Your Voice

And so we come to the pointy end of the election and time to rank the candidates. My rankings are based on four factors:

1. Candidate's policy positions;
2. Job skills - ability to present an argument;
3. Job skills - understanding of the law; and
4. Job skills - policy analysis.

Job skills - ability to present an argument

Of the candidates who turned up to the fora, all proved to be capable speakers by the end of the campaign. Lindsay Peters' improvement in this area was remarkable, and demonstrated a commitment to acquiring skills that you may wish to factor in. As you would expect given her background, McKew is a clear winner in this category.

Any of the attendees of the fora would be capable of representing the interests of Bennelong in Parliament.

Job skills - understanding of the law

As far as I am aware only two candidates have legal training - John Howard, who has a law degree and practised as a solicitor, and Margherita Tracanelli who is currently studying law. These two candidates are best positioned to understand the laws being made by Parliament in their own right without reference to advisers, although the Prime Minister's track record on this score has often being questionable and in some cases subsequently found to be not only wrong, but the opposite of the court's view. His continuing claim that the invasion of Iraq was legal in international law is so flimsy that it reflects extraordinarily poorly on his practical skills.

Given the history of Howard's decisions and of Tracanelli's performance over many years of service in a variety of public service and policy roles, I am inclined to rank Tracanelli, as a law student, above the Prime Minister in terms of skill in the law.

Allen's pointless challenge of the Prime Minister's nomination at the declaration of nominations suggests a profound lack of understanding of the law. Even if it was a stunt, it was a poor choice of stunt given the way it would reflect on him taken at face value.

Job skills - Policy Analysis

Of the candidates attending the fora, Lindsay Peters, Peter Goldfinch, David Leyonhjelm, Graeme Cordiner, Margherita Tracanelli and Maxine McKew all demonstrated reasonable policy analysis skills. The stand-outs in this category are Maxine McKew and Margherita Tracanelli - both have extensive policy analysis experience and this puts them ahead of the others. David Leyonhjelm, as a libertarian, can at times be limited by the purity of the libertarian philosophy, but is otherwise capable.

Candidate Policy

In this category I do not consider specific policies but rather the general policy positioning of the candidates. Candidates are elected to make decisions over the course of three years, and most of those decisions will be about things never mentioned in the election. When looking at policy I am more concerned with how the candidate will handle those unknown future decisions.

Peter Goldfinch for the Democrats holds small "l" liberal positions. The Liberal Party used to stand for such things, but at this election the only party, and the only Bennelong candidate, who represents the small "l" liberal position accurately is Peter Goldfinch and the Democrats generally. As a small "l" liberal myself, I find myself agreeing on most of the Democrats policies, although by no means all.

Lindsay Peters and Graeme Cordiner hold soft left positions. These positions favour the interests of the community as a whole over the interests of any individual. This does not mean they oppose individual freedoms as they recognise that the community has an interest in such freedoms - rather they tend to favour spending on services over tax cuts to a higher degree than parties that we would normally regard as small "l" liberal.

Margherita Tracanelli represents a more centre version of the Greens. The Party only has climate change in its policy kit bag, however their approach to politics seeks to be more pragmatic than that of the Greens. Tracanelli does not have a huge history of putting up policy positions, preferring to busy herself with practical work. In my assessment Tracanelli is somewhere between the Greens and the Democrats in her policy positions.

David Leyonhjelm has a pure libertarian position. This position puts individual freedoms above all else - the libertarian philosophy is that the only legitimate role of the law is to restrain actions that are directly injurious to others. The libertarian commitment to this position is always uncompromising (otherwise it would not be libertarian), and persists even when the result may operate harshly on some individuals. I have a lot of sympathy for this position, and in an ideal world would find it very compelling, however the harsh operation of libertarianism and the libertarian position that climate change is not a matter for government are somewhat fatal to it receiving my fullest support.

Lorraine Markwell for Family First and Robyn Peebles for the Christian Democratic Party, as religion-centric candidates, have a preference for encoding religious rules into the law that I find totally inappropriate in modern society.

David Allen is an eccentric who is probably not suited to the long work of policy-making.

Victor Waterson - One Nation, enough said.

Gavin Spencer for the Citizens Electoral Council takes the CEC's national socialist positions. I am not comfortable with nationalism being used as a basis for policy - pride in one's nation should be the outcome of policy, not the source of it, and putting these things the wrong way around leads to policies that would erode rather than improve the pride of most small "l" liberals in their nation. The CEC's socialism puts them somewhere to the left of the Greens economically speaking.

My disdain for John Howard's policy decisions between elections is well known, and if you are not already familiar with the reasons for this there is copious discussion of it on this site.

Maxine McKew's policy position is generally reasonable although I would prefer the ALP ended the union gerrymander of the ALP national conference. The ALP's strict party discipline is also problematic, and sometimes the ALP is too strongly pragmatic, supporting policies for political reasons that they probably should not and would not if the political considerations were taken out of the equation.

Yusuf Tahir has no policies as he nominated for election for purposes so unrelated to the election that I have labelled his candidacy "nomination spam".

Order of preference in the House of Representatives

Weighing all these factors, here are my preferences in the House of Representatives:

1. Peter Goldfinch (Democrats)
2. Margherita Tracanelli (Climate Change Coalition)
3. Lindsay Peters (Greens)
4. Graeme Cordiner (Independent)
5. Maxine McKew (ALP)
6. David Leyonhjelm (Liberty and Democracy Party)
7. David Allen (Independent)
8. John Howard (Liberal)
9. Lorraine Markwell (Family First)
10. Robyn Peebles (Christian Democrats)
11. Gavin Spencer (Citizens Electoral Council)
12. Victor Waterson (One Nation)
13. Yusuf Tahir

In the Senate, you could do a lot worse than giving just numbering "1" in box M (the Democrats) above the line. After examining their lodged preferences there is not much in there I have major objections to, and nothing I would object to strongly enough to risk lodging an informal vote by trying to number all of the squares below the line. The preference flows I do object to in the list are ones that are never going to be activated because the offending candidate will be eliminated long before the preferences get that far.

Conclusion

That is all from me prior to the 2007 Federal Election. Hopefully between the information here and the information at the BenneLog you have enough to help you with your decision tomorrow.