Dirty Tricks.

Anyone who has ever seen footage from the Australian Parliament will know that they do politics slightly differently there. To say that it can be more lively than we are used to would be an understatement. However I was still shocked to hear about the alleged dirty tricks carried out against the Green Party last year.

To summarise the story:

A religious sect (the “Exclusive Brethren”) placed ads attacking the Green Party’s policies on improved rights for transgender and intersex people saying that they would “ruin families”. Whether due to these ads or not the Green Party did not perform nearly as well in the election as they had been polling earlier in the campaign. The accusation now is that the ads were in some way related to the Liberal Party because the advertising agency responsible for them sent the invoice to the Liberal Party rather than the religious sect. The Exclusive Brethren and the Liberal Party put this down to an administrative blunder and say that anyone who believes there is a connection is a conspiracy theorist.
Well I for one look forward to more facts on this being uncovered.