Independents: Agricultural Region
Feb. 21st, 2021 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
b_auspolFor the Independents I'm going to group them by region, simply because I tend to find their election policies can be summarised pretty quickly.
First up is Agricultural Region, who have one unnamed independent group and 6 independent candidates.
Felly Chandra & Chelsea Henderson
Felly Chandra appears to be our favourite thing, a serial candidate. He’s run as a grouped candidate with Anthony Fels for Family First at state level in 2008, then with him again in 2010 and 2014 for the WA Senate in federal elections and in 2013 for the state election without an official party.
Anthony Fels appears to be an ex-Liberal who has had a lot of fun randomly hopping between far right parties over the years. He’s a treat.
Felly Chandra took the 2017 state election off from running for the rump of Family First and has now returned for the 2021 election, with a new electoral partner and in first slot. Despite this apparent passion for running futilely for government, he has no electoral website that I (or Antony Green!) can track down.
Things I have found while looking for him: he got out of a parking ticket in 2018 on “other compassionate grounds”. He might be the director of an industrial chemical company called “Liquid Engineering” that’s based in West Perth and manufactures lubricants and cleaning products for industrial purposes.
His group voting ticket preferences all the independents, followed by WA Party, Health Australia Party, Sustainable Australia Party, Liberals for Climate, and WAxit. This appears to be a chunk of the Druery nonsense, but is also solid right wing whack.
Look, he was a Family First candidate, so without any compelling evidence otherwise, I imagine he’s still a far right, religious, ‘heterosexual nuclear families are the only families’ proponent. Prove me wrong, Felly Chandra. Actually tell me what your electoral platform is!
Chelsea Henderson is possibly even more invisible. She might be a student studying primary school education, but I really cannot find anything that discusses this election.
I would suggest that you put Chandra's group down near Australian Christians. Just assume this is a vote for Family First until and unless any further evidence presents itself.
JM David
http://jm.david.net.co/
Yes! A website! And it even has a “Views on” section! (Why not call them polices, mate)
Jean-Michel David is a teacher who works in Steiner schools. He is a far right conspiracy theorist. He’s a COVID denier who doesn’t trust vaccinations, masks, travel restrictions or Microsoft (Gates tracking chips not namechecked but clearly referenced). He is anti-EMF and 5G and hates electricity smart meters. He’s anti-fluoridation (if you want it you can just use toothpaste/take tablets). He thinks surveillance cameras are wrong. He thinks lower speed limits are “revenue raising” and wants speed limits increased.
Bureaucracy is bad and wrong and taking over government and assuming powers that should be held only by government itself. He’s for school choice via school vouchers (of course he is, working in Steiners). Mining and logging are ok, but fracking is bad and stop logging old growth forests. People should be able to store water without being levied for it.
In terms of his position on government and economics: well we hit Magna Carta on his front page! “Principles of autonomy reflected in the Magna Carta, and later articulated as inalienable human rights, need to reflect considerations in the enactment of just laws.” Yeah, the Magna Carta! Always highly relevant in terms of politics. He also considers himself a small l liberal, of “classical and social liberalism”. He also kindly tells us his economic influences are “the works of the Austrian-school philosophers and economists Ludwig von Mises and Nobel prize winner Friedrich Hayek” which has been translated for me as “super free market libertarian”. Libertarian is probably the best encapsulation of his policy positions: get government out of regulation, get the bureaucracy out of government, the market can control all.
He also boasts possibly the only coherent GTV I’ve seen so far this election: it is him, followed by Health Australia Party, No Mandatory Vaccinations, the Liberal Democrats, then all the other independents, Sustainable Australia, Shooters, then Legalise Cannabis. Labor and Greens are bottom of the ticket. I don’t like it, but you can clearly figure out why he put the parties in this order, and track his views.
JM David also nicely invites us to email him if we have any questions about specific policies he hasn’t covered. I’m good without checking in on him, personally, as I can probably guess, but it’s that personal touch.
Don’t… don’t vote for this guy. Do go read his website though if you’re a microparty fan, he hits all the greatest hits and explains them in a reasonably clear manner without getting bogged down in the detail of the conspiracies he’s spouting.
Parminder Singh
https://www.facebook.com/Parminder.Singh.WA/
Another guy with a website and policies! Awesome. Thanks, Parminder Singh.
Parminder runs a number of small rural businesses. He is worried about the decreasing rural population and wants to regrow rural towns with more businesses. He wants more families to move rurally, to help support communities and increase the number of kids in schools.
Parminder wants to increase the number of rural doctors and nurses by providing incentives to work rurally, including repaying their HECS if they commit to work rurally for 3-4 years. That still sounds like it would generate a HUGE amount of churn and rather like the rural scholarships that already exist, only even more hardcore in terms of how much HECS they pay.
He also wants a passenger train from Perth to Albany! Cool, we always like train policies at this blog. Also to increase rural tourism by listing more historical buildings and turning them into “tourism icons”.
In terms of water and energy, Parminder is all for solar power backed by battery technology at a farm and business level, to help restore power faster in a blackout. That’s actually a rather interesting distributed power grid concept and completely worth investigating for a state as large as WA, where multiple small nodes in a grid would probably provide more redundancies. He also wants better water policies to drought-proof the state: more water piped in from the north of the state, as his local groundwater is extremely hard and has to be desalinated before use.
He’s FOR live exports. Wow. It’s interesting to see someone just outright supportive of live export rather than wrapping their support in caveats.
I can’t see anything on his social position, but Parminder is Sikh.
Looking at his GTV: it’s the Nationals, followed by the Liberals, WA Party, WAxit and Shooters. No Mandatory Vaccination and AJP are the bottom of his ticket.
Generally I like Parminder? He sounds pretty centre right and has some very locally rooted concerns for regional WA. I think you could do worse preferencing him as a centre right candidate if that’s your thing. He certainly hasn’t shown any signs of far right weirdness – he’s a rural small business guy and the sort of person who is what the Nationals like to claim they position themselves to represent.
Les Mirco
Les does not appear to have any sort of campaign website, which is always an issue when you’re an independent.
After some searching, he appears to be a gardening, yardwork and handyman based in Northcliffe. He has been on the Northcliffe Forest Park Management Committee as a community representative for some time: at least 2011 to 2017.
He’s taken a local yoga class.
I cannot tell you what he stands for, as he simply hasn’t articulated that anywhere I can see.
He does have a GTV: he lists all the independents (this level of solidarity always amuses me), followed by Health Australia Party, Liberals for Climate, the Lib Dems, and Sustainable Australia. Bottom of the ticket is Nationals, then Labor, then Liberal. So he doesn’t like big parties and probably has some crank tendencies: the general message of those four together is “slightly suspicious over government”. He seems to mix from left to right to left to right as he goes down the ticket, so I think he largely just doesn’t like parties generally.
I think the prospects of Les getting an LC seat, even with Agricultural quotas, is extremely small. Maybe he might consider running for local council instead? He seems to be a community-minded sort of person, in that he’s been on a Park management committee for quite some time.
Peter Wallis
Again, no website! If you don’t have a website (or a facebook page, or twitter) so you have an internet presence for your election campaign, you’re not REALLY campaigning in 2021. He does list an email address (ending in 98), so either he’s only 22 or he set his email up 22 years ago.
By scrutinising his group voting ticket, it’s himself, Health Australia Party, four of the other independents (but not Parminder Singh), No Mandatory Vaccination, Australian Christians, Great Australia Party, One Nation. The bottom of the ticket is Parminder Singh, the Greens and Labor.
Well, given that, I think we can say he’s a right wing COVID-conspiracy anti-vax racist, unless and until any other evidence is presented.
Relegating the only independent with a clearly non-white name to the bottom of the ballot after you listed all the others immediately after Health Australia Party? Yikes.
Do not vote for this dude. He's clearly racist, whatever else he believes.
Steven Hopkins
Another Mr No Website. Hey, I can tell you who he isn’t: he isn’t the governor of Rhode Island during the 18th century and a signatory to the Declaration of Independence, a reporter for the Huffpost UK, or a judge in Maricopa County Superior Court Criminal Division in Arizona. (And let me tell all of you, yes I AM delighted to get to talk about Maricopa County while writing about Australian elections, this is unexpected and amusing)
I haven’t been able to turn up an Australian who looks like they fit the bill to be this guy.
The Group Voting Ticket also proceeds to tell me less than nothing about his policies, as the parties listed at the front seem to be the Druery crowd: Health Australia Party, Daylight Savings Party, Liberals for Climate, Lib Dems, Sustainable Australia, then the rest of the indies. Bottom of the ticket is Labor then Liberal. The only fact of interest is that Liberals for Climate are split: first candidate is at 18, the second one is at 6 on the GTV. Clearly even here he doesn’t like Flux.
I call this possibly as an even more useless attempt to feed preferences into the GTV roulette wheel Druery orchestrates.
Why run, dude. Just why.
Andrew Ballantyne
Again, Andrew has no evident web presence. There are a couple of possible people in WA, but none of them jump out at me as definitely the sort that would run in a state election.
The Group Voting Ticket is useless, as it’s another Druery crowd ticket: HAP, DSP, four of the independents, Sustainable Australia, Parminder Singh, Lib Dems, Liberals for Climate, WA Party. Bottom of the ticket is Labor then Liberals.
Why bother? No really, this is just another straight preference harvest for a candidate that essentially doesn’t exist. Why do you bother doing this? At least set up a facebook page and entertain everyone by posting a couple of memes or generic issues everyone cares about. My suggestions for this WA election would be: ramping at WA hospitals; your opinion on border closures; farmers need more access to water; “I’m here to keep the big parties accountable!”. At least then you are cosplaying a political candidate, rather than being a blank slate.
First up is Agricultural Region, who have one unnamed independent group and 6 independent candidates.
Felly Chandra & Chelsea Henderson
Felly Chandra appears to be our favourite thing, a serial candidate. He’s run as a grouped candidate with Anthony Fels for Family First at state level in 2008, then with him again in 2010 and 2014 for the WA Senate in federal elections and in 2013 for the state election without an official party.
Anthony Fels appears to be an ex-Liberal who has had a lot of fun randomly hopping between far right parties over the years. He’s a treat.
Felly Chandra took the 2017 state election off from running for the rump of Family First and has now returned for the 2021 election, with a new electoral partner and in first slot. Despite this apparent passion for running futilely for government, he has no electoral website that I (or Antony Green!) can track down.
Things I have found while looking for him: he got out of a parking ticket in 2018 on “other compassionate grounds”. He might be the director of an industrial chemical company called “Liquid Engineering” that’s based in West Perth and manufactures lubricants and cleaning products for industrial purposes.
His group voting ticket preferences all the independents, followed by WA Party, Health Australia Party, Sustainable Australia Party, Liberals for Climate, and WAxit. This appears to be a chunk of the Druery nonsense, but is also solid right wing whack.
Look, he was a Family First candidate, so without any compelling evidence otherwise, I imagine he’s still a far right, religious, ‘heterosexual nuclear families are the only families’ proponent. Prove me wrong, Felly Chandra. Actually tell me what your electoral platform is!
Chelsea Henderson is possibly even more invisible. She might be a student studying primary school education, but I really cannot find anything that discusses this election.
I would suggest that you put Chandra's group down near Australian Christians. Just assume this is a vote for Family First until and unless any further evidence presents itself.
JM David
http://jm.david.net.co/
Yes! A website! And it even has a “Views on” section! (Why not call them polices, mate)
Jean-Michel David is a teacher who works in Steiner schools. He is a far right conspiracy theorist. He’s a COVID denier who doesn’t trust vaccinations, masks, travel restrictions or Microsoft (Gates tracking chips not namechecked but clearly referenced). He is anti-EMF and 5G and hates electricity smart meters. He’s anti-fluoridation (if you want it you can just use toothpaste/take tablets). He thinks surveillance cameras are wrong. He thinks lower speed limits are “revenue raising” and wants speed limits increased.
Bureaucracy is bad and wrong and taking over government and assuming powers that should be held only by government itself. He’s for school choice via school vouchers (of course he is, working in Steiners). Mining and logging are ok, but fracking is bad and stop logging old growth forests. People should be able to store water without being levied for it.
In terms of his position on government and economics: well we hit Magna Carta on his front page! “Principles of autonomy reflected in the Magna Carta, and later articulated as inalienable human rights, need to reflect considerations in the enactment of just laws.” Yeah, the Magna Carta! Always highly relevant in terms of politics. He also considers himself a small l liberal, of “classical and social liberalism”. He also kindly tells us his economic influences are “the works of the Austrian-school philosophers and economists Ludwig von Mises and Nobel prize winner Friedrich Hayek” which has been translated for me as “super free market libertarian”. Libertarian is probably the best encapsulation of his policy positions: get government out of regulation, get the bureaucracy out of government, the market can control all.
He also boasts possibly the only coherent GTV I’ve seen so far this election: it is him, followed by Health Australia Party, No Mandatory Vaccinations, the Liberal Democrats, then all the other independents, Sustainable Australia, Shooters, then Legalise Cannabis. Labor and Greens are bottom of the ticket. I don’t like it, but you can clearly figure out why he put the parties in this order, and track his views.
JM David also nicely invites us to email him if we have any questions about specific policies he hasn’t covered. I’m good without checking in on him, personally, as I can probably guess, but it’s that personal touch.
Don’t… don’t vote for this guy. Do go read his website though if you’re a microparty fan, he hits all the greatest hits and explains them in a reasonably clear manner without getting bogged down in the detail of the conspiracies he’s spouting.
Parminder Singh
https://www.facebook.com/Parminder.Singh.WA/
Another guy with a website and policies! Awesome. Thanks, Parminder Singh.
Parminder runs a number of small rural businesses. He is worried about the decreasing rural population and wants to regrow rural towns with more businesses. He wants more families to move rurally, to help support communities and increase the number of kids in schools.
Parminder wants to increase the number of rural doctors and nurses by providing incentives to work rurally, including repaying their HECS if they commit to work rurally for 3-4 years. That still sounds like it would generate a HUGE amount of churn and rather like the rural scholarships that already exist, only even more hardcore in terms of how much HECS they pay.
He also wants a passenger train from Perth to Albany! Cool, we always like train policies at this blog. Also to increase rural tourism by listing more historical buildings and turning them into “tourism icons”.
In terms of water and energy, Parminder is all for solar power backed by battery technology at a farm and business level, to help restore power faster in a blackout. That’s actually a rather interesting distributed power grid concept and completely worth investigating for a state as large as WA, where multiple small nodes in a grid would probably provide more redundancies. He also wants better water policies to drought-proof the state: more water piped in from the north of the state, as his local groundwater is extremely hard and has to be desalinated before use.
He’s FOR live exports. Wow. It’s interesting to see someone just outright supportive of live export rather than wrapping their support in caveats.
I can’t see anything on his social position, but Parminder is Sikh.
Looking at his GTV: it’s the Nationals, followed by the Liberals, WA Party, WAxit and Shooters. No Mandatory Vaccination and AJP are the bottom of his ticket.
Generally I like Parminder? He sounds pretty centre right and has some very locally rooted concerns for regional WA. I think you could do worse preferencing him as a centre right candidate if that’s your thing. He certainly hasn’t shown any signs of far right weirdness – he’s a rural small business guy and the sort of person who is what the Nationals like to claim they position themselves to represent.
Les Mirco
Les does not appear to have any sort of campaign website, which is always an issue when you’re an independent.
After some searching, he appears to be a gardening, yardwork and handyman based in Northcliffe. He has been on the Northcliffe Forest Park Management Committee as a community representative for some time: at least 2011 to 2017.
He’s taken a local yoga class.
I cannot tell you what he stands for, as he simply hasn’t articulated that anywhere I can see.
He does have a GTV: he lists all the independents (this level of solidarity always amuses me), followed by Health Australia Party, Liberals for Climate, the Lib Dems, and Sustainable Australia. Bottom of the ticket is Nationals, then Labor, then Liberal. So he doesn’t like big parties and probably has some crank tendencies: the general message of those four together is “slightly suspicious over government”. He seems to mix from left to right to left to right as he goes down the ticket, so I think he largely just doesn’t like parties generally.
I think the prospects of Les getting an LC seat, even with Agricultural quotas, is extremely small. Maybe he might consider running for local council instead? He seems to be a community-minded sort of person, in that he’s been on a Park management committee for quite some time.
Peter Wallis
Again, no website! If you don’t have a website (or a facebook page, or twitter) so you have an internet presence for your election campaign, you’re not REALLY campaigning in 2021. He does list an email address (ending in 98), so either he’s only 22 or he set his email up 22 years ago.
By scrutinising his group voting ticket, it’s himself, Health Australia Party, four of the other independents (but not Parminder Singh), No Mandatory Vaccination, Australian Christians, Great Australia Party, One Nation. The bottom of the ticket is Parminder Singh, the Greens and Labor.
Well, given that, I think we can say he’s a right wing COVID-conspiracy anti-vax racist, unless and until any other evidence is presented.
Relegating the only independent with a clearly non-white name to the bottom of the ballot after you listed all the others immediately after Health Australia Party? Yikes.
Do not vote for this dude. He's clearly racist, whatever else he believes.
Steven Hopkins
Another Mr No Website. Hey, I can tell you who he isn’t: he isn’t the governor of Rhode Island during the 18th century and a signatory to the Declaration of Independence, a reporter for the Huffpost UK, or a judge in Maricopa County Superior Court Criminal Division in Arizona. (And let me tell all of you, yes I AM delighted to get to talk about Maricopa County while writing about Australian elections, this is unexpected and amusing)
I haven’t been able to turn up an Australian who looks like they fit the bill to be this guy.
The Group Voting Ticket also proceeds to tell me less than nothing about his policies, as the parties listed at the front seem to be the Druery crowd: Health Australia Party, Daylight Savings Party, Liberals for Climate, Lib Dems, Sustainable Australia, then the rest of the indies. Bottom of the ticket is Labor then Liberal. The only fact of interest is that Liberals for Climate are split: first candidate is at 18, the second one is at 6 on the GTV. Clearly even here he doesn’t like Flux.
I call this possibly as an even more useless attempt to feed preferences into the GTV roulette wheel Druery orchestrates.
Why run, dude. Just why.
Andrew Ballantyne
Again, Andrew has no evident web presence. There are a couple of possible people in WA, but none of them jump out at me as definitely the sort that would run in a state election.
The Group Voting Ticket is useless, as it’s another Druery crowd ticket: HAP, DSP, four of the independents, Sustainable Australia, Parminder Singh, Lib Dems, Liberals for Climate, WA Party. Bottom of the ticket is Labor then Liberals.
Why bother? No really, this is just another straight preference harvest for a candidate that essentially doesn’t exist. Why do you bother doing this? At least set up a facebook page and entertain everyone by posting a couple of memes or generic issues everyone cares about. My suggestions for this WA election would be: ramping at WA hospitals; your opinion on border closures; farmers need more access to water; “I’m here to keep the big parties accountable!”. At least then you are cosplaying a political candidate, rather than being a blank slate.
