Ari Sharp, Australian Democrats candidate for Kooyong, reports from the campaign frontline.

A smartarse once said that we don’t need elections in Australia – what we need is a test of mental, physical and intellectual endurance that could only be achieved by running candidates through a series of gameshows – from the intellectualism of Sale of the Century, the physical demands of It’s a Knockout to the psychological rollercoaster of Perfect Match .. this is how our nation should choose its politicians.

Well, as is often the case, the smartarse is just about right. The challenges involved in running an election campaign both at a local and national level are incredible, with most of the responsibility falling on the shoulders of candidates and campaign managers. For most of these in a party like the Democrats, it is a job driven by passion rather than money, because, quite simply, we have no money. [Read more…]

Ari Sharp, Australian Democrats candidate for Kooyong, reports from the campaign frontline.

You’d be amazed at the barriers that being a candidate brings down, and also the ones that it puts up.

Take the early morning train station caper. Usually, hanging around dark train station subways early in the morning would be viewed with a combination of fear and suspicion by the rush of early morning commuters.

However, by wearing a decent suit and a half decent smile, a candidate is all of a sudden free to converse with whoever wanders by, the social barrier of chatting to a complete stranger having been broken down. [Read more…]