(Australia) Rightwing parties get WikiLeaks preferences

[Violet_Crumble]

Assange grouping says Australia First and Shooters party being ahead of Greens on New South Wales Senate ticket is an error

Julian Assange's WikiLeaks party has blamed an "administrative error" for its preferences going to rightwing parties including Australia First and the Shooters and Fishers ahead of the Greens on its New South Wales Senate ticket.

Amid a storm of criticism on Twitter, the WikiLeaks party released a statement on Sunday that said it was not aligned with any other political group and would prefer not to allocate preferences at all.

"In allocating preferences between 53 other parties or groups in NSW some administrative errors occurred, as has been the case with some other parties," the WikiLeaks statement said.

"The overall decision as to preferences was a democratically made decision of the full national council of the party. According to the national council decision, the Shooters and Fishers and the Australia First party should have been below Greens, Labor, Liberal.

" As we said, we aren't aligned with anyone and the only policies we promote are our own. We will support and oppose the policies of other parties or groups according to our stated principles."

Australia First's policies include "passive resistance" against refugees, multiculturalism and foreign ownership. The Shooters and Fishers party is running on a platform to increase access to public land and waters for recreational shooters and fishers, as well as reduce Australia's foreign aid budget.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/rightwing-parties-wikileaks-preferences

That's one hell of a pretty massive 'administrative error'. There's no way I'd vote for any party that'd give preferences to those RW nutcases, and were so sloppy that they made a mistake where the preferences went to them. While they're not fielding a candidate in my electorate, that preferences mistake would have lost them my vote if they were...

on edit: I just realised that the American system mightn't work on preferences, so here's an explanation of how it works.

http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/briefs/brief01

[JI7]

1. not really surprised

[Violet_Crumble]

4. I am, and I do believe it was an error...

..but it's such a blunder that if they were fielding a candidate in the Territory I live in, I wouldn't vote for them anymore based on that. I usually vote for Labor knowing that their first preference goes to the Greens, and the Greens in the Senate because their preferences usually go to Labor. I don't like taking any risk that I might inadvertently cast a vote for some extreme RW party...

[PowerToThePeople]

2. A lot of other countries RW partes are left of US Democratic party. n/t

[Violet_Crumble]

3. Not Family First....

I was going to post a link to a site called the Australian Tea Party to show you how stinky they are, but a virus warning came up on that page, so I'm not going to post a link in case any DUer doesn't have virus protection. But for those who do, google Family First and Tea Party. They're seriously the complete opposite of everything I believe in...

[Scurrilous]

5. Thanks Violet!

[KittyWampus]

6. Icky

[Dawson Leery]

7. Australia First is all of the above mentiond plus opposition to

social welfare programs and regulation of the markets.