by Robert J Lee in Cairns

Compulsory identification checks before voting, introduced for the first time in Queensland, will have a significant impact on the Labor election result.

Since at least 1987 the ALP has benefitted from voting fraud in federal and state elections and in some instances it has influenced results by more than 3 per cent.

Marginal seats are normally targeted by rent-a-vote where only a few hundred votes can swing a seat. This mob of unionists and ALP members now will have their wings clipped unless they can provide ID to correspond with the hundreds of false enrolments on the electoral roll.

For years the union movement’s captive Labor pollies have in some cases, won a seat not having any idea the result was fraudulent.

The most common fraud in the north occurs on Cape York Peninsula where mobile polling booths traditionally are manned by ALP leaning state public servants, or in previous elections, teachers with an ALP bent.

These booths usually record a high number of votes for Labor.

Twelve years ago the former Labor Main Roads Minister Steve Bredhauer was caught with a bum bag full of $50 notes he was seen handing out to Aborigines prior to the election.

A complaint was made to the Queensland Electoral Commission in Cairns but luckily Bredhauer’s brother- in- law happened to be the returning officer.

LNP not hiding behind door

The LNP has not been entirely innocent either when it comes to vote fraud.

Particularly on Cape York where Kowanyama and two other communities were the target of LNP vote buying prior to the 2012 election.

A rather unsavoury character closely attached to the Mareeba LNP campaign team and the Tablelands LNP apparatus was seen with 200 litres of home-brewed moonshine being delivered to community members before polling day.

Suffice to say an article in the Weekend Australian in September 2012 noted that the LNP vote in Kowanyama was the highest ever recorded for the Liberals or former Nationals on Cape York Peninsula.

When quizzed about the outstanding result, the newly elected Member, David Kempton, a former Cooktown solicitor, commented that it was his “personal following” that delivered him the poll windfall.

Comments left on the Cairns News web site indicated that few readers in the Far North believed his claim.

Then the Murdoch rag, the Courier Mail, in 2014 discovered another LNP scam costing taxpayers $2000 a day to pay a ‘consultant’ hired by the State Government to make indigenous people “feel good”.

In the article Mr Kempton denied suggestions the female consultant from Melbourne, Annalise Jennings was his girlfriend, although he was seen flying around Cape York in chartered helicopters and planes, staying in motels with Ms Jennings firmly attached to his side.

Further sightings in Cairns of the elusive Member entwined with the ‘feel good’ consultant were reported, in spite of his romance denials.

Media sources in Cairns recently reported the relationship continues…..

Mareeba Forum

At a ‘meet the candidate’ forum held by the Chamber of Commerce last night, the Member for Cook kept up his façade of misrepresentation and half-truths with misleading statements about coal seam gas and lied about its scientifically documented, detrimental effect on water tables.

It became quite apparent during his attack on a CSG activist in answering a question that fracking is Mr Kempton’s Achilles heel.

Also represented at the forum were the Katters Australian Party candidate Lee Marriott, the ALP’s Bill Gordon and Jason Booth from PUP.

All candidates fielded questions from the audience. Several audience members said after the meeting they thought Lee Marriott had the best policies for job generation and agriculture and had explained it well.

One audience member told Cairns News that Marriott “certainly” behaved much more openly and honestly than the Member for Cook.