Rio Tinto names Shell’s Katie Jackson as new copper chief
Jackson, who is the current president of National Grid Ventures, an energy group, joins Rio Tinto on September 1.
Clive Palmer has just announced that he’s very likely to lose the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax as a result of “voting irregularities” and that until Tony Abbott reforms the “corrupt” electoral system, his Palmer United Party will block new legislation pushed through by the coalition.
Palmer claims that his ‘scrutineers’ were banned from entering certain counting rooms, were not “provided with copies of AEC officials’ signatures to check against signatures on ballot papers,” and that numerous individuals were able to vote using pencils and without providing proper identification, the Courier Mail reports.
“Having votes marked in pencil is just a joke…even in Zimbabwe you have to mark you thumb with ink and have identification,” Palmer commented. “What’s to stop one guy to go into 10 different polling booths and voting 10 times?”
He also accused officials of lax protection of the ballots overnight:
“They should be kept under lock and key, the ballot boxes should also be sealed and signed by each party’s scrutineers and only opened in the morning by those same scrutineers,” Mr Palmer said.
“That always happens in other countries. Why not here? Maybe Australians are just apathetic.”
“If there were UN observers here this would be regarded as an unfair election.”
Just hours ago Palmer was still riding high on a post-election victory wave, claiming the Fairfax seat by more than 3000 votes and also calling himself a kingmaker for the role his party played in Tony Abbott’s ascension.
Now it appears that Palmer’s Liberal National Party rival Ted O’Brien has the Fairfax seat locked up by a only a few hundred votes.
5 Comments
golddigger69
Sinking like the Titanic he is
DrSlider 1952
I’ll sue, I’ll sue…. what a classic wingnut ! what too much money can do for your ego. Imagine as a politician… greater fiasco than Joe !
HardWorker
And to think, I actually considered voting for this fool, until I looked a bit closer,
Dave
Any sane person would think he should just hold tight until the AEC has finished their (very thorough) job and got final results before opening his mouth and threatening legal action et al. Typical school yard bully throwing his weight around.
Postal votes have until the 27/9 to arrive for counting the following week. Until then a final figure is pure conjecture.
Tashinga
So Zimbabwe’s voting systems does become the envy of some? Thought elections were always fair in the West.