Tim Quilty on Sky News

Tim Quilty has once again been waving the LDP flag in the media. Tim is our candidate for the important bell-weather seat of Eden-Monaro (NSW) and has already picked up a bit of local media. Today he hit the big time with a story on Sky News investigating his run for the seat and highlighting his controversial proposal to end farm subsidies.

The story can be seen at www.federalelection.com.au, along with other useful information about the election.

UPDATE: The story can now be seen here.

Rudd v Howard in Griffith

There has been a lot of media coverage of John Howard’s battle to retain his electorate of Bennelong, and the LDP has a strong candidate in Bennelong (David Leyonhjelm) trying to help Howard into retirement.

But today a new Howard entered the race.

The new contender will run against Kevin Rudd in his inner-Brisbane electorate of Griffith, and has applied to appear on the ballot paper as “Howard, P.M.”

The trouble-maker’s name is Peter Howard and is better known as the serial pest who staged a break-out of Woomera Detention Centre. I ran into him today at the Brisbane office of the Australian Electoral Commission and he explained to me that his policies included removing income tax and decriminalising marijuana. Sounds good to me.

Howard may have a chance against Rudd… but of course neither candidate is a match for the LDP’s own Samantha Myers.

61 candidates

Phew! Our nominations have now been lodged and I am very happy to announce that the Liberty & Democracy Party (LDP) will be standing 61 candidates around Australia. To all our candidates and those people who helped organise the candidates, a big thank you.

The LDP has 14 Senate candidates (2 each for all States + ACT) and 47 House candidates. The LDP will be represented from Darwin to Tasmania and Perth to Byron Bay, including all important marginals. We have a healthy spread of House candidates thoughout the States — NSW (12), Qld (12), Vic (8), SA (6), WA (6), Tas (2), NT (1).

Realistically, the only winnable positions for a minor party is the 1st Senate candidate in each State. The LDP lead Senate candidates are as follows:

NSW — Terje Peterson
Qld — John Humphreys
Vic — Steve Clancy
WA — Peter Whelan
SA — David McAlary
Tas — Bede Ireland

I am very happy with how things are turning out for us so far and look forward to an interesting and fun-filled next four weeks of campaigning. If you would like to help, please get in touch with the lead Senate candidate in your State and start spreading the word. To all our candidates — good luck!

UPDATE: As there are a total of 1421 candidates, LDP makes up 4.3% of all candidates.