The 19 September byelection, triggered by the sudden death in July of sitting MP Don Randall, has attracted a motley slate of candidates. We’ve compiled a handy form guide for those following at home, presented in ballot paper order.
1. Vimal Sharma, Palmer United party
Clive Palmer is unlikely to have any loyalty concerns about Palmer United party candidate Vimal Sharma. The Canning candidate, who had a failed tilt at the Western Australian seat of Cowan in the 2013 general election, is a senior executive with Palmer’s flagship company, Mineralogy, who, the Australian suggested, “was once suspected [in a judgment of a closed-door inquiry leaked to the Australian] of feigning chest pains as a ruse to avoid being grilled under oath over claims of a major alleged fraud” when in fact he had mild anxiety.
Palmer, on PUP’s website, described his lieutenant as “a family man who believes Western Australia is getting a raw deal,” who “has the guts to stand up for Western Australians”.
Sharma, for his part, said he’ll fight to increase WA’s share of the GST.
PUP is arguably stronger in Western Australia than in any other state, with the WA senator Dio Wang the lone person left in the party room alongside Palmer. Palmer says Sharma will be over in Canberra to interrupt Wang’s lonely cups of tea for one soon, but the polls say otherwise: PUP got 6.9% of the primary vote in Canning in 2013, but the latest Newspoll has it on 2% this time around.
2. Connor Whittle, Liberal Democrats
Twenty-two-year-old libertarian Connor Whittle has been keeping a low profile.
The party’s website describes him as a “guitar-playing, globe-trotting draftsman” who aims to raise the party’s profile in WA – and, presumably, advocate for its policy positions, which include relaxing gun laws, ceasing all foreign aid except humanitarian relief and legalising cannabis.
Whittle is not on Twitter, but his Facebook profile, which doesn’t seem to be set up for campaigning, describes him as an “enthusiastic amateur”. (It also features a profile picture which prompted Helen Dale, senior adviser to the Liberal Democratic senator David Leyonhjelm, to comment: “There are women and gays in Canning who will vote for you on the strength of your dimples. Truth.”)
3. Michelle Allen, Pirate party
Michelle Allen is a Perth-based software developer who has the advantage, which not all candidates share, of actually having lived in Canning. She is nominally campaigning on the party’s core policies of digital rights and civil liberties (her profile boasts “we know how to use the internet”), but her real pitch is an opportunity to stick it to the major parties. The Pirate party has been crowdfunding to pay for her campaign, which does not yet appear to have begun in earnest.
Allen has pointed out that 19 September, the date of the byelection, also happens to be international Talk Like a Pirate Day, just in case that influences anyone’s vote.
4. Greg Smith, Australian Defence Veterans party
Greg Smith worked as a journalist for almost two decades, starting as a copy boy at the Sydney’s Daily Mirror (since absorbed into the Daily Telegraph). He joined the Australian army as a public relations officer in 1986, switching to the army reserve after three years. In 2001 he began active service, serving in East Timor and rising to the rank of major before leaving the defence force in 2009.
According to the ABC, Smith hadn’t heard of the Australian Defence Veterans party before the Canning byelection was announced. Which is fair enough: the party only formed after the 2013 federal election, making Smith its first candidate.
His first media statement as a candidate was a release claiming the byelection was “unnecessary”, arguing the House of Representatives should apply the same rules as the Senate when a member retires or dies, which would see his opponent and fellow veteran, Andrew Hastie, summarily appointed to the seat.
5. Katrina Love, Animal Justice party
Katrina Love is the coordinator of the animal rights group Stop Live Exports. She describes herself as a social progressive but says animal welfare is “the one issue that keeps me awake at night, the one issue that brings me to despair and often to tears”.
The Animal Justice party was formed by a Sunshine Coast professor, Steve Garlick, and registered as a political party in 2011. It has one elected representative: Mark Pearson, who was elected to the New South Wales upper house on preferences in April.
This is the second time Love has stood as a candidate for the party (she ran for the Senate in 2013) and her expectations are understandably low. On her Facebook page she says: “We won’t pretend we have any hope of winning this federal lower house seat, but you can send a strong message to the three major parties that animals matter and they aren’t doing enough, by placing AJP first.”
6. Andrew Hastie, Liberal party
Until three weeks ago, the 32-year-old former Special Air Service Regiment captain Andrew Hastie lived in army housing in the Perth suburb of Shenton Park, 40km from the boundary of the Canning electorate, with his wife and newborn. The young family have since moved into a house in Mandurah’s Dudley Park.
An Anglican and social conservative who opposes marriage equality, Hastie has relied on his military record to impress, nominating as relevant experience his time fighting the Taliban and other militant groups in his three tours of Afghanistan. And it’s working. The West Australian described him as “smart and well-spoken, fit and focused”.
He is campaigning on a platform of law and order, promising to reduce methamphetamine or ice-related crime in the outer suburban seat; his national security expertise; and his ability to fill Randall’s shoes as a voice for the local community (which also helpfully distances him from the Abbott government’s national unpopularity). The guarantee he gives of success is, again, based on his military record, citing what has become his catchphrase: “Mission failure is not an option.”
7. Teresa van Lieshout, independent
Serial campaigner Teresa van Lieshout is standing as an independent this time around (although she is describing herself as from the “voter rights party”). She was disendorsed by the Palmer United party just 12 days after being named its candidate for the seat of Fremantle in 2013. She lives in Mundijong, in the Canning electorate.
Campaign strategies this time around have included an acrostic poem attacking a local Fairfax Regional paper, the Mandurah Mail, for being “Malicious Asshole Nutcases Dickheads” (it goes on, but we won’t). That was posted on Friday, after the Mandurah Mail published an article about Van Lieshout failing to appear on charges of breaching bail at the Fremantle magistrates court, then quoting her as saying: “They call it a trial, I call it a Nazi fascist process … I don’t care what they say, I want that magistrate jailed.”
Van Lieshout also released a 12-minute video in the style of Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues (although Dylan may take offence to that comparison) that won her an interview on Sunrise. That video and other gems, including her bikini-clad pitch for the 2014 state byelection for Vasse, prompted by the resignation of the chair-sniffing former treasurer Troy Buswell, can be found on her regularly updated YouTube channel.
8. Matt Keogh, Labor party
Matt Keogh is a commercial litigant and former prosecutor with the office of the commonwealth director of public prosecutions. He resigned from his role as president of the Law Society of WA to stand for preselection for Canning.
The 33-year-old, as all his campaign material states, grew up in Kelmscott, a suburb in the electorate, but moved to the inner-city suburb of Mount Lawley in recent years. He moved back to Kelmscott after being preselected.
Keogh, a practising Catholic, joined the ALP at the age of 16. He is campaigning on the bedrock Labor party platforms of health, education and jobs, is vocal in his support for marriage equality, and has promised funding to local road projects (doubling Armadale Road, fixing the Denny Road intersection) and $3.4m for local drug rehab and family violence programs – all contingent on the ALP winning the 2016 general election.
He is also trying to pitch himself as the ideological, if not the political, successor to Randall, who was known for his commitment as a local member, saying: “I’ve grown up in this area and I’m really committed to this area and making it a better place.”
That didn’t impress the deputy Liberal leader, Julie Bishop, who dismissively dubbed him: “The hipster Labor lawyer.”
9. Vanessa Rauland, Australian Greens
The renewable energy campaigner Vanessa Rauland is a lecturer at the Curtin University Sustainable Policy Institute. She’s also the founder, along with fellow Curtin University academic Samantha Hall, of an organisation called Simply Carbon, which began a “low-carbon schools” pilot program to turn 10 schools in Fremantle carbon neutral.
Rauland’s key campaign issue is solar energy. Canning has the highest solar energy uptake of any electorate in Australia – half of all homes have rooftop solar panels or solar hot water systems. She lives in Fremantle, about 30km outside the electorate, but is quoted in the West Australian as saying: “I feel very connected to them [Canning voters] on this issue of renewable energy.”
In the same article, the Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, pitched the byelection as a chance to send a message to the Abbott government on renewable energy, destabilise the leadership of Abbott himself and “influence the national landscape”. The Greens are not expected to do much better on 19 September than they did in 2013, when they got 7.4% of the primary vote.
10. Jim McCourt, Family First party
Serial Family First candidate Jim McCourt ran for Family First in Fremantle in the 2013 election, netting just under 1% of the primary vote. He also ran in the WA electorate of Hasluck in 2010, where he managed 2.26% despite famously calling gay people a “diseased group”.
McCourt later tried to clarify those comments with LGBTI press Out in Perth, saying: “I don’t hate gay people; I just see there is blindness in the community with what they are doing … They are the most demanding people in Australia.”
He also claimed he wasn’t homophobic, because “a phobia means you’re scared of something.”
McCourt is a former pastor who now lists his profession as a teacher.
11. Jamie Van Burgel, Australian Christians
The byelection is the second tilt at the federal seat of Canning for the Australian Christians candidate Jamie Van Burgel, who ran for the seat for the Christian Democratic party in 2010 (he got about 3% of the vote). A Canning local, the 33-year-old father of four also ran for state parliament in the 2010 byelection for the seat of Armadale, triggered by the resignation of now federal MP Alannah MacTiernan, polling 20% of the primary vote behind Labor’s Tony Buti. He was also the lead Senate candidate for the Australian Christians in 2013.
On the party’s website Van Burgel says he is a “viable conservative option” and also plays up his connection to Randall, saying: “Whenever I am out and about in the electorate I am reminded of his mantra of, ‘You talk, I’ll listen.’”
12. Angela Smith, Sustainable Population party
Angela Smith is an environmental scientist who has lived in the Canning area for about 30 years. On the party’s website she describes herself as a carer and mature-age law student. She also volunteers at the Mandurah community museum and sings in a choir in her spare time.
Smith said she’s campaigning for “a better, not bigger, Canning”, with key issues being paid work, education for all ages, infrastructure, affordable housing, renewable energy and healthcare.
