The Sex Party will pour its resources into Tuggeranong after southern voters gave a substantial Senate vote to the party that espouses a civil libertarian agenda under the slogan "fun, fair and free".
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
Lead candidate Steven Bailey says he would use a balance of power position to legalise fireworks, bring back a speedway, legalise marijuana, scrap tax exemptions for the church, push restorative justice rather than throwing people in jail, allow e-cigarettes, and ban people from owning pets if they have a history of cruelty to animals.
Mr Bailey is yet to release detailed polices - he says they will come along with the other candidates in about a fortnight, but they will include cutting red tape for small business and a focus on public transport. His party is opposed to the tram but also believes the Liberal plan to tear up contracts is "economic vandalism".
Characterising his party as a "real" liberal party with compassion, he says it has appeal across politics, attracting a "sophisticated leftist vote" and an "ordinary Aussie battler vote".
He believes he has a real chance at taking one of the five seats in Tuggeranong. With 86 per cent of the federal vote counted, the Sex Party polled about 4 per cent of the Senate vote across Canberra, but Mr Bailey says the Tuggeranong booths polled 5.4 per cent. While that is still a long way from the 17 per cent needed to win a seat, Mr Bailey says if he can get half a quota (8-9 per cent) on first preferences, he has a very good chance with preferences.
Other than the Greens, minor parties are widely believed to have a very limited chance, but Mr Bailey is politically savvy and is helping the array of minors to organise themselves strategically. With the help of public funding if he tips 4 per cent of the Senate vote, he will pump $40,000 to $50,000 into the Tuggeranong campaign. The party will run five to 12 candidates, and perhaps a full ticket of five in Tuggeranong.
Mr Bailey, 33, has a colourful background, having worked for Bob Katter and stood as a candidate for Katter's Australian Party before joining the Sex Party.
He's a maverick, who recounts a childhood living in the country near Bombala, the son of "hippy" parents who had so little money there was no electricity or hot water and he had to sleep in a caravan then a shed.
Left to his own devices, he mowed lawns in return for a piano - an instrument for which he showed such talent that he was accepted early into the ANU school of music. He says he also earned sufficient money to buy a motorbike at the age of 10 which he used to explore the countryside, making regular use of a neighbour's .22 to shoot rabbits. At 14, he started work in a sawmill, and at 16 he took himself to Canberra to go to Narrabundah college - telling his mother the night before he left home.
"My childhood had in it more independence than any other person I know so she trusted me - and she didn't have a choice either," he says. He works in the arts.
Mr Bailey lives in Kaleen, but is standing in Tuggeranong given the Senate vote - and aided by the sudden resignation of Liberal Brendan Smyth. While "nothing more than a political bribe and an act of political cynicism and bastardry" on the part of the government, it left an opening, he says.
If successful, the Sex Party's strategy is another blow to the Liberals' chances, since the seat would be the one the Liberals need to win.
While saying he doesn't "see the point of the Greens in the ACT other than perpetuating the nanny state", he would support whichever major party was prepared to deliver his agenda - clearly a non-conformist agenda that rejects "media empires, corporate monopolies, corrupt financial systems, and social values imposed by government" and isn't easily assigned to the classic left-right divide.
