A perspective from Perth, Western Australia

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Thoughts on election day

The debate on Tuesday night at Bentley Baptist Church went very well for me, not so well for the major party candidate. Rather than summarise myself, it seems poll bludger is onto it. I got to ask a question on 6PR off the major candidates which got answered by none, and I was on last week's Page 2 and this week's Page 3 in the local paper for the southern third, the Canning Examiner. If I don't win (which is to be honest likely, as a "good" polling figure in my case is 10%+) I intend to use the profile I've built up to try and get these local issues fixed and addressed - especially the local services, public transport and health.

The result will be on this link probably around 7pm or 7:30pm WST - the actual voting stops at 6pm. I'll be in the tally room and 6PR and ABC are both running election coverage (I'm presuming ABC 720 rather than the TV, but not sure.)

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Hmm... 4:50am and just about to leave for the booths. I had lunch with some seniors yesterday and even got to play carpet bowls - was a lot of fun - then spent all yesterday running around the city with Dad collecting signs and how-to-votes and all the things one needs. This is like studying for an exam, in that you work hard for weeks beforehand to prepare, you do everything you can, but is totally unlike it in that nothing I can do today once polling starts will make any difference. It's entirely in 25,000 people's hands what actually happens, and a reflection of but not necessarily an accurate one of how much work I've invested into this in the last 5 weeks. It's kind of weird looking over the side at the major party candidates and comparing, and considering that I've made so much progress almost entirely on my own, with a single-digit-percentage of the money they've spent and almost the nomination fee ($250) in donations. :) Dad has been a great help in the last couple of weeks with both the letterboxing and some of the creative stuff with the signs and displays and he will be one of my main men today.

Fingers crossed!