Sam McQuestin, with State Libs Leader Will Hodgman
What is an independent liberal?
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McQuestin is quoted as claiming “We have the strongest political brand in the state and in the nation and we take very seriously our responsibility to protect that brand”, and as saying the party was “prepared to consider all legal avenues”.
They can consider all the avenues they like. They’re all dead ends.
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S. 197 is not a truth-in-electoral-advertising clause – rather, it’s there to stop advertisers from misleading the public by telling them that an informal vote will be formal and vice versa, by telling them falsely that voting is optional, by misleading them concerning the day of the election, and so on. The truth or falsehood of claims made during the campaign by candidates concerning themselves, each other, or parties, is for the candidates to debate and the voters to decide.
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The modern Liberal Party’s continuing use of the L-word in its title is no mere technicality, but one of the great political Piltdown Men of Australian electoral history. The unfortunate thing about it is that the party is able, under laws preventing parties from registering under names that would create confusion, to suppress attempts at competition by other parties seeking to describe themselves explicitly as liberal parties. The Liberal Party can be as indifferent or even hostile to actual liberalism of any form whatsoever as it likes, and anyone else wanting to grab the name for themselves can be as liberal as they like, but the Liberals keep the brand, because they were the trolls who got there first.
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But the funny part of it is what this combination of stances means for how the party views Tony Mulder MLC. Effectively, the party is saying that there are formally unendorsed candidates it informally endorses, and formally unendorsed candidates it doesn’t informally endorse, and hence that Mulder was its endorsed unendorsed candidate!
Read more: http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/what-is-independent-liberal.html
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