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New EnglandDeputy prime minister, loose unit, and infamous dog hater Barnaby Joyce may have won the seat of New England during the 2013 election. But his victory came only after the electorate's much-loved independent member Tony Windsor announced his retirement.Now Windsor is back, challenging for the seat he held for more than 12 years. "I'm serious about this. We'll mount a full-scale grassroots campaign," he told reporters. "I'm fully aware it will be a David and Goliath event."Joyce—with the full support (and money) of both the Nationals and the Liberals behind him—is the Goliath in this metaphor. The government doesn't want to see its second-in-command rolled in what should be a safe seat. But progressive Windsor's unshakable popularity in what should be a conservative seat means anything is possible.Plus this is political meets personal. In 2010, Windsor threw his deciding vote behind Julia Gillard instead of Tony Abbott, allowing her to form government. As Annabel Crabb wrote: "The personal loathing between Mr Windsor and Mr Joyce is pretty much unchartable, not to mention unprintable, and this is the first opportunity they've had for a direct scuffle."Trevor Evans v Pat O'Neill
Brisbane"If you'd said twenty years ago that the two major parties would both put up openly gay candidates in a marginal Queensland seat at a federal election, you'd have been dragged down to Fortitude Valley and stoned to death with XXXX tinnies," commentator Bryce Corbett wrote in the Financial Review. Yet here we are.
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Eden-Monaro
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An Australia-wide battle to the deathBack in March, the government pushed through Senate voting reforms, with the help of the Greens and independent senator Nick Xenophon. The biggest change under the deal is preferences: your vote will no longer be funnelled to some candidate you never intended to support because of backroom deals.In 2013, there were more than 100 candidates listed "below the line" in NSW alone. These included some of the biggest losers under these new reforms. All of those micro parties who scraped into the Senate—the Motoring Enthusiasts Party, Glenn Lazarus Team, Jacqui Lambie Network—and made it the all-in free-for-all it's been over the past few years will be likely swept out.A double dissolution election will mean Senators will need fewer votes to win a place (because every seat is up for grabs, as opposed to only half in a regular election). However, these reforms will make is statistically impossible for most of these micro parties to get enough votes.
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Federal Court of AustraliaAhh, Clive. What is there left to say? You rode into the 2013 on a wave a public dissatisfaction with the major parties, savoured bending the government to your will, even hosted Al Gore for a deeply weird joint presentation on climate change.But then your party candidates started deserting en masse: Jacqui Lambie, Glenn Lazarus, Alex Douglas, Xavier Kurrupuwu, Larisa Lee. The list goes on. And your businesses, which made you Australia's leading self-declared billionaire, started to crumble—first your dinosaur park, then Titantic II, and now Queensland Nickel (QN).Allegations emerged last week that Palmer used a pseudonym (Terry Smith) to siphon around $224 million from QN in order to fund his political aspirations. While he's still committed to the idea of running in this year's election—potentially in the Senate—it's likely Palmer has a bigger foe to overcome: prosecution under the Corporations Act. As Lee Zachariah wrote, "In a best case scenario Palmer now faces a very awkward expulsion from politics. The worst scenario sees him going to prison."For more VICE Australian Election updates, follow Maddison on Twitter.