Category: Elections

Pirate Party preferences announced

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Yesterday the Australia Electoral Commission published group voting tickets (GVT) for this year’s Senate election, indicating where parties have decided their preferences should flow. Pirate Party Australia is proud to announce that it has successfully completed this important stage of the election process.

In keeping with the Pirate Party’s committment to transparency and participatory democracy, this election the Pirate Party pioneered a form of preferencing unprecedented in Australian politics[1].

“Our approach had three phases. First, all parties were invited to provide our members with a message explaining why we should preference them. These were published publicly. Second, all members were asked to rank the parties according to how they should be preferenced. Finally, our members were asked whether any deals offered by other parties were acceptable,” said Simon Frew, President of Pirate Party Australia. “This made our preferences entirely democratic and transparent. Pirate Party Australia stands in a class of its own in this regard.”

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Preferencing Statement for Federal Election 2013

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Preferencing Process

Pirate Party Australia has completed its preferencing for its first federal election. All group voting tickets (GVT) have been published on the Australian Electoral Commission’s website.

In keeping with the Pirate Party’s commitment to transparency and participatory democracy, this election the Party pioneered a form of preferencing unprecedented in Australian politics.

All parties were invited to provide members of Pirate Party Australia with a statement explaining why they deserve preferences. These statements can be found on the wiki.

After publishing the statements publicly, the members of Pirate Party Australia ranked all 53 registered parties according to how they should be preferenced.

A rundown of the process is as follows:

  • Party members were given a ballot listing the parties to be preferenced in an order predetermined by the Party’s Election Committee to be a good general order of preferences based on the Committee’s research. They were given three days to respond to the ballot.
  • The Committee used the preferencing order prior to the closing of the ballot in order to determine how to best go about negotiating preferences with other parties in order to get them to reciprocate the preference order determined by our members.
  • As soon as the GVT ballot closed, the deals ballot was put to our members.
  • 24 hours later, the deal results were determined and the other parties were informed.
  • The Election Committee met as soon as possible after receiving the Group Voting Tickets for each state and democratically determined any changes necessary to the GVT that were not possible to determine in advance.
    • The minutes of that meeting can be found here.
  • These results are now being published in this statement.

An example of the digital ballot that the members of the Party used to determine their preference order can be found here!

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Pirate Party announces Senate candidates

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Following the announcement of Australia’s 2013 Federal Election, to take place on the 7th of September, Pirate Party Australia is pleased to announce its final candidate line up for the Senate. The Party will be fielding Senate candidates in all four eastern states.

In NSW the ballot will comprise of Brendan Molloy and David Campbell; in Queensland, Melanie Thomas and Liam Pomfret; in Victoria, Joe Miles and Geoff Hammett; and in Tasmania, Thomas Randle and Thomas Storey.

The Pirate Party’s platform centres around civil liberties[1] (including privacy, freedom of speech and opposition to censorship), copyright and patent reform[2][3], and greater government transparency[4]. Other issues the Party has addressed include education, tax, welfare, energy, the environment, asylum seekers, marriage and drugs[5].

Pirate Party Australia will be pioneering a new method of preferencing in this election. Practising what it preaches, the Pirate Party will be transparently preferencing other parties — all members will be asked to rank other parties to determine how preferences will flow. Parties have been invited to respond with a letter to Pirate Party Australia’s members outlining why they are deserving of preferences.

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Pirate Party leads the way with transparent preferencing

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In April, Pirate Party Australia’s members voted in favour of deciding the Party’s Senate preferences transparently and democratically. To initiate this process, an email from the Party was recently sent out to request other parties make a case for Pirate preferences.

“Pirate Party Australia is changing the game this election by making our preferences completely transparent,” said David W. Campbell, President of Pirate Party Australia and Senate candidate for NSW. “This ensures democratic participation in our preferences and accountability from not just our party, but for all parties seeking our preferences. We are the only party on the Australian political landscape with such a selection process, including full disclosure to Australian voters before they vote.”

“Australian political parties continue to base preferences on back-room deals conducted by their controlling elite. Pirate Party Australia will stand as the only example of a transparent and democratically managed party from top to bottom this election. The Australian people deserve and want better, and we are the Party delivering on that.”

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Pirate Party Announces Candidates for Federal Election

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Pirate Party Australia is pleased to formally announce that the Party has decided on candidates in four states. The Party met last month to hear presentations from members seeking candidacy for the Senate this year. Nominations came from New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, and Tasmania.

Brendan Molloy and David Campbell, Secretary and President of the Party respectively, will be competing in the election in New South Wales.

“Australia needs strong representatives that actually stand for principles. I intend to be that representative, pushing back on the encroaching surveillance state of data retention and Internet censorship, while offering positive and much needed reform for copyright, digital liberties and civil liberties,” said Brendan Molloy, lead candidate for New South Wales.

“For too long the electorate has been treated poorly by the incumbents, assuming that the voter will only choose between the big two parties. We offer Australians a real option for political change. I look forward to the public discourse, and hope everyone will join us in creating a better future for Australia.”

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