IT WAS AN underwhelming day for Julian Assange’s most staunch supporters in his homeland today as the Wikileaks Party failed to secure even one per cent of first preference votes in Australian elections.
As the ballots are totted up, it looks increasingly unlikely that the founder of the whistle-blowing will secure a seat in Victoria.
In fact, the party will most probably be beaten to one of those seats by Ricky Muir of the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party.
With more than 60 per cent of the vote counted in the state of Victoria, the party has obtained just 1.18 per cent support.
Nationally, the Wikileaks Party gained just 0.62 per cent of the electorate’s mandatory votes, losing out to the controversially-named Australian Sex Party and the pro-gun movement Shooters and Fishers who received 1.37 per cent and 0.91 per cent support respectively.
The Australian Sex Party received much attention as the country’s Electoral Commission had to decide whether its name was obscene.
The Wikileaks Party lost much of the ground it had gained in the first weeks of campaigning when it revealed a number of controversial preference decisions, opting to place some right-wing parties ahead of the Greens on its ticket.
In some good news for Assange though, as he continues to live in the ladies’ bathroom in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, the party beat Bullet Train for Australia. The new party was set up for this election and ran with two main selling points: to campaign for a high-speed train network and to be the least annoying political party in the nation.
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