If you’re voting in the Broadmeadows by-election today, you might be interested to read the candidates’ responses to an Australian Family Lobby questionnaire.
Because the AFL is fairly new, we didn’t get responses from all the candidates – and voters might want to consider how much they’d trust the candidates who refused to answer these fairly straightforward and entirely reasonable questions.
We’ll be doing a similar one for the upcoming NSW election and will send it off to the parties shortly.
ELSEWHERE: Not that if you relied on the state media you’d know it was on, of course.
Moved On 
Methodologically, it might have been a tad questionable to give the independent -1 for every “no answer” rather than zero but, hey, considering the content of his other responses, I’m happy with his overall score. (Paraphrasing: “I don’t support evidence-based AOD policy because I gave up smoking for my daughter.” WTF?)
Originally we marked them “0” but then I thought – hang on, then a candidate with the worst views on each subject would be better off declining to answer. Voters should probably draw an adverse inference against a candidate who refuses to say what they believe.
It’s entirely arbitrary, though, of course.
The score is no big deal. What is good is the responses the candidates provide.
Nice one AFL.
Top work.
Sadly goes to confirm that as a rule, independents you’ve never heard of are almost certainly a worse choice than any of the well known parties, no matter how many issues you have with each of their platforms.
Unless of course you want some sort of statue built of them in your city – then the independent will rock!
Did the god-botherer independent seriously claim that the following is a clear indication that the writers of the constitution meant to exclude same-sex couples from marriage? Yep, it’s definitely very clear!
The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:
[…]
(xxi) marriage;
“Sadly goes to confirm that as a rule, independents you’ve never heard of are almost certainly a worse choice than any of the well known parties, no matter how many issues you have with each of their platforms.”
Well said. Which is a pity for decent independent candidates…
Best way to tell about an independent you’ve never heard of, without doing actual research, is to compare the parties’ HTVs – you’ll usually (but not always) be able to tell what sort of independent someone is by which bigger parties put them higher and lower.