AUSTRALIA—The Australian Sex Party will introduce its candidates for the NSW state election at a media conference March 17 at 2.30 p.m. at the Beauchamp Hotel in Darlinghurst.
Sex Party President Fiona Patten said that the party would be running Andrew Patterson (pictured), a 46-year-old former vice squad detective sergeant and chief investigator for the Independent Commission Against Corruption, in the seat of Sydney. In the Upper House, the party is running a 23-year-old student from Sydney University, Huw Campbell.
Patten said both candidates would run as Independents, as the Sex Party had been told by the NSW Electoral Commission some 15 months ago that it was too late to register for the current election.
“The NSW government, the Opposition and the Greens have made it so difficult, expensive and time-consuming to register a new party in NSW that very few new parties will be seen in state elections for the next few decades,” Patten said. “But by endorsing and backing independent candidates and creating new social networking tools to do this, the major parties may have shot themselves in the foot”.
Patterson said that he would run on a platform that focuses on civil liberties, drug law reform, anti -corruption and anti-censorship, which he said would be unique in this election.
“My background as a police officer and an ICAC investigator has shown me how governments feed black markets and organized crime through irresponsible social policies,” he said. “I am also extremely worried that a new Liberal government with Fred Nile controlling the Upper House will turn NSW into a religious state where hard-line ideologues control social and economic policy.”
Patterson added that the Sydney seat was currently being represented by a member who also had a full time job on local government.
“I don’t believe that you can be an effective member of state parliament and be an effective member of local government at the same time,” he said. “The pressure must be enormous and the issues would often be conflicting, I would imagine. If elected I would seek to introduce legislation to make people choose one or the other. With the issues currently facing the City of Sydney I believe the people of Sydney deserve a full time MP and a full time Lord Mayor.”
Patterson said that the seat of Sydney also took in Kings Cross, which was the symbolic centre of sex, drugs and organized crime in Australia, and that if elected, he would introduce to the NSW parliament new ways of dealing with these problems that were currently being tested in modern European democracies.
“The old style approach to drugs, censorship and corruption has not worked,” he said. “There are new ways of dealing with these issues that require completely new political approaches which we will not get from dinosaurs like Fred Nile, David Clark and John Hatzistagos.”
For more information, visit the Australian Sex Party website.
