The Sex Party would be in with a chance if it could muster enough members.
Alf and his mates could muster a few members among them.
He supposes it’s enough to count heads and not bring length into considerations to prove there is no shortage of the aforementioned members. Length of service, for example.
But even if he is right with this supposition he is personally disinclined to line up to come to the aid of the troubled Australian Sex Party.
This party – we learn today – has been deregistered after the Australian Electoral Commission ruled it has fewer than 500 members.
This suggests a certain slackness in the recruitment department.
But Sex Party registered officer and co-founder Robbie Swan said the party would “vigorously” appeal the finding, which he described as dodgy and unfair.
Swan claimed there are more than 6000 Sex Party members across the country, although he said many might not want to admit their party membership to a government official.
To calculate the number of party members, the AEC is reported to have cross-checked members against a list of 550 members.
It found 508 were members and on the electoral roll. Staff phoned 26 of them before ruling the party no longer had 500 members.
This shortage of members does not mean the party is politically impotent.
According to the AEC, a deregistered political party can still field candidates at election, but will not be able to put the party name on ballot papers. Party funding from the public purse is also adversely affected.
But coyness obviously is a handicap. Too many members prefer not to stand proud to be counted.
“There’d be many reasons why they wouldn’t want to admit to that, some people,” Swan said. “You know, a husband with a conservative wife, who joined up at Sexpo, or whatever.
“It’s just so dodgy and it’s unrepresentative and it’s not fair.”
Swan said more than 6000 people had signed a statutory declaration since 2009 saying they wanted to be Sex Party members.
She also said the federal parliament needed to urgently review the way the AEC canvassed membership numbers, or small parties would be “wiped out”.
“The Sex Party is also at a disadvantage in that the majority of our membership is from young people who change their addresses frequently, do not have land line phone numbers and are much more transient than established Labor, Liberal or Green members.”
Dunno if they have a similar party in Britain.
The photo above suggests they should have one.
But the Poms are a funny lot.
Alf recalls a popular movie a few decades ago titled “No Sex Please, We’re British”.
He also recalls a study that found Britons are lazier than ever.
One in six people would rather watch a TV programme they didn’t like than leave the sofa to change the channel if their remote control was broken. A third (36%) of the 2,000 adults surveyed for the study said they would not run to catch a bus and more than half (59%) would not walk up two flights of stairs to reach their office, choosing instead to take the lift.
More than half of dog owners (52%) did not walk their dogs, and two-thirds (64%) of parents admit to always being too tired to play with their children.
The laziness epidemic appears to have spread to the bedroom, with almost three-quarters (73%) of couples saying they regularly do not have enough energy at the end of the day to have sex, with more than half (58%) blaming a lack of fitness.
Obviously we can exempt the royals from this indictment.
Alf Grumble 