On Thursday evening the local newspaper that is not the topic of ICAC investigations held a candidates forum at North Ryde community centre. All Bennelong candidates attended except one.
The non-attendee was the youngest, Lachlan McCaffrey, 23, of the Democratic Labour Party. He decided that his rugby training was more important than being at the forum. He sent his daddy to speak for him instead. Having completely failed to advise us of any relevant qualifications, and failed to be present at this forum, he has to rate a zero for relevant job skills.
Of the remaining candidates, the top 3 shared a key differentiator - Jason Li, Lindsay Peters and Rob Marks all spoke reasonably fluidly, without any use of notes, from beside the lecturn. The last point may sound like a small one, but in reality a person standing beside, rather than behind, a lecturn, invariably conveys their message more effectively.
The clear winner on job skills remains Jason Li (Li Yat-Sen), who appears on the ballot paper as "LI, Jason Yat-Sen". He has extensive background in law (including both bachelor and masters degrees), business, policy and political advocacy, including at the international level. He spoke fluidly and engagingly without using any notes, and stood beside the lecturn rather than behind it.
Even though he came back to Australia less than 2 months ago, Li's grasp of Labor party policies was impeccable, and his grasp of the Liberal party policies impressive. In responding to questions from the audience he was able to immediately identify and describe the relevant party policy, and apply it appropriately to the question asked. He presented as somebody with an impressive degree of dedication and intellect. He also qualified his comments appropriately on the one occasion when he was unsure of the position, when an audience member asked him about a Liberal party policy that had been released only 2.5 hours before the forum.
On 2 occasions Li was asked some inordinately difficult and loaded questions which had me thinking "don't answer that". One of these was from Liberal councillor on Ryde City Council, Bill Pickering, who posed a question that was in substance a parroted speech from Tony Abbott. This is not what the forums are about, and it wasted time that could have been better used for genuine questions. This was quite rightly met with jeers from audience members or all persuasions, and the Liberal candidate, John Alexander looked decidedly uncomfortable. Aside from showing sheer bloody-minded disrespect of the audience, it made it look like Alexander's party does not think Alexander is up to the task given to him, and had to send in a babysitter. Alexander probably wanted to tell Pickering to sit down, and should have acted on that instinct. Pickering did no favours to his party or his candidate with this, and needs to take a long hard look at himself.
Li answered the difficult questions anyway, and he answered them very well. Pickering's speech masquerading as a question backfired spectacularly, when Li answered it so well that he received by far the most enthusiastic applause of the evening, again from audience members of all persuasions.
Li also articulated a vision for the electorate as an Australian version of Silicon Valley, which was well received by the audience. This is something he has been actively working on since coming back to Australia, and you can find out more about that at www.bennelongbusinessforum.net.
Li was also prepared, when appropriate, to say where he thought Labor party policy needed some improvement, and to commit to working on that improvement.
At risk of sounding like an ad for his campaign, Li clearly outranks all other candidates in every aspect of every job-skills category.
Lindsay Peters and Rob Marks are close. Both spoke fluidly without notes from beside the lecturn. Both have business skills. Rob Marks claims to have legal qualifications - more on that below.
In a fairly close contest, I rank Peters just above Marks. Peters brings strong policy analysis skills to the table, which Marks appears to lack. While Marks generally speaks well, he comes off as lacking genuineness - like a used car salesman. Peters was generally able to apply policies appropriately in answer to questions, whereas Marks was not, and simply kept repeating the same slogans.
While Marks' grasp of policy seems quite poor, his ranking is marginally lifted by his having had some legal training. However on checking the course lists for the relevant period from the university he claims to have received the qualification, I could not find any qualification offered that was precisely what Marks claims to have. I have assumed he has simply described the qualification loosely, but it appears it was a TAFE disploma covering law for business people, which would amount to essentially a watered-down version of first year law.
Marks embarrassed himself by demonstrating that he did not know where Silicon Valley is, suggesting that it was in the middle of the desert. Silicon Valley is actually part of the San Francisco metropolitan area, which is a similar environment to Sydney, but with temparatures typically a little but colder than Sydney. Part of Silicon Valley is right on San Fransico Bay).
All of the remaining candidates come well behind the three leaders on job skills. None of them will be winning any prizes for their public speaking skills.
I would rank John August at fouth, as he does have some policy analysis capabilities, but he does not appear to have any other relevant job skills. He was able to answer questions relatively sensibly.
Fifth comes John Alexander, with no discernible job skills. He spoke reading notes in a near monotone from behind the lecturn. While he spoke about the party policies in answer to questions, the policies he referred to were rarely relevant to the question asked, and even when they were relevant he failed to apply the policy to the question.
Alexander embarrassed himself by demonstrating he did not know the nature and significance of Silicon Valley when he claimed that Macquarie Park was already the Australian Silicon Valley, and rattled off a list of large foreign businesses that had set up their Australian head offices there. He was quite rightly called out on this by a Greens supporter in the back row.
Alexander still does not seem to appreciate that every time he describes the table tennis tables he put into the Bennelong schools as one of his achievements, everybody hearing it has a bit of a chuckle to themselves. If he has to count something like that as a great achievement, it only serves to make it look like he does not have any.
Alexander did secure some respect from the audience, when he answered a question about why Victor Waterson was ranked at number 5 on the Liberal how-to-vote card, rather than number 8. The first part of the answer earned jeers, when he placed the blame for this with head office, which insisted on putting the Greens last. The second part of his answer earned cheers, when he said that he had gone back to head office and insisted they change it, and then held up a new how to vote card with Victor Waterson last.
The final 2 candidates in the ranking actually score negative numbers on job skills, so they rank below the no-show, Lachlan McCaffrey. Aside from lacking job skills, they come across as irrational bigots. Julie Worsley comes in at 7, only because Victor Waterson comes across as even more irrational than she does.
This makes the order of job skills rankings:
- Jason Yat-Sen Li (Labor)
- Lindsay Peters (Greens)
- Rob Marks (Palmer United Party)
- John August (Secular Party)
- John Alexander (Liberal)
- Lachlan McCaffrey (Democratic Labour)
- Julie Worsley (Christian Democrats)
- Victor Waterson (Australia First)