The Null Device blog: Night of the living DLP

The Democratic Labor Party was a fiercely right-wing Catholic party that split off from the Australian Labor Party in the 1950s because they were seen as too Communistic, and disappeared in all but name after the USSR collapsed. Now, it's back, having won two seats in the Victorian upper house and potentially having the balance of power, assuming that the other parties line up on opposite sites. How does an undead party manage to grab two seats out of nowhere? Largely through preference deals with other parties, who all put them ahead of the dangerously un-Australian, pro-paedoterrorist Greens (thus bringing back another Cold War concept, that of a policy of containment).

Anyway, it's not quite as bad as it could have been; the ALP has 19 votes, the Tories have 15, with the Nationals (i.e., the God and Country party), the DLP and the Greens having two each. Victorian politics may soon start looking more like Italy or Israel, with no one party having a clear mandate and a lot of horse-trading going on behind the scenes. Though whether Labour would rather deal with the Greens or throw a few legislated-morality carrots to the DLP is uncertain.

There are 3 comments on "Night of the living DLP":

Posted by: ard65 Wed Dec 13 21:45:34 2006

In an interesting gesture, the Bracks government called for a recount by the Electoral Commission in two of the regions......Anyway, the electoral commission went one better and recounted 3 regions. One of the DLP candidates has been replaced by an ALP candidate. In another region, an ALP candidate has replaced by a Greens Candidate. In the 3rd recounted region, no change.

Summary : DLP 1, Greens 3, Tories 15, ALP 19

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org/acb/ Thu Dec 14 19:20:51 2006

I heard that on RRR this morning.

Posted by: ba-santamaria Thu Dec 14 23:19:42 2006

I'm back from the dead...

Such Whitlam-ite obscenities as multiculturism must be eliminated!

Remember "Point of view" - stunning television ;-)