Thoughts on candidate blogging.

It's kind of sad in a way as I had looked at Graham Kierath's blog at the last election and thought of doing something similar, but there's so much intrigue and suspense and simple hard slog in a campaign that either would be boring or counterproductive for me to report. I probably should write a book when it's all over. :) pollbludger.com is probably the best source of news at the moment as this is really only getting community newspaper reportage up to the present (apart from the revelations about the One Nation candidate which somehow made page 4 of the Australian.)

Things are going well, although slowly as when one is an independent, one simply doesn't have a party at beck and call to do stuff, but I'm getting a lot of grassroots support and a lot of name recognition now. I'm amazed that I am yet to hit, three weeks into the campaign, any serious negativity from voters - you know, these people who are meant to hate politicians who actually really want to talk to me and are friendly and shake my hand even if they aren't going to vote for me.

One thing that has come out of this - if you are young, IT-literate, friendly/outgoing, intelligent, not afraid of a fair amount of hard work and a lot of walking, and you really don't think either party has the answers and you have a couple of solid issues you want to address, never let anyone tell you that you can't achieve anything out here. I am yet to see how I will ultimately do, and I could be utterly disappointed on election night, but I have learned SO much not only about the political process but about myself, about people, about supplier chain management, organising events, you name it. I will have no regrets about any of it, no matter what way the vote goes - it's been an experience.