Oh yeah, because you're in the Batman electorate. I'll run you through the existing candidates.
Yvonne Gentle - Rise Up Australia party: Danny Nalliah's ultraconservative, ultrafundamentalist Christian party that wants to halt all immigration, ban building of religious buildings that aren't Christian, etc. Nalliah is notable because he claims to have raised the dead.
Ged Kearney - Labor Party: Fairly standard Labor politician. Started working life as a nurse before becoming a union official, has been president of the ACTU since 2010. She replaces the retiring Martin Ferguson.
Alex Bhathal - Greens Party: Lives in the electorate. Worked in social welfare for the last 25 years or so. She's been big on helping people in the northern suburbs of Melbourne for a long time. She has unsuccessfully contested the Batman seat many times, in 2001, 2004, 2010, 2013, and 2016. Seems like a good person, but she's been unsuccessful as a politician thus far.
Kevin Bailey - Australian Conservatives: Melbourne businessman, philanthropist, former SASR soldier, diplomat, is a Member of the Order of Australia. He's written "Your Money" columns for the Herald Sun for the last ten years. Part of the Australian Conservatives, so that should explain a lot. Presumably former hard-right factional Liberal supporter, but jumped ship around the time Bernardi did.
Tegan Burns - Australian People's Party: The only candidate for this party, who has a very rudimentary website with her face splashed across it several times. Her policies include "Free education, aged care and dental care", "Lower HouseholdGas and Eletricity Bills by 50%", "Scrap All Road Tolls", "Legalise Cannabis, e-Cigarettes and Vaping". This is quoted verbatim. It doesn't seem to explain how she'd go about enacting her policies, not to mention that much of her policies would be a federal issue, rather than a not-even-state byelection.
Debbie Robinson - Australian Liberty Alliance: The ALA is much like the Rise Up Australia party, in that they're aggressively anti-Islam, and ultraconservative. There isn't much more to tell.
Teresa van Lieshout - Independent: Resident of Perth. Originally a member of the Palmer United Party, within a fortnight they had disendorsed her. She's one of Australia's most recent perennial candidates; she's run many, many times in many different elections, and almost universally come last.
Teresa van Lieshout, a resident of Perth, has unsuccessfully contested seven state and federal elections standing for various constituencies in Western Australia. She has stood for the Parliament of Western Australia as a One Nation candidate at the 2005 election, and as an independent at the 2006 Victoria Park by-election, 2013 state election, and 2014 Vasse by-election. For Federal Parliament, she ran as an independent at the 2004 election and 2014 special senate election, and as a Protectionist candidate at the 2013 election.[1] In August 2015, she announced she would be contesting an eighth election, the 2015 Canning by-election.[2]
She is notoriously crazy, and has had a warrant issued for her arrest following a no-show at the Perth Magistrates Court on charges of breaching bail, theft, and wilful unlawful damage. It's also worth mentioning that Teresa doesn't even live in the state and she's attempting to contest the Batman by-election.
This is her "party website". It explains all you need to know about her. Her facebook periodically reposts stuff by the Citizen's Electoral Council, a political movement based on the US activist Lyndon La Rouche. CEC have been described as "fascist", "lunar right". They campaign against "Fascism", though this usually amounts to campaigning against Howard-era policies. They're fucking mental, and managed to barely limp across the line into registration, with 549 members. The CEC have run in almost every election in Australia over the last two decades, and never receive more than 1.5-2% of the vote.
Adrian Whitehead - Unregistered "Save the Planet" party: Doesn't appear to have many policies besides creating the Great Otway National Park to preserve the Otway Ranges rainforest. He's also keen on addressing global warming, but I don't know how he'd manage to do that from a by-election level campaign. His party is unregistered. He's a former Greens convenor.
Mark McDonald - Sustainable Australia party: IT Engineer, lives in Preston. "Passionate about affordable housing, sustainable environment and population, energy security and sensible public asset ownership". On the one hand, this does sound somewhat reasonable, but in my experience, Sustainable Australia party members tend to be less about the affordable housing/environment/energy security and more about the "STOP THE BOATS".
Miranda Joyce Smith - Animal Justice Party: "ten years senior management experience in the healthcare industry". Active in animal rights protests, AJP candidate for Richmond in 2014, and for Melbourne in 2016 Federal election. As far as I understand, besides animal welfare, the AJP doesn't really have many policies. I did note that they want to reduce "home grown natural birth rates" to zero, while "also maintaining a compassionate approach to refugees and migrants." That's an interesting stance to take.
Last election, in 2016, Alex Bhathal came ahead for the Greens before preferencing, with 32,645 votes, or 36.2% of the vote, followed by Labor's David Feeney (the one who recently stepped down) with 31,780 votes (35.3%).
After preferencing, Labor came out ahead with 51% of the vote.
