Australia elects its first Libertarian Senator

 

By Jim Fryar
Real World Libertarian

After a history making effort, the libertarian Liberal Democratic Party is welcoming our new provisional senator, David Leyonhjelm who scored the fifth senate spot in NSW. Who said we would be battling it out for the final place??????

 

It could have been even better had the Liberals had the sense to preference us ahead of The Palmer United Party, which would have won us a second seat in Tasmania, where our candidate came a whisker short.  The Libs will pay for this in a big way, as we are essentially classical liberals while PUP has a populist grab-bag of policies varying from left of the greens, to the far right of Abbott.

 

In most of the other states we had the third or fourth highest tally of votes at the end of the night.

While we bask in the kudos of the breakthrough, everyone and his dog are talking about us and seeking more information to the point where our website crashed from overuse.  The Liberal Dems are on the way.

 

David Leyonhjelm is to be elected a
Senator after his Liberal Democrats
Party drew the first box on the NSW
Senate ballot.
Read more: (smh.com.au)

Not all of the conversation is happy talk.  The normally sensible ABC election annalist, Antony Green and others are claiming that David's position of first on the ballot caused Liberals to get all confused and in a tizz, bringing about his election.  

 

While we probably benefited from this, it is a little rich to claim that the 8.9% who voted for him were Liberal Party members who cant read very well.  We were conspicuously in second place on the ballot in WA without that happening, so perhaps Antony thinks WA Liberals are much smarter than NSW ones.

 

Perhaps some of the warnings that were issued by the Liberals, that the Liberal Democrats at the head of the ballot were not the Liberal Party drew some attention to us and caused people to have a better look at us and they liked what they saw.



I had a good result in WA with nearly 3.5% but lost out to the Sports Party. We got a little bit of favorable press this time, which was better than the normal cloak of invisibility that gets thrown over us.

 

Overall we increased our vote in every state except Queensland where the Palmer billions crushed us along with all other small parties.

Overall though, we are in a great position to go on to win from here.  In most states we achieved a sufficient primary vote to win with in any other election than this one, which had two new well-funded parties who took most of the oxygen out of the campaign.

 

We now have a voice in federal parliament, which cannot be ignored and a healthy base of enthusiastic supporters who have tasted victory and want to pig out on it.  The sky’s the limit, or perhaps even higher. 

 

Of the two new parties, Katter's saved Labor from defeats in Queensland, while both his and Palmer's did preference deals that resulted in the election of Luddite Greens senators in both Qld and WA.  

This should be neither forgiven, nor forgotten.

 

Australian Senate
There is a total of 76 senators; 12 senators are elected from each state, regardless of population, and the two autonomous internal territories have two senators each.
.
Unlike upper houses in most parliamentary systems, the Senate is vested with significant power, including the capacity to block legislation initiated by the government in the House of Representatives, making it a distinctive hybrid of British Westminster bicameralism and US-style bicameralism.

 

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Gun-loving Liberal Democrats pull

off greatest election fluke

It is a gun-loving fringe party with a similar name to the new government, but the Liberal Democrats made no apologies for pulling off one of the biggest electoral flukes in Australian history.

Having sneaked 8.5 per cent of the vote - the backing of a staggering 283,000 people - in New South Wales, the six-year-old Liberal Democrats are set to gain at least one Senate seat, veteran election analyst Antony Green said.

Top candidate David Leyonhjelm, who believes we should carry handguns and that marijuana should be legal, admitted many punters had confused his fledgling party with the Liberals but said he was happy to take their votes.

Mr Leyonhjelm plans to form a "loose but powerful" coalition with other fringe parties who performed well, which may include the Australian Sports Labor Party, Motor Enthusiasts Party and one of two likely Palmer United senators including former rugby league great Glenn Lazarus.

"It looks like there will be a small political party senator for each state, so control of the Senate will very likely be in the hands of these parties," he said.

"We are very strong supporters of these parties and we will work together to bring democracy to the Senate."

Read more: (news.com.au/national-news)