“Informed” indeed

Now election day does tend to bring out some cranks, and even in Maroubra/Kingsford-Smith we tend to get them. This time round, we got these clowns:

Never heard of them before now but they have evidently been around for a few years. Quoth Wiki:

The Informed Medical Options Party (formerly known as the Involuntary Medication Objectors (Vaccination/Flu…oride) Party) is an Australian political party. The party’s policies oppose compulsory vaccination programs and water fluoridation. The Party states that these are “mass-medication programs” where there is “genuine scientific uncertainty about the benefits and risks in a genetically diverse population”. Australian Medical Association president Tony Bartone said the party’s views “lack the backing of scientific evidence” and that its members “should consider the harm that can ensue upon the Australian community”. It was registered for federal elections on 26 October 2016.
Party secretary Michael O’Neill said the “anti-vaxxer” label regularly used by critics was “insulting”.

Well if you don’t want to be called anti-vaxxers… maybe don’t be opposed to vaccination? I know they insist they’re only really opposed to compulsory vaccination schemes like the Covid program, but I feel that if you expressed an active interest in getting the Covid vaccine and actively wanted it, they would try and talk you out of it. Indeed, when the Covid thing was kicking off in 2020, one of their candidates made a misinformation video on the subject (claiming you can’t catch a virus unless it’s injected right into your bloodstream, which will come as news to BILLIONS of people who’ve ever had the common cold) which wound up being banned from Youtube and Facebook; before it vanished from the latter, it wound up being shared by people like anti-5G mobs and the crypto-Nazis at Reclaim Australia. Great friends to have…

Anyway, they decided to stand in Maroubra this time round for some reason and offered us a local candidate, lad from Pagewood called Roderick Aguilar, about whom his page on the party website says:

During the COVID-19 period, Roderick lost his job twice due to the vaccine mandates.  The family was forced to live on one income while Roderick searched for work for over two years.  This downtime also allowed him to look deeper into the mandatory COVID vaccines, and his eyes were opened to the many conflicts of interest existing in government today, not just in Australia but around the world.  Previously, his eyes had been ‘closed’ and he blindly followed any government directive without question.  Today, Roderick has his eyes ‘wide open,’ dissecting every bit of information, checking its source and validity, and questioning the motives behind it. He is passionate about securing a better future for his children and future generations.

Nice to know Roderick’s involvement with these goons is completely disinterested and has no personal element whatsoever… But it was the how-to-vote card illustrated at the bottom of his info page that struck me:

So there’s our man, the other guy being the previously mentioned Michael O’Neill. And… um… interesting choice of preferences for the upper house paper. Liberal Democrats as second preference is curious enough, but… One Nation as third?

Roderick? Mate? I know these are preference deals that you would’ve had little or nothing to do with, they would’ve been worked out by O’Neill, I’m sure, but how are you OK with them? Cos your info page says you were born in the Philippines… and though it doesn’t say how old you are, it says you’ve been working in IT for over 26 years, so you’d be old enough to remember Pauline Hanson’s parliamentary debut. You know, the speech she made about Australia being “swamped by Asians”. YOU WERE ONE OF THE ASIANS SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT, RODERICK. I know Porleen is more interested in Islamophobia these days, but I’m sure she still hates Asians too in-between hating Muslims. But you’re OK, I presume, with sending preferences her way despite that, or at least you’re not bothered enough to quit the party… does getting revenge on Covid-19 matter that much more to you than, you know, not supporting professional racists?

As of the end of counting on election day itself, Roderick has 866 first preference votes, 2.8% in total. This is 866 too many, of course.