The following are my thoughts on overall rankings in Bennelong, based on my job skill rankings, consideration of the minor party merits, and the critical factors in considering the major parties.
Unsuitable candidates
As is becoming my custom, I will eliminate the candidates who are no real option at all first.
Last has to be Victor Waterson, the national socialist. There is nothing nice that can be said about this candidate or his party.
The existence of a nazi on the ballot paper is the only thing that saves Julie Worsley, the Christian Demoocrat, from being last. She comes in second last.
The absentee candidate, Lachlan McCaffrey, comes 6th. The Democratic Labor Party are , like the Christian Democrats, too concerned with imposing their religious views on others. Added to this are his non-existent job skills.
Fifth is Rob Marks. The Palmer United Party are pushing seriously irresponsible policies, and it does not help that its leader seems to be a conspiracy theorist, based on his recent performance. Even where the Palmer United Party has good ideas (and they do have some), they fall down by taking them too far.
Fourth is John Alexander, with no relevant job skills, and being a candidate for a party that is determined to injure essential infrastructure like the NBN to serve its leader's ego, he is no real option, and only beats out the candidates in lower positions because the candidates in lower positions are worse than an ineffectual seat-warmer. Even in Alexander's later campaign material, his plans for the local area are all about sport. When he talks about his "business skills", again, it is all about sport. Alexander is a one-trick pony who clearly knows nothing outside of sport, and skill in and knowledge of sport is a completely useless skill for a legislator. It is a disgrace that this is the kind of candidate the Liberal Party is prepared to put up in Bennelong.
The viable candidates
This leaves only Lindsay Peters (of the Greens), Jason Li (Labor), and John August (Secular).
Jason Li is such a high quality candidate that I was very strongly considering putting him in the first position. However the Secular Party has a very good set of politics, with very little in it to complain about. While John August is not suited to the job of a legislator, he also has no chance at all of being elected. Accordingly I have decided to put him at number 1 on the paper to make a clear statement of my preferred policies.
Jason Li comes second. Aside from his impeccable job skills, he had already demonstrated a preparedness to work for Bennelong and to work to improve Labor policy, and has moved into the electorate. Even if, as seems likely, he fails to win, hopefully he will stick around another 6 years to run in 2016 and 2019.
That leaves Lindsay Peters third. While not a bad candidate, he simply cannot compete against the skills of Jason Li, and the Secular Party represents what in my view is a better policy mix.
Overall order
This leaves the overall order as follows:
[3] PETERS, Lindsay (The Greens)
[2] LI, Jason Yat-Sen (Labor)
[7] WORSLEY, Julie (Christian Democratic Party)
[5] MARKS, Robert James (Palmer United Party)
[6] McCAFFREY, Lachlan Patrick (Democratic Labor Party)
[4] ALEXANDER, John (Liberal)
[1] AUGUST, John
[8] WATERSON, Victor
Senate
Unfortunately, none of the Senate "above-the-line" tickets is worth following, which is unfortunate, given the number of candidates below the line. All of the tickets direct preferences in strange and inconsistent ways, and if you vote above the line you risk helping to elect somebody you probably did not expect. A surprisingly large number of above-the-line tickets put One Nation near the top.
Of the above-the-line tickets, the Secular Party ticket is probably the best, as it starts of well at the top. However it then goes through a series of questionable choices before getting to the Greens, then some more questionable choices, then Labor, then some more questionable choices, then Liberal. They also fail to put the national socialist and xenophobic parties last.
This means that for a good result, you will need to vote below the line, which has some risks, given the large number of candidates.
If you do decide to vote below the line, my summary of the Senate groups should help, together with the belowtheline.org.au drag-and-drop generator, which produces a convenient personal how-to-vote card.
If you do decide to vote below the line, I find it helpful to find the group with number 1, and number it in order, then to keep numbering the boxes in the order you want, rather than just trying to write out the numbers from the left hand side of the paper to the right. While this takes a lot longer and means you will be sliding this very large ballot paper back and forth when you fill it in, this approach effectively lets you double-check that you have done it right, while you are numbering the boxes. You can then triple-check after you have finished, by finding number 1, then 2, and so on, to check that every number up to 110 is there.
