I wonder how many people really would confuse Green Liberals or Brandon Raynor’s Green Liberals with the Liberal party of Australia. You would have to be a bit of a moron.

The Labor Party of Australia and the Liberal party of Australia both contain Australia . I am sure there is a moron somewhere out there that would confuse the 2.

It seems like there are 2 parties with the political term Socialist in it, yet why not two with the term liberal. They are both broad political philosophies with many different meanings.

Australia is a corrupt country………..

Maybe in a seat or two. Without ballot labels, dummies were even more dangerous – assuming their how-to-votes are funded by the major party concerned – since punters in those days couldn’t make up their own mind about prefs purely from the ballot paper.

Strop, you’re right dummy independents are at least unethical. (Although if you are really an independent voter, why would you follow their ticket?) The solace I have with them is they by definition attract little of the vote: by definition a high profile independent won’t be a dummy, or is likely to be found out if he is.

But they are an argument for a ‘none-of-the-above’ or at least ‘you can vote informal’ option on the ballot.

The only problem I might have with that usage is that I wonder whether the people involved really do think of themselves as ‘Celtic’ as opposed to ‘Irish’, ‘Scottish’, or ‘Welsh’ (as the case may be).

I may not have been so clear. The term Celtic is a bit misleading because the ancient Britons (often called the Celts) were not necessarily that closely related to the continental Celts. The use of it in this context is a 17th century affectation

Genetically speaking ancient Briton heritage is pretty widely spread through the Anglo population. Of course cultural heritage is more important in this context, but I won’t venture an opinion there…

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Martin B Says:
August 15th, 2007 at 11:46 am
J-D

Still, off topic, but actually you’re largely right: Celtic as an ethnicity is largely an affectation. Nonetheless it has a conventional usage.

I’m not sure if you are contesting the point that there are many Muslims of Anglo(+) ethnicity, but I can certainly name the (more or less) famous Sarah Cartland, Bilal Cleland, Timothy Winter, Jemima Khan and Peter Murphy (of Bauhaus) as well as the infamous David Hicks, Jack Thomas and Abdul Waheed.

It’s not ‘Celtic’ I have a problem with, it’s ‘Anglo-Celtic’. Anglo Muslims, undoubtedly (I was not contesting that point); Celtic Muslims, very likely; but Anglo-Celtic Muslims, obviously, can’t be more common than Anglo-Celtic people, and how many people really are Anglo-Celtic?

Sure, he/she ought to be good enough to win on primary votes, but on my count many seats were won on 2PP outcomes for both Labor and the Coalition in 2004 so these so called ‘independents’ can/do make a difference. I hope I am not naiive in hoping this practice is not common in Australian politics, and if it is , I dont want to know about it.

didnt the 75 election have quite a few (damascene) independents
from memory this was pivotal in frasers win esp.tasmania and sa
please correct me if im wrong

Those laws got an airing last week when Harkin withdraw, allegedly having been promised a winnable Senate candidacy. I notice the Libs did not pursue that line too far: I suspect all sides have skeletons in that closet.

My take is the law against incentives to withdraw candidacies evolved in 19th century UK, before strong parties arose to control preselections. It evolved to stop you bribing your rival from another political background from standing – ie to buy the seat by default, an anti-competitive practice, denying electors a real choice. Understood with that purpose, it is not electoral bribery for a party to offer an incentive to move on a dud candidate of their own. Not just because it is now customary: but because it is not anti-competitive.

It’s not binding. Sub-paragraph da, which you rightly focus on, is new. And because the AAT doesn’t bind itself. But it was 3 judges – the weight of a full Federal Court.

The judges said: ‘the confusion contemplated by s 129(d) extends to confusion as to whether some relationship exists between two registered political parties the names of which appear on the ballot paper’. So they took into account – even prior to the law being changed – that confusing similarity of names included any potential for mistaken assumptions that ‘liberals 4 forests’ were some sub-set or affiliate of ‘Liberal Party of Australia’/Liberals’. Admittedly they went on to state a possibly narrower test, based on confusion as to mistaken identity.

But the judges’ determinative conclusion was that ‘It may be that some persons will draw the inference that members of ” liberals for forests ” are former members or have some affiliation with the Liberal Party of Australia …. It is unlikely that any elector, seeing the two names on a ballot paper, will draw the conclusion that ” liberals for forests ” is a political party related to the Liberal Party of Australia or any of its State divisions’. So they held there was no real risk voters would assume an institutional connection, even if they thought that some ex-Liberals were involved in l4f.

The judges were also strongly against the idea that ordinary political terms like ‘liberal’ could become in effect owned by some party.

That said, the Liberal Party will likely win if they present credible statistical evidence that enough voters read ‘liberals 4 forests’ and imagine an institutional link with ‘Liberal Party’

Still, off topic, but actually you’re largely right: Celtic as an ethnicity is largely an affectation. Nonetheless it has a conventional usage.

I’m not sure if you are contesting the point that there are many Muslims of Anglo(+) ethnicity, but I can certainly name the (more or less) famous Sarah Cartland, Bilal Cleland, Timothy Winter, Jemima Khan and Peter Murphy (of Bauhaus) as well as the infamous David Hicks, Jack Thomas and Abdul Waheed.