Bob at Family First points out that the Green Party’s previous stance when faced with a petition falling short is to give up and move on.
He also posts a few stats comparing the referendums:
How many signatures were submitted? 324,216 v 391,355
How many were needed to force the referendum? 300,094 v 308,753
How many were found invalid after the thorough audit? 13% v 25%
To collect in two months: 18,027 v 16,500
Government funding: 0 v $91,000
That’s right – $91,000 of your money to get 100,000 irregular signatures
Let’s face it, the CIR route was always a bad one for the Greens given their sneers at the last successful (and wildly popular) one. Submitting a petition with one hundred thousand (use Dr Evil accent for that one) false signatures sinks what was already a seriously leaky moral ship.
There’s some questions being raised that the duplicates and false signatures were planted there deliberately. Perhaps if they had relied on volunteers they might have had a few less. I have no Either way, they only have themselves to blame for not checking more thoroughly It’s not like they lacked funding or anything.
Update: Wow, Normal keeps it classy.
Because clearly there’s no difference putting a fake or duplicate signature on a petition and signing up for information on shares and then deciding that you’re not going to make the purchase (as I did).
One of these is fraud. The other is normal business. It appears we have a party leader who either doesn’t know the difference or think’s it’s good politics to pretend there isn’t.
Something should go here, maybe later. 