. I may respond to it at greater length at a later date. In the meantime, I was amused (happy/sad face) to read that “[a]lthough there are groups and individuals that oppose fascism in Australia, they fail to make an impression in public opinion. Anarchist blogger slackbastard follows the trends of fascism in Australia, but is a lone writer. Fight Dem Back was prolific in combating racial hatred in Australia, but is effectively defunct now.”

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2013 Australian federal election. How did the far right fare?

Posted on September 12, 2013 by @ndy

The Mad Monk is Australia’s NEW! Prime Minister.

HUZZAH!

Five days after polling closed, here’s the results obtained by the far right.

[NB. FINAL results will not be available for some days; I'll update the numbers periodically.]

Australia First Party

AF stood 10 candidates for the Lower House (8 in NSW and one each in SA and VIC) and gambled on a seat in the Senate in NSW and QLD. The party’s main claim to fame during the campaign was being placed ahead of the Greens in NSW by the Wikileaks Party on its Senate ticket. This decision by WLP drew no small degree of criticism, the party claiming it was the result of an “administrative error” while others claiming it was the product of a backroom preference deal. In the end, AF (Garth Fraser and Darrell Wallbridge) received 3,626 votes (0.08%) in NSW [FINAL], while Wikileaks fared considerably better with 36,399 (0.83%). As for AF in QLD, teenage former Stalinist, neo-Nazi and Labor party candidate Peter Watson joined Peter Schuback in sharing 6,531 votes (0.25%; a decline of 0.15) [FINAL].

Despite having previously declared that he was going to snatch the seat of Cook from former opposition spokesperson on Immigration, Scott Morrison, Party fuehrer Dr Jim Saleam managed to acquire just 610 [FINAL] votes or 0.66%, coming last among the seven candidates. In (“Get the ‘Face of Chinese Imperialism’ out of”) Bennelong, Victor Waterson scored 492 votes (0.56%) [FINAL], the last of eight. Of the nine worthies in Calare, Peter Schultze done a bit better, gaining 1,010 [FINAL] votes, smashing through the 1% barrier (1.11%) and avoiding coming last, a fate reserved for the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) candidate.

In Chifley, veteran bizarr0 Alex Norwick saw AF’s vote decline from 1.17% to 0.48% (396 [FINAL] votes). This decline may well be blamed on teh gheys; the DLP got its revenge by beating Norwick into last place. The decline in the AF vote was repeated in Lindsay, where Mick Saunders’s 610 votes (0.70%) [FINAL] represented a reduction of 0.47%; Mick’s vote did at least ensure that the most unpopular of the eight candidates on offer was Geoff Brown of the Stable Population Party. In Macquarie, Matt Hodgson managed to increase the AF vote by 0.02%, gaining 750 [FINAL] votes (0.83%), thereby pushing Teresa Elaro (DLP) into last place on a mere 502 (0.56%).

Things were a bit brighter for AF in Newcastle, candidate Michael Chehoff being placed first on the ballot and getting 922 votes (1.08%) [FINAL] for his troubles. In doing so Michael beat both the Socialist Alliance candidate (616/0.72%) and that of the Australian Independents (367/0.43%). The last Australia First candidate in NSW was Lorraine Sharp in Riverina. She got the best result for the party with 1,287 [FINAL] votes (1.46%) and placed eighth out of ten candidates for the seat.

Outside of its NSW heartland, AF ran just two further Lower House candidates, in Port Adelaide (SA) and Deakin (VIC). In Port Adelaide, last-placed Terry Cooksley earned 1,116 votes (1.23%) [FINAL] while in Deakin a bewigged John Carbonari failed to set the seat on fire with a measly 212 [FINAL] votes (0.24%), a reduction from the dizzying heights achieved last time around of 0.28%.

Australian Protectionist Party

The APP ‘Love Australia’, but how much does Australia love the APP? In the race in Queensland for a seat in the Senate, Rick Heyward, “a very proud Australian, who is passionate about protecting his country”, received 955 votes (0.04%) [FINAL] and the dubious merit of being the most unpopular of all party candidates. Oh, and Doug Boag too.

In the seat of Fremantle (WA), Teresa Van Lieshout had 205 (0.24%) [FINAL] people vote for her, the APP at least proving to be more popular than the LaRouche kvltists of the Citizens Electoral Council (131/0.15%). Things were a bit better for the APP in Swan, where Troy Ellis, “a Who Weekly finalist for their Most Beautiful Person Award” in 1999, rode a donkey on to gaining 718 votes (0.88%) [FINAL], and came third last.

Oh and in Corangamite (VIC), ex-One Nation candidate Nick (Man of) Steel got 156 [FINAL] votes (0.17%), unloving Australians ensuring the Protectionist came twelfth of 12.

Independents

In the Victorian seat of Flinders, two Independents, Denis McCormack and Paul Madigan, threw their hats into the ring. Denis scored 478 (0.51%) and Paul 708 (0.75) [FINAL] votes. Both were previously involved in the group ‘Australians Against Further Immigration’, including as candidates, while Denis also helped found AF. You can read some of Paul’s views in the comments on a previous post here. The dynamic duo want to REDUCE IMMIGRATION http://reduceimmigration.wordpress.com/.

One Nation

The other minor far right (?) party to contest the election was (Pauline Hanson’s) One Nation. It ran 11 candidates in the Lower House in NSW and four in Queensland, along with Senate candidates in NSW, QLD, SA, VIC and WA. Its best result was obtained by Pauline, Kate McCulloch and Aaron Plumb in the NSW Senate race. Generally, in the Lower House candidates placed just above the other fringe parties, typically Australia First, the Christian Democrats (Fred Nile’s mob), Katter’s Australian Party and the poor old CEC. Its worst result came in the Victorian Senate contest, where the Townsends managed to beat BOTH the Australian Republicans (38 votes) AND the Smokers Rights Party (78 votes) into last place with 242 votes (0.01%, a decline of 0.3) [FINAL]. It would seem that Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party soaked up most of the vote for anti-Establishment candidates with the remains being fought over by a wide range of parties left, (but mostly) right and generally obscure.

In the NSW Senate, Pauline Hanson, Kate McCulloch and Aaron Plumb got 70,851 votes (0.53%) [FINAL], a decline (!) on 2010 of 0.03%. In the House of Representatives, ON hopefuls scored as follows:

Barton | Perry Theo | 686 | 0.86%. Placed 7 of 8, he beat Rodney Tim Wyse of Katter’s Australian Party into last place (567 votes/0.71%). [FINAL]
Charlton | Brian Burston | 2,266 | 2.62%. Burston was placed 6 of 7 candidates, honours for last going to Trevor Anthoney of Bullet Train For Australia fame (1,460 votes/1.69%). [FINAL]
Chifley | Elizabeth Power | 1,403 | 1.70%. Of the 9 hopefuls, Power came seventh, notably beating Alex Norwick of AF (0.48%) by quite a large margin. [FINAL]
Hume | Lynette Styles | 2,521 | 2.77%. Styles was middlin’, coming fifth of nine. [FINAL]
Hunter | Bill Fox | 3,245 | 3.78%. This was a gain for ON of 0.43%, Bill beating both the Christian Democrats & CEC candidates. [FINAL]
Lindsay | Jeffrey Lawson | 1,901 | 2.17%. Placed 6 of 8, ON again triumphed over AF in the form of Mick Saunders (610/0.70%). [FINAL]
Lyne | Craig Huth | 2,208 | 2.56%. Mid-placed Huth (6 of 9) beat the CDP, KAP & CEC candidates (in that order). [FINAL]
New England | Brian Dettmann | 1,566 | 1.72%. In New England the ON vote increased by 0.85% on last time, Brian (7 of 9) beating the CDP & CEC. [FINAL]
Page | Rod Smith | 1,382 | 1.61%. Poor old Rod came last (6 of 6). [FINAL]
Parramatta | Tania Rollinson | 822 | 1.02%. As did Tania (8 of 8). [FINAL]
Werriwa | Marella Harris | 1,519 | 1.96%. Marella (7 of 8) beat the KAP kandidate into last place. [FINAL]

In Queensland, the ON Senate vote (Jim Savage and Ian Nelson) also experienced a mild decline, the pair receiving 14,348 votes (0.55%) [FINAL], down 0.36%. In the Lower House, results were fairly poor. Stewart Boyd in Fadden came last (8 of 8), gaining 510 [FINAL] votes (0.64%, down 0.96%); Mike Holt in Fairfax was no match for Clive Palmer, coming last and getting just 705 votes (0.83%) [FINAL]; in Herbert, Stephen Moir received a similar vote of confidence (623/0.81%), placing 7 of 10 and finally; in Moncrieff Veronica Beric just managed to beat the CEC bizarr0, obtaining 600 [FINAL] votes (0.75%) for her troubles.

In South Australia, Peter Fitzpatrick and Kym Dunbar got 2,968 votes (0.29%) [FINAL] about half (-0.22%) the number ON got last time around. In Victoria, Dale Townsend and Rosalyn Townsend received 242 votes (0.01%), a decline of 0.37% [FINAL]. The Australian Republicans, on the other hand, received A MERE 38! votes. In Western Australia, lone candidate Robert Farmer fared marginally better with 416 (0.03%) [FINAL].

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